I’m just cranking them out today. I’ve been using the last paradiddles around the drums thing so much I decided to write up something similar using another familiar solo pattern, the six stroke roll (as […]
Category: downloads
Groove o’ the day: Freddie Waits
This is a hip stick-and-brush thing Freddie Waits plays on the intro to If You Go Away, from Ray Bryant’s 1967 album Slow Freight. The regular note heads on the snare drum line are played […]
Kernels of Cascara
My students have been doing so well with my “kernels” concept that I’ve decided to write up a real challenge for them: cascara with the clave in the left foot. It was the hip thing […]
MD column: hi-hat technique
OK, I’m not meaning to turn this into a fair-use abusing, exclusively old Modern Drummer stuff blog, but a longer post is taking its sweet time getting finished, and this is just what I happen […]
First-inversion paradiddles around the drums
2024 UPDATE: Wow, this page looks like crap. See my new bigger and better page of this. This came up in my own practice today— straight conditioning movements around the drums, using the very traditional […]
Stick Control implied rhythms
I hope you dig all of this Stick Control stuff; I just happen to be working with this book a lot right now. One of my reservations I’ve always had about it- about the way […]
Grooves o’ the day: found items
[UPDATE: Link fixed!] I found these inside an old copy of Mel Bay’s Stage Band Drummers’ Guide I just purchased on Ebay: two pages of beats cut out of 1984 issues of Modern Drummer. I […]
More Stone on the drums
Here’s something timely to the ECM feel post. I’ve been using Stick Control quite a bit in my practicing lately- particularly my application in 5/4 (and a similar thing in 7/4), and in fooling with […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen – Dansere
This goes out to my old friend Tim Willcox, who turned me on to this record- Jan Garbarek’s Dansere, with Jon Christensen on drums. Christensen is pretty important to the current thing going on in […]
Basic solo vocabulary with Syncopation
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything downloadable of my own, and you don’t want to hear me prattle on about cymbals and crap, so here’s a basic solo vocabulary builder I’ve been working […]
MD column: Alternative open roll stickings
Here’s an interesting piece from that same old Modern Drummer from 1977. The writer, Mickey Earnshaw, proposes a set of alternate roll stickings, using the RLLR/LRRL paradiddle inverion or the RLLR/RLLR sticking in place of […]
Todd’s Methods: Stick Control in 5
So much for writing nothing. I’ve been doing a lot of practicing in 5/4 lately- I’ve always quite sucked at it, frankly- and finally getting it together for real has been a curious process. Very […]