More student stuff! Someone needed a Latin rhythm for a tune he’s playing in a rehearsal combo, and this repeating quasi-samba pattern is what he came up with. So in the lesson we worked through […]
Category: exercises
Afro 6 – advanced bass drum ideas/coordination
A page of patterns I’m playing around with, in an Afro 6 feel, that are difficult or unusual for varying reasons— either the bass drum is in unison with the left hand, or the actual […]
Singles speed builder
This is a page for developing fast singles, for my students— maybe you can use it too. Like anything else, your results may vary teaching it to yourself. You can contact me for lessons on […]
More on that Latin system
Breaking down part of that short Latin method from the other day. I like it. It’s easy, and gets us into some pretty fundamental things about rhythm, drumming, using the drum set. This is a […]
A concise straight 8th / pseudo latin system
It’s remarkable how long you can work with a book like Syncopation, and still come up with new things to do with it. Newish. This isn’t actually new, it’s a specific variation on existing things. […]
Todd’s jazz drill
A summary of something I’ve been doing lately. I hadn’t practiced for about a week, so to get my act together, I drilled some standard jazz methods using that recent page of practice rhythms. I […]
Cliché control – 5 stroke singles
Another Cliché Control page for learning to solo in jazz, combining stock licks. This time centered around 5-stroke singles: RLRLR or RLRLB. We’re squarely in Philly Joe / Art Blakey territory here— and a lot […]
Stick control in 12/8 – “Afro logic”
Here’s what that page of 6/8 sticking patterns was setting up— and that funny joke photoshopped page from Stone: sticking combinations in 12/8, oriented like the Afro “short bell” rhythm, with one pattern on beats […]
Reed interpretations: 16th notes in a triplet feel
A simple system here, that nevertheless has a number of possibilities, that I was playing using with my own book, Syncopation in 3/4, along with the Bill Frisell / Where In The World loop in […]
Stick control patterns in 6/8
This is part of a larger writing project I’m doing— some things you have to write out to decide if they’re going to be of any use. You can see that the logical sequence here […]
Reed tweak: paradiddle fill in
Some of these Reed systems are so sprawling that you can spend months working your way through them. This one is nice and limited. There’s exactly one thing to do, and relatively few lines from […]
Subtractive patterns for jazz snare and bass
Continuing to develop this subtractive method, here are some good patterns for snare drum and bass drum in a jazz feel. I’m digging the system. It allows me to put whatever part I want consistently […]