It’s a funny thing, there’s endless online conversation about how to play an open roll, and virtually nothing about flams. They’re off the radar for some reason. And with the book Stick Control, NOBODY every […]
Category: exercises
Basic short roll studies with continuous motion
UPDATE: Download link is working! I’ve got to stop putting “EZ” on every single normal-difficulty thing I post. This is an easy page of roll studies I wrote to prepare a couple of younger students to […]
More practice phrases for EZ fills
Here are some more practice phrases to use with my page of EZ one-beat fills with tom moves, in a fast 4/4, and a slower tempo with the fill in 32nd notes. On the original page, the […]
EZ triplet bass drum / cymbal drill
Do you think most of what you play in real life is hip, complicated, multi-layered, polyrhythmic, hybrid-rudimental madness? Sir, it is not. Most of what you play is normal, obvious, easy stuff. You want to […]
Single stroke 5s – 32nd notes
A set of exercises I improvised on my leg at the start of a rehearsal yesterday— and this would actually be good as part of a warmup. These are 5 stroke rolls in single strokes, in […]
Page o’ coordination: 2SB-2BS
Another entry using this slightly different conception of my page o’ coordination series— adding various cymbal rhythms to a repeating snare-and-bass coordination pattern. The cymbal rhythms are good for jazz, R&B, Afro-Cuban, or just general […]
Page o’ coordination: linear pattern for Latin soloing
The 5+3 note phrase is one of the easiest and most useful of Gary Chaffee’s basic linear phrases. If you start phrase on the a of 2, the bass drum part makes a Latin tumbao […]
Page o’ coordination: SBSB – 01
This is an emerging twist on our old Page o’ coordination formula: practicing various cymbal rhythms along with a repeating SD/BD coordination pattern. I’ve found that this opens up some creative possibilities; I’m a very […]
EZ uptempo jazz method – 02
It’s not so much a method as it is “some things to try”, using pp. 10-11 (“Lesson 4”) in Ted Reed’s Syncopation. Last time we looked at ways of making a broken time feel using […]
Page o’ coordination: SB / BS
For some reason* this particular pattern is always difficult for me: snare-bass/bass-snare on the second two triplet partials. So let’s work on it, adding the left foot, and varying the cymbal rhythm. If you find […]
Arpeggio exercise in 6/4 – 7th chords in C and G
UPDATE: Too many things were bugging me about the original version of this page, so I updated it. I added measure repeats so you play each thing twice, and I added an ending in which […]
Simultaneous clave triplet pull exercise
Here’s something you can do with that silly “both clave directions at the same time” idea. In clave-based Latin music, the clave rhythm is often not played with a strict march-like execution; the 4/4 version […]