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 […]
Category: harmonic coordination
Rock with Stick Control!
A little thing I improvised while warming up for a rehearsal. All my rock stuff is oriented around getting off the hihat, getting both hands moving around the drums. A lot of students get locked […]
Beats to fills
Here’s a connecter idea, using some rock beats written normally, a la Funky Primer, but playing them as cymbal accents with fills, as in this rock fill drill— hitting accents on the cymbal/bass drum, and […]
Wrong stickings game
I’m hard at work on a new book right now, and the only way I’ll finish it is if I write the whole thing at once, so here is an absolute throwaway item to keep […]
P. 38 canon
This is purely a writing experiment, pay no attention. Like, run away to some other web site right now. Actually this is a pretty good exercise for working up an Ed Blackwell kind of solo […]
Harmonic coordination summary
I never did a really good summary for my harmonic coordination system (which I’ve variously called Harmonic Coordination Whatsis or Harmonic Coordination Improved, etc), let’s do that now. I use it a lot in teaching, with […]
Marvin Dahlgren video channel
Everybody’s going to want to check this out: Marv’s Legacy, a new(ish?) YouTube video channel with Marvin Dahlgren talking about practicing his books— Four Way Coordination, Accent On Accents, Drum Set Control, etc. I’ve only […]
More notes on Dahlgren & Fine
I’ve continued working on the harmonic portion of Dahlgren & Fine’s Four Way Coordination— the basic exercises in 4/4, on pp. 15-18— since it’s so bloody difficult, I’m writing about it a lot. Around here, extra […]
Back to Dahlgren & Fine
Basic unit of Dahlgren & Fine UPDATE: I’ve been hitting this all week, covering most of the pages in question every day, tempo around quarter note = 126. It’s very interesting— all kinds of unrelated […]
A needlessly difficult book
This has been sitting in my drafts folder for a few weeks. I wasn’t going to post it, but I’m having a hard time finishing anything lately. So here we are: A book I’ve never […]
Accents on 8/8 jazz rhythms
A background project lately has been to create some ways of practicing feathering the bass drum as part of a modern, varying, organic jazz texture. This page is related to some things I’m hearing in […]
From the zone: two-note coordination patterns
From Manuel in Augsburg, Germany. We’ve met a couple of times in my travels— in Berlin and in Augsburg, and I got to help him put together a really nice set of Cymbal & Gong cymbals— a […]