x10,000. Go. It’s kind of interesting when someone runs a common concept to its logical conclusion, forcing you to examine the premise of the original thing. In this case, the Stick Control model of practice […]
Category: exercises
Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern, in 5/4 — part 1
Extending this recent series of Dahlgren & Fine/Elvin-style coordination studies a bit further, here’s part one of the dotted quarter series, converted into 5/4: Swing the 8th notes and do the tom moves when you […]
Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern – part 2
Here’s part two of our series of Elvin-esque four way coordination in a waltz feel, with a dotted-quarter note cymbal rhythm. Here the bass drum is in unison with the cymbal, and it’s a little […]
Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern – part 1
There’s got to be a better title for that, but I don’t know what it is. Frankly, I’m just lucky if I can get anything posted at all at this point. Here we’re looking at […]
Rudimental Reed: five stroke rolls
I’ve been fooling around with applying some rudiments to the long exercises in Syncopation, by Ted Reed. We’ll start humbly with it, converting the written quarter notes (and tied 8ths) to untied rolls– an 8th […]
Survival chops: accented 8ths
This is never too far from my mind anyway, but playing a salsa gig this weekend it occurred to me how little advanced chops are required in most musical situations. What is usually required is […]
Afro 6/8: left hand variations – the basics
Here’s something challenging for you. I’ve been working with left hand variations within the Afro-Cuban 6/8 (or Bembe, Naningo, whatever term you use) in a variety of formats for about the last year– mostly applying […]
More fun with waltzes
I’ve been using these Elvin’s Afro-Waltz things almost daily in my practicing since I started writing them, and they’re working really great for me, so here’s a new one. This uses the same concept as […]
Cracking 5/4: rock variations
I wasn’t planning on making this part of this series, but it happened to come up. I was prepping for a recording session today which will involve a couple of tunes in 7/4, and I […]
Hemiola applications: funk
Here are some very straightforward funk applications derived from the 3:2 polyrhythm in 4/4 in the hemiola basics post. By isolating each measure, revoicing the parts slightly, and adding obvious things like a downbeat on […]
More Stick Control in 5/4
Another nice addition to your 5/4 practice library: Andrew Hare @ The Melodic Drummer has taken my Stick Control in 5/4 thing a step further, applying an Alan Dawson interpretation to it, filling in the […]
Three Camps: all inversions in one
I was trying to work this up on the fly at the drum set, and it wasn’t happening, and I needed to write it out– so here we are. This is a slightly more practical […]