The tune Out of this World by Harold Arlen has been on my mind a lot recently– I’ve been listening to John Coltrane’s recording of it on the album Coltrane, then it came up in […]
Category: jazz
What records I’m listening to
I really want to cop a feature from Jon McCaslin and list what records I’m listening to, but I’m afraid it would get as repetitive as a broken example of the medium for which the […]
Cracking 5/4: more architecture
Beyond the 2/4+3/4 or 3/4+2/4 phrasing we’ve already discussed, there are a few common constructions you should be familiar with. Just learning the things covered in the first part will take a fair amount of […]
DBMITW: Art Ensemble of Chicago
I’ve got several things brewing– including, but not limited to the rest of the series on playing in 5/4— but they’re all taking their sweet time getting finished, so in the mean time, here’s some […]
Groove o’ the day: Al Foster – Rated X
As promised– or hinted at, rather– here is Al Foster’s hip and unusual groove from Miles Davis’s Rated X, from the record Get Up With It: As you can hear, the 1 and the 4 […]
“If I think of something beforehand then I should not play it.”
Pianist George Colligan has posted a really great interview with drummer Jeff Ballard on his blog, Jazz Truth. It’s really hard to excerpt anything from this because it’s all so good; I put in a […]
DBMITW: Rated X
From Miles Davis’s Get Up With It: That’s the great Michael Henderson on bass. From Wikipedia: Davis saw the young Henderson performing [with Stevie Wonder] at the Copacabana in New York City in early 1970 […]
Cracking 5/4: the basics
It took me a long time to come around to accepting the type of method we’re going to use here; for years the Syncopation-based interpretive method– in which you think more like a horn player, […]
Groove o’ the day: On the Corner
Today we’ve got Jack Dejohnette’s James Brown-like groove on Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X from Miles Davis’ On The Corner: There’s an overdubbed part by Al Foster that’s more forward in the mix, so it’s a […]
Cracking 5/4: the library
Essential. Again following my normal process of doing the easy stuff first, here is the library of practice materials I’ve used for finally getting my act together in 5/4. Normally you would put this at […]
Cracking 5/4: listening
Here’s the first in a series on playing in 5/4. Since everything in music follows from listening (and this is the easiest type of post for me to write), we’ll start with some recorded examples: […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell
Here’s another simple afro feel played by Ed Blackwell on Mu, the duo record with Don Cherry. It’s also available on the Cherry album Cool. This also could’ve been written as two measures of 3/4 […]