Helen Frankenthaler Talking about abstract painting, and attitudes towards it in general, countering some things I’ve heard said many times over the years, sometimes about my own work. Modern painting is easy to relate to […]
Triumph of the worst
UPDATE: Toning this down a bit— mainly removing a very unkind assessment of the American electorate— and moving on. My current state of mind is that I’m not going to worry about all the horrible […]
RIP Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones passed away early this morning. I’m not equipped to write anything meaningful about him, so here are some links: notices from the Associated Press, and from Variety. “I’ve never been bored or lonely in […]
Fills in a 3/8 framework – 01
UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took […]
History of cymbal manufacturing
An interesting article by Fritz Steger, author of A History Of Drums Made In Germany, written in German: Welches Becken passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise? In English that’s “Which cymbal suits my music and playing style?”— […]
Latest practice loop archive
Here we are, the latest archive of all my sampled practice loops, mostly categorized by style, mostly with tempos. I also have folders with all the loops I use the most, and with the ones […]
Two measure Reed phrases – 01
Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and […]
Bill Stewart
I’ve been listening to a lot of John Scofield this week, and realized I basically never talk about Bill Stewart here. It’s weird, he’s on anyone’s short list of top living jazz drummers, particularly of those […]
Best books: The Drummer’s/Musician’s Lifeline
Looking at two little books co-authored by Peter Erskine and Dave Black— The Drummer’s Lifeline, and The Musician’s Lifeline, subtitled, respectively, as Quick Fixes, Hacks, And Tips Of The Trade, and Advice For All Musicians, […]
First inversion paradiddles around the drums
Updating a very crummy looking page I wrote in 2012— some calisthenic patterns moving the highly hip and useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion around the drums. Drill them blazing fast, and also for control and accuracy […]
Simple four limb unison warmups
Here’s a set of simple four limb warm ups, that are heavy on the unisons… an underrated practice item. Take your pick, run p. 38 of Syncopation with 4-5 of these, at a reasonably bright […]
Meter-within-meter phrases
A page of meter-within-meter phrases— three beat rhythms played over four measures of 4/4: You’ll want to be very familiar and comfortable with this kind of rhythm— it happens a lot in jazz, and if […]