Some things I worked through with a student, based on the book Joe Porcaro’s Drum Set Method. It’s an interesting book, based on practical applications of rudiments as embellishments, fills, and for soloing. It’s rather […]
Category: fills
Stick Control for fills
I get pretty individualized finding the best way for my students to work on something. People come to me with a lot of different levels of background, and playing goals, so I can’t just give […]
Rock beats with fill phrases
Using this framework a lot with my students in recent months, marking up Funky Primer with a Sharpie, putting accents over the bass drum notes to indicate a crash, marking over the remaining notes with […]
Reed tweak: RH lead triplets – fast within slow
This has been an item of interest for a long time— playing fast in a slow tempo. In a master class Peter Erskine mentioned that Jack Dejohnette was the only drummer he knew who could […]
More 3/8 fills – 01
Here are some things I was playing around with while playing my page of 3/8 fills— embellishments on things on that page. Some odd stickings, or normal stickings I would play in an odd way. […]
Fills in a 4/8 framework – 01
Continuing the concept of that last thing, Fills in a 3/8 framework. Here we’ve got four 8ths of space to deal with, a cymbal accent, and three 8ths of fill. I’m very pleased with how […]
Fills in a 3/8 framework – 01
UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took […]
First inversion paradiddles around the drums
Updating a very crummy looking page I wrote in 2012— some calisthenic patterns moving the highly hip and useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion around the drums. Drill them blazing fast, and also for control and accuracy […]
Chaffee linear patterns – first exercises
I’ve needed this page several times recently— the first basic orienting exercises for the Gary Chaffee linear patterns: RLB / RLBB / RLRLB / RLRLBB / RLRLRLB / RLRLRLBB Mainly, playing the repeating patterns as […]
Chaffee linear phrases – beginning with LH double
Getting back into Gary Chaffee’s linear materials a little bit— originally outlined in the Time Functioning volume of his Patterns series of books. Since first working on this system as a student, it has been a […]
That Steve Gadd lick
More on that Steve Gadd lick from the Full Compass transcription. It’s essentially a familiar kind of four note tom ruff ending on the beat with the bass drum, with an extra snare drum note […]