Here’s a relatively easy jazz waltz page o’ coordination, with a minor twist— we’ll be incorporating an open sound on the hihat, played with the foot. This is a jazz feel, so swing the 8th […]
Category: jazz
Swing coordination: Dahlgren & Fine format — 01
In the swing section of their book 4-Way Coordination, Marvin Dahlgren and Eliot Fine created a fairly ingenious framework for writing related exercises in multiple time signatures. With my Pages o’ Coordination I’ve been following […]
Todd’s methods: Reed with RB and BR
Playing Latin styles, you end up using a lot of sticking combinations of RB and BR— B meaning both hands together— so here’s a basic way of using Ted Reed’s Syncopation to work on that. […]
Frankie Dunlop plays an intro
Not much to say about this, except that one of my favorite things ever, Thelonious Monk’s Bye-Ya, from the album Monk’s Dream, came on KMHD today, and that Frankie Dunlop’s opening is just a perfect piece […]
“When in doubt, groove.”
Branford Marsalis’s drummer Justin Faulkner gives a drum clinic at the Seattle, and says lots of great stuff: Part 2 is after the break: [h/t to S_Funk at Drummerworld]
Page o’ coordination: 2 over 3 metric modulation
We’ve done some jazz waltz POCs, and some metric modulation POCs, but some people will still have problems moving between the two in actual playing, so here’s something that may help with that. The modulation […]
Transcription: Tony Williams — Seven Steps to Heaven, trumpet solo
Continuing with our Seven Steps To Heaven transcription in installments, here is Tony Wiliams’s playing behind Miles Davis’s solo, starting at 0:43, on the version of the tune from the album Four & More: The […]
Transcription: Tony Williams — Seven Steps to Heaven, head in
Man, I am getting tired of writing words. Let’s get back to what you actually come here for: drum shit. In honor of the Superbowl— which they tell me is today— here is something that’s […]
Oh, I don’t know…
Probable dialogue: “Come on, swing, you mother— SWIIIIIING! YEAH! YEAAAH!” So, I hear the big hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Whiplash, a movie about the tumultuous relationship of an abusive, hard-driving jazz […]
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 […]
Doubling up a ballad feel with Syncopation
Happy new year, everybody. I’m practicing a lot of slow tempos lately, so here are some Reed interpretations that will be familiar to all jazz students, written out to suggest double time during a ballad. […]