This is a sticking system for a Reed linear solo/fill method, which I improvised while practicing. In the past, I mostly improvised the stickings, which is not a bad way to practice, but it’s limiting, […]
Very occasional quote of the day: a thousand answers
“Teaching requires just as much time and effort as playing. There are a thousand ways to ask one question and a thousand ways to answer it. You’ve got to have the time to understand your […]
Freehand sketching
A couple of interesting art books available “free” on Scribd, for anyone interested in art, or in getting into art, and trying some non-music related creativity. … which I highly recommend. I gave myself permission […]
Subtractive patterns for feathering the bass drum
A collection of subtractive patterns for developing feathering the bass drum in jazz— for sketching it in, and making punctuations, anyway, since this will mostly not have you playing running quarter notes. Learning to support […]
On Stanley Spector
In the spirit of that recent quasi-paranoid rant, here’s something I wrote some years ago and never posted. Any time I think I’m getting too dogmatic in my writing, I look up the following personality. […]
Groove o’ the day: Jack Dejohnette – Soft Blue
Another item from Jack Dejohnette, playing on Jackie McLean’s album Jackknife— Dejohnette’s first major recording, made when he was 24 years old. We’ve seen a couple of other things from this album, a groove o’ […]
EZ solo method: six stroke rolls with brushes
I was doing this easy Reed method with a student— it’s a rare one for using the triplets-and-8th-notes pages of Progressive Steps to Syncopation, pp. 16-17. This is good for brushes, OK for soloing with […]
Most recorded jazz drummers
A list of the 134 most-recorded jazz drummers and percussionists, created by Mark Stryker, a Detroit jazz writer, which I’m pilfering directly, because it’s not currently live anywhere. I had to look at it through […]
Listening to Clifford Jarvis
Clifford Jarvis was always best known to me as Sun Ra’s drummer, and as the drummer on a number of records I saw in the store, but never bought. A hard bopper turned free guy. […]
8/8 rock method
An easy little two-part system for rock and funk drumming. It’s a way of livening up a rock groove without breaking away and doing an actual fill— using an 8th note texture, played between the […]
Groove o’ the day: Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit
Alphonse Mouzon’s groove from McCoy Tyner’s Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit— as he plays it in the live video below, from 1973. The tune was originally recorded on Tyner’s album Enlightenment— a 24 minute spiritual journey. […]
10 and 11 stroke rolls in Wilcoxon’s Rolling In Rhythm – continued
Continuing with this nerdly topic of problems with roll notation in Charley Wilcoxon’s book Rolling In Rhythm; it should have been the authoritative book on rudimental rolls, but is compromised at times by some very […]