A smoking short drum solo by Al Foster, playing with Cecil Payne and Duke Jordan on their album Brooklyn Brothers. The tune is Egg Head, a little three minute burner. It’s a blues, and Foster […]
Category: fast tempos
Q & A: Turned around
I received this question in the comments a while ago: I wanted to ask you a quick question about listening to (not playing) up tempos. I find that sometimes my brain shifts the hi-hat 2&4 […]
Time and whatnot
Object To Be Destroyed by Man Ray It is often said that in a musical ensemble, keeping time is everyone’s responsibility. And in some hypothetical quantum universe or other fantastical musical fairyland, people may actually […]
Practice loop: Nexus
Practice loop in 4/4, sampled from Nexus by Gateway— a trio of John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, and Jack Dejohnette, that put out a couple of records in the 70s, and again in the 90s. This […]
Practice loop: Zorn fast 4
Here’s a good practice loop for working on the recent EZ uptempo methods. Tempo is 154 bpm, or 308 depending on how you want to count it— which is about as fast as most people […]
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 […]
EZ uptempo jazz method – 01
There is at least one other EZ uptempo jazz method— oh look, here’s another one— but this one is first in a series of similar things I’m writing now. If you learn to be creative […]
FRANKIE DUNLOP SPEAKS
This is incredible: AUDIO from Scott K. Fish’s interview with Frankie Dunlop. A long, hilarious story— and ultimately hair-raising, when you get to the part with Tony Williams et al in the audience— about Monk […]
Transcription: Joe Dukes – Hallelujah Time
I was rooting through some early George Benson the other day, and turned up this smoking number, which I had never heard before: Hallelujah Time, played by Brother Jack McDuff, with his long time drummer […]
Uptempo Stone method — 02
Here’s a little companion to our other uptempo method using Stick Contrtol by George L. Stone. This is more of an open system, and you may do it without even getting that deeply into the book […]
Transcription: Kenny Clarke fours
Here are Kenny Clarke’s fours, played with brushes, on Love Me Or Leave Me, from the album Walkin’, by Miles Davis. I’ve given the drum solo breaks only: The ties are due to some kind […]
Transcription: Ed Blackwell — Happy House
UPDATE: Download link is now working! Here is Ed Blackwell playing the head of a fairly well known Ornette Colman tune, Happy House, with the band Old and New Dreams. The beginning of the tune […]