…before I have a moment of weakness and do something stupid? This set of 70s Sonor Phonics in all the right sizes has been on eBay for a couple of months now, for a pretty […]
Category: drums
Sonor Phonics are something else
As I mentioned, I just picked up a Sonor Phonic bop set, which I had been coveting for a couple of years. My overwhelming impression is that this is really the Tiger tank of bop drum […]
Page o’ coordination: metric modulation — 2/3
Part 2 of this little three-page o’… unit. Actually, there are a couple of other previous pages you can work up as well— once you’ve learned any one page of this series, the others are […]
Groove o’ the day: funk samba
Today we have a studio-funk style samba by Ivan Conti of Azymuth, on the tune Manhã, from the group’s 1974 self-titled album: The right hand alternates between the bell of the cymbal, and the regular […]
Gary Chaffee linear patterns
In the coming days we’ll be doing a little extension of a thing found in vol. 3 of Gary Chaffee’s Patterns series— an appendix, really— and since that’s not an everyday title like Reed or […]
Page o’ coordination: in 4/4 — 01
Extending this coordination series a little further, way out there into 4/4. What he have here is a little Elvin Jones-like phrase, ending with an accent on the & of 4, with a space at […]
From the zone: Weckl’s paradiddle-diddles
It took awhile, but I finally stumbled across some old scribbled-out exercises conceivably worth sharing as part of this from the zone series. So far the only person brave enough to submit anything has been […]
Groove o’ the day: Grant Green — Cantaloupe Woman
Here are two different Blue Note/soul/boogaloo-type grooves on the tune Cantaloupe Woman, from albums by Grant Green. First, from the great session drummer Ben Dixon (who also wrote the tune), as played on the 1965 […]
Another samba builder
Our previous “samba builder” was very batucada-focused (and probably in need of an update); this has more to do with samba as played on the drums, like in our Milton Banana pieces. The method is straightforward; […]
More with rock beats using Syncopation
Going a little further with my earlier piece on making rock beats using— say it with me— Ted Reed’s Syncopation. In doing this, there will be many duplicate beats, but that’s not important— our purpose […]
Survival chops: right hand lead
This is the second in an extremely short series covering the bare essentials of what you need for “drumistic” fill, variation, and solo material across a variety of styles— you can read the intro to […]