A couple of items related to jam sessions were asked on Reddit (r/jazzdrums) recently, I can comment more freely here than would be appropriate in that forum, and why should I give my stuff away […]
Category: jazz
Practice loops: 10 tunes – 01
Here is a collection of ten loops for learning jazz tunes, sampled from albums, including several by Thelonious Monk. Each has the head played, then an equal number of choruses of soloing— one or two. […]
Notes from a Louis Hayes clinic
I attended a Louis Hayes clinic in Seattle on Tuesday, and have written some impressions of what he said— I’m also reading a Modern Drummer interview from the 80s, in which he goes into greater […]
Dejohnette with Coltrane
“The biggest thrill I got when I was playing in Chicago was the time Coltrane came to town. It was at a place called McKee’s Lounge. I used to go down there to play in […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Blessing In Disguise
From the record East Broadway Run Down, by the late Sonny Rollins. The record is an old favorite of mine, but not one of his most famous. Recorded in 1966, the recorded quartet includes Elvin […]
Playing JPFMR
Playing the page jazz patterns for massive repetition— some pretty ordinary jazz patterns— the way I typically would practice that kind of thing. I’m not learning them for the first time, so I’m free to […]
RIP Sonny
I don’t know what to say about the death of Sonny Rollins. He was one of the last people of his era of music, and his community of players, and it’s remarkable to me that […]
Matthew’s Tunji lesson
Was working with a student on a couple of recent things: this sort of approach, using these pages as a rhythm library, playing along with the loop sampled from Tunji, by John Coltrane. These are […]
Standards now
Jazz context. Tunes we call standards— originally contemporary popular songs that everyone knew, that were a standard part of a working group’s book. These terms arose when there were regularly working bands and an active […]
Alternating triplets, off the 1
Dealing with a lot of small items lately. We know all the big stuff, now we’re getting into how to practice it in a musically natural way, how to fit it naturally into a continuity. […]