You can buy them all in one collection now. Hey, we haven’t done one of these in a while. All the tempos from four very famous Miles Davis records, with his very famous quintet from the […]
Category: fast tempos
Reed tweak: yet another uptempo method
Minor tweak to an ordinary right hand lead Reed system, making an approach to playing jazz at fast tempos. I’ve probably written something like this before, I can’t be bothered to check. This way has […]
Transcription: Billy Higgins trading
Some uptempo trading 8s and 4s on Moose the Mooche, from an old favorite album, Wish by Joshua Redman, with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins on drums. I used to play along […]
EZ Fast Rock Lesson
This page functions both as a page of easy stuff for beginners, and as basic vocabulary for fast-tempo rock drumming. There are a lot of patterns, deliberately. This’ll be many students’ first shot at processing […]
Uptempo drill a la Riley
Major rehash alert: an uptempo jazz drill I was playing yesterday, using what John Riley once called “my C major scale”: an SSBB pattern in 8th notes, with notes omitted. The page below is very […]
Transcription: Ndugu Leon Chancler – Man in the Green Shirt
Quick little transcription that includes one of the great opening drum fills ever— Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Man in the Green Shirt, from Weather Report’s album Tale Spinnin’. I’ve just written out the opening, some […]
Plain talk about fast tempos
“Billy, can we talk?” Henry Fonda time. I see we need to have this talk again. Everybody wants to talk about ride cymbal technique for blazing tempos. A little perspective on the subject: About 15 […]
Transcription: Jack Dejohnette – Climax – drum solo
Another drum solo from a Jackie McLean record. Jack Dejohnette early in his career, soloing on a fast tune from McLean’s album Jackknife. The tune is Climax, tempo is about half note = 160. We […]
Three Camps for drumset – jazz / uptempo – 01
I wrote this to isolate some things used in my main uptempo Reed method— which I continue to find an excellent method. This is good if you need to polish a few of those bass drum patterns […]
Latest uptempo drill
I’ll be honest, most of my uptempo things I improvise while practicing, and then work on them maybe a few times over a week or two. But taken together, they give you more than a […]
Transcription: Roy Haynes – It’s Time
Roy Haynes playing behind Herbie Hancock’s solo, on the title track of Jackie McLean’s record It’s Time. There’s a lot of what people call “broken” time here, and meter-within-meter playing. The tune is in 4, […]
Daily best music in the world: Al Harewood fast
Digging around for some Al Harewood— I mostly know him from the 60s Blue Note records he’s on, but he was active into the 90s— I found this killing live track from George Benson, in […]