Still hard at work on the new Cymbalistic site, which will be going live any minute now. I’m at the designing-cruise-ship-drummer-themed-merch-while-waiting-for-domain-cot-com-to-let-me-log-in-to-my-account-so-I-can-reset-the-domain-to-take-you-to-shopify phase. That old story. In the mean time, in honor of Tony Williams’s birthday, […]
Category: fusion
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 […]
Transcription: Chester Thompson – Gibraltar
Here’s Chester Thompson playing on the tune Gibraltar, an extended groove number on the Weather Report album Black Market. The first thing I ever transcribed was Chester Thompson playing with Genesis, and I associate him […]
Daily best music in the world: four by Steve Gadd
Taking a moment to dispel a totally absurd impression of Steve Gadd that has somehow formed in recent years: that he is some kind of conservative “groove” player, which… …no. He’s extremely influential on the […]
JD Beck
Someone shared the following video, and was commenting on the technique of JD Beck, a hot new drumming sensation who I kind of like. How can you not? He’s cute and charismatic, and has an […]
Daily best music in the world: early Weather Report
I have a lot of writing projects going right now, and seem to be unable to finish any of them, so let’s listen. Here’s Alphonse Mouzon playing on the first Weather Report album, doing what […]
Unpacking a groove: Predator
I’m getting into some finer points of playing the hihat two handed with a younger student, and was tempted to show him a groove I transcribed a long time ago: Predator, played by Omar Hakim […]
Paradiddle inversion control – 02
We’ve been doing a lot with the highly useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion lately. This is a page I wrote for myself as I’m developing some other Reed methods for it— sometimes you need to see […]
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 […]
Groove o’ the day: Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit
Alphonse Mouzon’s groove from McCoy Tyner’s Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit— as he plays it in the live video below, from 1973. The tune was originally recorded on Tyner’s album Enlightenment— a 24 minute spiritual journey. […]
Transcription: Tony Williams – Life Suite, Part 2
Some more from that self-titled Stanley Clarke album. I must have gotten the record in high school. Nobody ever told me to get it, I was just rooting through the stacks at the used record […]