Make them all go SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m about to finish my out of town project that has been consuming a lot of my time, so hopefully we’ll resume regular posting soon. …aaaand I just got a […]
Very occasional quote of the day: mesmerized
“The fault with most drummers is they get carried away, mesmerized by the sound of the instrument.” – Larry Ridley, Jr. Modern Drummer, July, 1981
What it is: reading music
The world is teeming with resources. I was just involved in an extended, very contentious online discussion on the topic of reading music— Is it good to be able to read? Is it better to learn, […]
Reed tweak: linear fill in another setting
A similar item to another recent thing, with a Reed system I use pretty often, but don’t talk about much— with the hands plaing the book rhythm, and the bass drum filling in the spaces. […]
Subtractive method: key to BSSB-SBBS
If you’re not doing anything with this system, you should give it a try. It’s a way of orchestrating rhythms from Syncopation (or rhythms from wherever) between the snare drum and bass drum, based on […]
Best books: Working Space
Here’s an old favorite, by the painter Frank Stella, who died this week: Working Space— you can read it online at that link. It’s pretty dense, but there’s a lot to learn about art in it. […]
Something strange
This person is making a lot of videos composing accompaniment for drum solo videos by some well known players, “adding music”, as he says. The first few minutes explain this was done, then there’s an […]
Groove o’ the day: two by Elvin Jones
I have a couple of larger transcriptions going right now, from a couple of Elvin Jones live albums, but don’t have time to complete them, so here are the major grooves from them. The first […]
Reed tweak: filling in 16ths – 02
Boy, if you’re not doing all my Reed stuff, you’re really missing out. These things square away a ton of stuff that people generally have to put together piecemeal— I had to do that. Figure […]
Leading with SD/cym accent
I don’t know what to call this category of thing— I was listening to some Jack Dejohnette, where he would play something on the snare drum, beginning with a unison accent on the snare and […]
Updated rock loops
Here is a link for my updated collection of rock loops, which I put together for one of my students. These should be easy for most people to play along with— no weird rhythms or […]
On Effortless Mastery
Service announcement: the next couple of months will continue to be very busy for me, so I’ll be posting irregularly for awhile longer. Quality of language will be unpolished, wisdom coarsely hewn, logic poorly articulated, […]