The title is Nigeria spelled backwards, usually pronounced AIRa-jin. I took a minute in the shower this morning figuring out how to pronounce it actually like Nigeria backwards: ah-ee-REE-jine. JINE rhyming with JIVE. A little […]
Category: How to play…
Thelonious
Thinking about the tune Thelonious, by Thelonious Monk. It’s fun and unusual, based on a single note riff. I don’t believe the form comes from another tune, it’s just a little self-contained bebop invention. It’s […]
Vashkar
The other day I listed some often-played tunes that had some kind of an mystique, at least in my mind. Here’s a tune that nobody ever plays, with a lot of mystique. Apropos of nothing— […]
How to play Autumn Leaves
Playing Autumn Leaves should be a no brainer for a drummer: it’s an easy standard, and one of the first tunes everyone learns. No problem, except some players always do a certain zombie jam session […]
Another list of standards
On George Colligan’s Jazz Truth blog there is a group email sent out by a student who sounds nearly as dickish as I was in college, with the heading: The George Colligan Standards List…LEARN THEM […]
How to play Dear Old Stockholm
Dear Old Stockholm is the English title of a traditional Swedish song, which, you are probably aware, has become a jazz standard. I don’t know who first started playing it as a jazz tune, but […]
How to play Stablemates
The bop tune Stablemates, by Benny Golson, is something of a test piece for drummers. As now-Portland pianist George Colligan said, “Stablemates can be revealing for a drummer….”, and Golson himself said “It moves around […]
How to play Jordu
About time I did another one of these: here’s Jordu, by Clifford Brown, as played on the definitive recording, Clifford Brown & Max Roach, on EmArcy. It gets played a lot at the high school […]
How to play Pent Up House
Or, how to play it the way it was played originally. What we’ll do in this series is look at the definitive recorded versions of some commonly played jazz tunes, and nail down all the […]
How to be a jazz drummer
Here are some tips for a rock drummer who wrote to me wanting to begin learning jazz, but is unsure how to go about it: 1. Play a lot. With people. Everything you do as […]