No, this is an ALL Elvin Jones site. I think we have to earn it if we’re going to talk about him, put in some work, have some humility, don’t be a leech. I imagine […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat in the space
Here’s a page based on this ongoing Elvin Jones transcription— I observed when he was playing time on the hihat, he would tend to close it before the beat. I also saw him doing that […]
Transcription: more medium tempo Elvin
Here’s some more of Elvin Jones playing that same tune from yesterday, Foolin’ Myself, from Lee Konitz’s record Motion. This is the first chorus of Konitz’s solo, starting at 0:58: It’s pretty straightforward if you […]
Transcription: Elvin plays in 2
A little transcription of Elvin Jones playing in 2, on the hihat, on the head of Foolin’ Myself from the Lee Konitz album Motion. In case you’re short of comping ideas, or phrasing ideas when […]
Very occasional quote of the day: competition
“Music isn’t about competition, but about cooperation, doing s*t together and fitting in.” —Miles Davis
Cymbalistic: little cymbal day
CYMBALISTIC: Yesterday afternoon I went to Cymbal & Gong HQ to pick out a few things. I needed to pick out a 22″ 11th Anniversary ride— an Elvin Jones tribute cymbal— for someone. They took the middle […]
Page o’ coordination: Juju
I’m transcribing a little bit of Elvin Jones’s playing on the Wayne Shorter tune Juju, which I originally did off the LP around 1988. It’ll take some time to finish it, so here’s a page […]
Best books: revisiting Rubank
The matte industrial looking horizon blue cover has that depression era band room reek. A fresh look at the very old, very turgid Rubank drum method books. Rubank, a series of method books for all […]
Hey, you should get drum lessons with me
NOTE: I’m going to keep this pinned to the top of the blog for a little while. Scroll down for new stuff. You know what, I don’t think I get as many students via this […]
Marking up Reed for chart reading practice
Continuing the kicks/set-ups Reed tweak— in aid of that kind of practicing, let’s mark up the full-page exercises in Syncopation some more. You may not want to look at these changes all the time, so […]
Reed tweaks: kicks and setups with RH lead triplets
An online student in Europe is working on his reading with me, in preparation for an audition, and we’re talking about kicks and set ups. There’s a minor tweak to a common Reed solo/fill method— […]
Stickings a la Funky Primer
This is part of why I write so much stuff— you never know what a particular student is going to need, and in what form. For whatever weird reason, somebody will do really well with […]