Here’s a conditioning page of 8ths notes played around the drums, with one hand. It’s easy enough that most drummers should be able to learn it well enough to play the page straight down in […]
Category: fills
Problem Child fills
I listened to Problem Child by AC/DC a lot when I was in the 8th grade, and just happened to put it on for the first time in a few years, and realized how much […]
More Reggae lead-ins
Here’s a nice companion for my transcription of Sly Dunbar intros from his recordings with Serge Gainsbourg. These are some drum lead-ins from a weird little record by a 70’s London group called Creation Rebel, […]
Several big band drumming books
A couple of new/old big band drumming books dropped into my lap recently, so what the heck, I thought I’d round them up for you: Studio & Big Band Drumming by Steve Houghton – 1985 […]
The Hawaii 5-O fill
That’s the term I use for that universal 8th-grade-style fill down the toms effectively applied, ever since it was coined by Ralph Hardimon regarding a concert tom run of mine when I was in Santa […]
Sixtuplet plus release
This is something that came up in my practicing yesterday, and I went ahead and scribbled out a page of it for you. These sound good fast, but it’s also a good idea to ask […]
Around the drums Max Roach-ily
More good stuff from Bang! The Drum School- a fun page of Max Roach-inspired fills. I like this kind of thing for just practicing getting around the drums- something I never actually did in isolation, […]
16th note fills using Syncopation – part 2
Here’s part 2 of my method for practicing 16th note fills using Syncopation. The goal is to practice reading interpretively, and also to give you a framework for working on the timing of your fills […]
Basic big band set-ups
Another in the recent series of easy stuff, here is a page of basic set-ups for ensemble kicks on the & of 4. You can apply these to my earlier piece, Kicks and Set-ups Using […]
16th note fills using Syncopation – Part 1
This is the first part of a method for working on 16th note fills, which I developed for my intermediate students. It requires some selective reading, but in a constructive way- the same type of […]
Kicks and set-ups using Syncopation
Here’s a little method I devised for working on basic big band-style kicks and set-ups, using Ted Reed’s Syncopation. Like many of the ways of working with Reed, it involves some selective reading/interpretation, but in […]