I’ve been working with Elvin’s waltz daily since I first posted about it, and have been getting great results- and not just with playing this particular type of feel. So let’s keep developing it. It […]
Category: drums
How to play the brushes
Now we’re talking- here’s something substantial for you: I was able to shame Ted @ Trap’d into finally labelling his posts, and now I can link to his entire great series on playing the brushes. […]
HFS, part two
Last time I was moved to so eloquent a title I had just received the massive Paiste 22″ 602 dark ride; today I received a massive library of 180+ dense pages in three volumes by […]
Observations about the volume of things
One of the things on my mind a lot lately has been the issue of projection- making your performance be heard clearly by the other musicians and by the audience. While performing and hanging at […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Out of this World
Here’s another example of Elvin Jones’ “afro-waltz”– as I keep calling it- from the intro of the tune Out of this World, from the John Coltrane album Coltrane: The dotted-8th/16th rhythm you see a couple […]
Developing Elvin’s Afro-Waltz, part 2
I’ve been doing a lot of this sort of thing in my own practicing lately- practicing snare drum variations vs. a cymbal/hihat/bass drum ostinato, via Dahlgren & Fine, and my own materials. Ralph Humphrey’s Even […]
5s around the drums
I’ve enjoying practicing my previous around-the-drums things so much, I thought I’d run it through a few iterations- similar to my multi-page paradiddle exercise– and see what we get. Today it’s 16th note 5s, using […]
Transcription: Paul Motian – Israel
UPDATE: Download link working now. Here are a couple of famous drum breaks by Paul Motian, from Israel, a 12 bar tune on Bill Evans’ Explorations; Motian and Evans trade choruses before the head out. […]
DBMITW: Tootie Heath
OK, there’s always time to do one of these. Here’s Tootie Heath playing with Dexter Gordon: Tootie was living in LA when I was in school down there- my combo leader Dwight Dickerson was in […]
Tom moves
This Elvin thing is turning into a real epic– well, a very small epic, maybe, if you think about it- and I still have to complete the transcription. Here are the tom moves I would […]
Developing Elvin’s Afro-Waltz
Here’s a little something for developing the left hand using the feet-and-cymbal part from Elvin Jones’ groove on John Coltrane’s Your Lady. I always did that type of thing by just going for the sound […]