Here’s Pete La Roca trading 4/8s (four bars horn, eight bars drums) on Homestretch, a blues on Joe Henderson’s album Page One. I’ve written out the full choruses— four total. On the fourth chorus there’s […]
Category: jazz
I transcribe myself
Please forgive the slow posting here— lots of work going on with site other than just writing for it. As soon as I have my act together there, we’ll be back to a normal pace […]
Fast tempo warmups/fallbacks
Some patterns both for giving our fast tempo playing— jazz playing— a solid, simple foundation. Also something to fall back to, when playing a tempo too fast for you. It’s an entry point, and a […]
Listening to Night of the Cookers
The Night Of The Cookers is a two volume live album from Freddie Hubbard, that’s a pretty pure embodiment of what jazz is. Whatever else we get into with jazz— with groove, dynamics/development, arrangement, fancy […]
Who and why: the magnificent seven
New series, some thumbnail sketches of drummers who matter to me— to us, I’ll be that bold— and why. The title of this list is of Lenny White’s coinage, as far as I know— the […]
Reed tweak: BD triplets, with options
Posting sparsely this week due to holiday festivities, and doing a ton of work on site stuff, promotional stuff, getting my Patreon presence happening, other stuff. There’s a lot in the works for ’26. This […]
Daily best music in the world: Mickey Roker fast
Here is Mickey Roker absolutely killing it on the tune Impressions, on A London Bridge, a live recording by Milt Jackson. Tempo is about 334 bpm— half note = 167. And it does pick up […]
Transcription: The Sound Effects Manne
Here’s an interesting duo piece with Shelly Manne and pianist Russ Freeman, from Manne’s 1954 record The Three & The Two. Also on the record are Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre, all Lighthouse regulars— there […]
Listening to Chris Dave
Catching up on my albums that came out over 20 years ago, with Kenny Garret’s Standard Of Language, with Chris Dave on drums. I’ve really never heard him play in a normal modern jazz setting, […]
Jazz patterns for massive repetition
For a younger student of mine. Right now he has a notebook of stuff like the baghad vita, sometimes you need to pare it down for them. This is a small collection of jazz patterns […]
Right hand lead quintuplets? For jazz?
Dropping a big ol’ stinkbomb in your lap as I prepare to wing off to Europe, here is a thing I’ve been working with, under Jack Dejohnette’s influence. I’ve been working on an extended transcription […]
Reed interpretations: Billy Higgins-like uptempo method
Here’s a little thing suitable for jazz at fast tempos, resulting in a Billy Higgins-like sound. Billy Higgins at times. He’ll do a lot of unisons between hands, partial spangalangs, and alternating singles. There are […]