Today we have another odd-meter Billy Cobham groove from the track “b. Spectrum” from his 1973 album Spectrum: He plays the unaccented notes stronger than is customary today, and puts a light accent on the […]
Category: fusion
DBMITW: Billy Cobham
Here’s a live version of another fusion classic: Billy Cobham’s “Anteres” – The Star, from a record I stole from my brother a long time ago, Alivemutherforya: That’s a rare use of the Tama Octobans […]
DBMITW: Lenny White
Speaking of technically-monstrous maverick types, I finally found a copy of Lenny White’s fusion classic Venusian Summer yesterday. And yes, that really is the album cover, not the side of some dude’s Chevy van: More […]
Grooves o’ the day: found items
[UPDATE: Link fixed!] I found these inside an old copy of Mel Bay’s Stage Band Drummers’ Guide I just purchased on Ebay: two pages of beats cut out of 1984 issues of Modern Drummer. I […]
Groove o’ the day: Airto’s samba in 3
Here’s a favorite piece of drumming by Airto, from Chick Corea’s Return to Forever album on ECM. I’d like to transcribe this entire track, but today I just have the primary grooves for you. The […]
DBMITW: Gadd with Chick
I’m working on putting last year’s transcriptions into book form today- which, thanks to the miracle of online publishing, should be available for you to purchase shortly. So you’ll just have to enjoy these two […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Cobham in 17/16
I present this just as a curiosity, because I’ve never encountered this meter anywhere before (maybe in a percussion ensemble piece?). But you can see how we usually deal with the odd #/16 meters; often […]
VOQOTD: Pete La Roca on backbeats
What an insult for Fusion to impose the repetitive BackBeat on Jazz drummers! How ironic, since the BackBeat is merely the handclap used by American slaves when they were forbidden to have drums! How bizarre […]