Finished my taxes and I am exhausted, so here’s something for you to practice with: Freddie Hubbard’s solo on Stolen Moments, from Oliver Nelson’s Blues And The Abstract Truth. At 111 bpm, it’s a good […]
CYMBALISTIC: more cymbals!
CYMBALISTIC: I just got a few more cymbals in stock, videos will be coming soon! [4/18 – videos are up!] • More of the very popular thin Turks! 18/20/22″ 4/18: I discovered a small defect […]
Natural music
Some open ended musing here. Lately I’m getting a lot of accidental music from younger drum students. Like with that “worst drummer ever” video from a few months ago, they naturally do some things that we […]
Jazz fills with Stone
Another item from a drum lesson. A student and I were playing around with Stick Control, using it as a launch pad for jazz fills. The starting place was my post on rubadub using Stick […]
Reed interpretations: Matt’s double bass method
Here’s a Reed system for double bass drums, made up by a student of mine, with a few tweaks by me. Apply it to the rhythms in Syncopation, pp. 34-37. The first examples will be […]
Get it while you can: Different Drummers
4/23 update: It’s gone. You can try reaching Mr. Mintz through his website, to purchase a copy of the book, if he’s selling it, and/or send him some money for the illegal download. Now available […]
Practice loop in 7/4: Freddie Hubbard / Heidi-B
While I finish up my taxes, here’s the practice loop I was playing with when I was doing that Reed in 7 thing: Heidi-B, from Freddie Hubbard’s album Sweet Return. Tempo is quarter note = […]
Page of polyrhythms – updated
Updating my old badly formatted page of polyrhythms from 2013, adding some things, and hopefully making it easier for more people to read and use. I’ve written them in the easiest possible form, expressed as […]
Best books: The Art of Modern Jazz Drumming – Dejohnette / Perry
“As our mental image becomes more precise, we are better able to select muscle movements which will achieve our goals quickly, efficiently, and accurately.” I’m surprised I haven’t written much about this book already— The […]
Reed in 7/4
Another one of my little photoshop* pranks of an existing drum book— here putting some rhythms from Progressive Steps to Syncopation into 7/4 time. It’s fun. * – Actually I do it using Paint.NET. I […]
Cymbals are in!
SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ll be posting lightly for the better part of this week, A) because I’m doing my taxes, B) because a huge new shipment of cymbals just came in, and I’ll be making videos […]
Very occasional quote of the day: practicing in time
“Through the years I had always practiced from slow to fast, but then I found out that that’s the worst possible thing any drummer can do for his time. If you practice like that, you […]