As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been thinking a lot about Samba of late. And as my friend Blake Thomas, an expert cuica (not to mention caixa and zbumba) player has loaned me […]
Category: music
Gigs this weekend
There are a couple of opportunities to hear me play this weekend, for those of you in Portland: Friday, April 15th – 8-11pm – Benson Hotel With Brazilian pianist Weber Iago, and saxophonist David Valdez. […]
Getting started transcribing
There have been a whole raft of people asking for transcriptions over on the Drummerworld.com forum, so I thought this would be a good time for me to write up my long-intended little tutorial on […]
Drumming/jazz glossary roundup
Here I have briefly reviewed a selection of drumming and related glossaries from around the web. Writing definitions requires a special type of mind and writing skill, and is a pretty tedious, thankless task, so […]
Frankie Dunlop on Monk
UPDATE: Scott Fish has posted some of his interview recordings of Dunlop, and they are hilarious. Much about playing with Monk in this interview with Ben Riley from 1986 as well. Do check out my Dunlop […]
Feel in samba
I’ll start this post with an enormous caveat that Brazilian music is not my field of expertise at all. Many people around me are learning Portuguese, making trips to Brazil and being very serious about […]
Hal Blaine interview
Great article and interview with Hal Blaine at Jazz Wax, absolutely worth reading. If you haven’t heard of him, Marc Myers’ introduction should pique your interest: Except for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a […]
Why we transcribe
Yes, I look the same when I’m transcribing as Duke did when he was copying parts- immaculately-coifed, reclining in my suit surrounded by reams of parchment. I’m a pretty big transcriber, and I thought I […]
Best Books: Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman
In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a big fan of Joel Rothman’s books. His many, many books- I think he has written about a hundred of varying lengths since the early 60’s. […]
A lot of hip LP covers
Jazz specialist for the US Library of Congress, writer, and blogger Larry Appelbaum has a couple of huge galleries of LP covers which you should be looking at right now. Emphasis is on jazz of […]
Andrew Cyrille interview by Ted Panken
Here’s another in my series of choice, drummer-relevant bits of other people’s interviews, this time with Andrew Cyrille, by Ted Panken: Ted Panken: Are there different challenges for you in dealing with, let’s say, the […]