Hey, we haven’t done anything for the snare drum in awhile— in my own practicing I’ve been preoccupied with Dahlgren & Fine’s Accent On Accents books, and Buster Bailey’s Wrist Twisters, and my students are […]
Category: jazz
Kenny Clarke plays an intro
Putting together a bebop podcast (which we’ll see here whenever I get it finished), this intro from 1941 by Kenny Clarke jumped out at me— the tune is Hot House, and the playing feels more […]
Page o’ coordination: another 5/4
OK, if you get burned playing a 5/4 because you haven’t practiced enough, don’t come crying to me. I’m doing all I can. This page is based on an ostinato that is sort of a […]
Perspectives on cymbals, part the first
You may have noticed that I’ve lately been advocating for heavier cymbals than are currently in fashion, especially among jazz drummers. After pursuing ever lighter cymbals for most of the oughts, finally settling on some […]
Page o’ coordination: 5/8 + 5/8 — 02
More fun with 5/4, gateway to all odd meters. I guess. Getting it together does seem to make the others quite a bit easier. This is our second entry using the 5/8+5/8 construction: When getting […]
VOQOTD: on swinging
To me, any drummer who hits the drums too hard doesn’t swing. — Peter Erskine Read the entire Drum! Magazine interview from 2000.
Groove o’ the day: Shelly Manne — Way Out West
Here are a couple of very famous things by Shelly Manne, from the album Way Out West by Sonny Rollins. Sonny could be a little perverse in his tune selections, often choosing things that would […]
Mel Lewis on cymbals
More on cymbals from Mel Lewis’s 1985 Modern Drummer interview. This is pretty much the bible of the subject, as it relates to jazz: Number and type The average drummer usually uses two to four […]
VOQOTD: Al Foster’s listening habits
From the Small’s interview archive: “He’s in it all the time. He’s listening all the time. He’s got kind of a small range of stuff he listens to over and over again: Monk, Bird, earlier […]
Page o’ coordination: 5/8 + 5/8 — 01
Another page o’ coordination in 5/4. From the amount of time we spend dealing with playing in 5, you might get the impression that I think it’s pretty damned important. I really don’t, but it […]
Much more to do with 5/4
If you’ve been using the pages o’ coordination we’ve been doing around here, you’re going to like what Sam Nadel has been posting recently— a whole bunch of stuff on playing in 5/4. He doesn’t […]
Groove o’ the day: Peter Erskine — Clint
Because I like challenging you to hear past things that most people perceive as cheese, here’s a little relic of the later fusion era, by the great John Abercrombie trio with Marc Johnson and Peter […]