No entry for getting lost, panicking, and soiling oneself. An interesting day yesterday- I played two sessions in which we played through a bunch of really challenging reading. It’s an interesting dynamic when a group […]
Category: jazz
How to be a jazz drummer
Here are some tips for a rock drummer who wrote to me wanting to begin learning jazz, but is unsure how to go about it: 1. Play a lot. With people. Everything you do as […]
Two nice finds
Two nice things from Jazz Schmazz, a blog I’ll be checking in with real often from here on out. First is a transcription of Pete LaRoca’s fours on Homestretch, from Joe Henderson’s Page One… and, […]
DBMITW: Sam Rivers with Barry Artschul
Another track from Sam Rivers’ Sizzle plus some bonus Barry Altschul after the break:
The way drum instructional videos should be
30 seconds long, no explanation, no BS, no nothing except everything you need to know about the subject: More of Ted Warren’s excellent series of brush videos after the break:
Coordination “kernels”
Here’s one for the teachers. This is an approach I’ve found helpful with students having difficulties with coordination on written patterns in jazz and Latin, and a good alternative/supplement to the usual solution of “slowing […]
VOQOTD: Pete La Roca on backbeats
What an insult for Fusion to impose the repetitive BackBeat on Jazz drummers! How ironic, since the BackBeat is merely the handclap used by American slaves when they were forbidden to have drums! How bizarre […]
Two videos
Here are a couple of nice videos from my fellow drumming blogs while I recover from my little Oregon coast mini-vacation: First, a video on practicing by Steve Smith, from the excellent new Melodic Drummer […]
Transcription: Four – more intros
Once you get going on these, it’s hard to stop. And it looks like I’ll have to do one more, because in a near-inconceivable oversight, I left off my favorite one, by Tony Williams on […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Randy Brecker
It’s a reality these days that it is harder to tell guys apart trumpetistically, because we all study out of the same books, and there’s a certain trumpetistic artistry that’s prevalent these days. So it’s […]
Big band figure builder
Here’s another installment of a thing I’ve been doing with several students, using Syncopation lesson 4 to get familiar with the basic moves and reading associated with setting up and kicking big band figures (“cutting” […]