Here’s a nice companion for my transcription of Sly Dunbar intros from his recordings with Serge Gainsbourg. These are some drum lead-ins from a weird little record by a 70’s London group called Creation Rebel, […]
Category: drums
How much to practice something
1. Get wood chisel. 2. Remove everything that doesn’t look like Billy the Kid deftly gunning down Bat Masterson before the throng of stunned onlookers, a yapping yellow hound at his feet. 3. SUCCESS! One […]
Typos in Funky Primer
Time to get out your white-out again. This is something that had been bugging me for many years of working with A Funky Primer, by my old professor, Charles Dowd. Most of the book consists […]
Groove o’ the day: Gainsbourg
I love 70’s studio drumming. I was just re-listening to some old Serge Gainsbourg stuff- I made a record of his music in 2009 and did a couple of little Europe tours with it- and […]
Playing in 2
I got a nice note from Ben at the excellent Melbourne Drumming Online blog (adding him to the blogroll- be sure to pay him a visit), requesting that I write something about playing in 2- […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin afro-waltz
I’ve been working on a transcription of Elvin’s playing on John Coltrane’s Your Lady, from Coltrane Live at Birdland, but it’s not going to be ready today. Here’s a little teaser, though- the closest thing […]
Todd’s waltz
Or, the presumptuously-named Todd’s waltz, as I call it. I’m not attempting to claim the radical innovation of adding a hihat on the & of 3, it’s just how I often play a waltz, and […]
Four in three in four in 4/4
This an item inspired by Elvin Jones’ rolling triplet thing, written by my friend Stephen Pancerev- we just spent an afternoon rifling through his notebooks of original exercises, cryptic scribblings, etc, and this is the […]
Now available: Book of the Blog 2011 – Vol. 1: Transcriptions
UPDATE: I’m keeping this at the top of the blog this week- scroll down for new stuff. OK, it took me longer than I had hoped to wrap this up, but it’s finally ready to […]
Several big band drumming books
A couple of new/old big band drumming books dropped into my lap recently, so what the heck, I thought I’d round them up for you: Studio & Big Band Drumming by Steve Houghton – 1985 […]
Jazz percussion
This is a concept I’ve been kicking around for years, I think since the term first came up for me in reference to Tony Williams in the history section Jack Dejohnette/Charlie Perry book: Tony didn’t […]