This is a classic situation when you start improvising in 5/4: you get a little cocky about your ability to just vibe the meter and come out OK, and in a few moments you observe […]
Category: jazz
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 […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen — Keep It Like That- Tight
Here’s Jon Christensen doing some nice open, dynamic playing on a slow, static vamp: Keep It Like That — Tight from Terje Rypdal’s self-titled album on ECM from 1971. We love Christensen because he’s a […]
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 […]
Drum intro: Art Blakey — Straight, No Chaser
Every part of this is just so classically Art Blakey— except maybe his touch, which is somewhat gentler than usual. This is his intro on Straight, No Chaser, from Thelonious Monk’s album Genius of Modern […]
Transcription: more Frankie, more Jackie-ing
Let’s really Dunlop out during this fundraising drive. Here’s part 2 of yesterday’s most— Frankie Dunlop’s actual solo on Jackie-ing, from Thelonious Monk’s Live In Stockholm 1961 album: Note that he feathers the bass drum […]
Making bass drum punctuations while feathering
A couple of the problems I have with the idea of playing time with the bass drum (“feathering”) in jazz are: 1) it’s easy to play the feathered notes too loud— a very hokey thing […]
DBMITW: happy 80th to Wayne Shorter
In honor of the 80th birthday of the great saxophonist Wayne Shorter, here is one of my favorite solos of his— or of anyone else’s, ever— from Miles Davis’s Complete In A Silent Way Sessions […]
More meter-within-meter phrases
Here’s a little supplement to the meter-within-meter introduction of a few days ago: some additional two, four, and eight measure practice phrases: It’s easy to get yourself into trouble with this, so it’s important to […]
Getting started with meter-within-meter
Playing meter-within-meter— playing in one meter during a tune in a different one— is a very common rhythmic element in jazz, which became fully realized in drumming during the 1960’s by Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, […]
Page o’ coordination: metric modulation — 2/3
Part 2 of this little three-page o’… unit. Actually, there are a couple of other previous pages you can work up as well— once you’ve learned any one page of this series, the others are […]
Page o’ coordination: metric modulation — 1/3
Or rather superimposed metric modulation, per Vinnie Colaiuta’s term, which few people use, but is actually correct. This is the first of three pages ‘o… developing a swing feel in 2 within a measure of […]