I wrote this to isolate some things used in my main uptempo Reed method— which I continue to find an excellent method. This is good if you need to polish a few of those bass drum patterns […]
Daily best music in the world: So What
I’m going to transcribe some part of this— you can give it a listen while I figure that out. It seems worthy of a pretty full treatment, and breaks down cleanly into funk, medium swing, […]
EZ ECM feel – 01 – unisons
This is the first part of a little method I used in a lesson recently, for introducing what has become known as an ECM-type feel— a modern, non-repetitive, quasi-linear, straight 8th jazz feel. See Jon […]
Linear 8ths in 9/8 – 02
We’re doing a lot with triplets and compound-meter 8th notes these days— here with a linear pattern in 9/8, with inversions. See this last similar page, and my page of linear double paradiddles/paradiddle-diddles— still one of […]
CYMBALISTIC: a few new Holy Grails
I picked up a few more cymbals from Cymbal & Gong HQ last week, for sale on my Cymbalistic site. I’ll be posting those and adding video… shortly. Four Holy Grail series, two 20″ rides, […]
Latest uptempo drill
I’ll be honest, most of my uptempo things I improvise while practicing, and then work on them maybe a few times over a week or two. But taken together, they give you more than a […]
Transcription: Jimmy Cobb solo
This week I may finally be getting a handle on this Jimmy Cobb fellow, after 40 years of listening to him. It turns out his records with Wynton Kelly are the ones to listen to. […]
Syncopation exercise: page 38 inverted
A little writing experiment here: I’ve inverted the rhythm from the full page Exercise 1 from Progressive Steps to Syncopation, on p. 38 in current editions, famously on p. 37 from earlier editions. It’s one […]
Daily best music in the world / groove o’ the day: Sookie Sookie
I heard this on Portland’s jazz station KMHD yesterday— on Ben Turner’s excellent afternoon show. You probably don’t have a decent local jazz station, so you should be streaming KMHD online and becoming a monthly […]
Page o’ skiplets – UPDATED
UPDATE: Boy, I suck— it turns out this thing is riddled with typos in the 4/4 versions. I’ll let you know when I’ve posted the corrected version… You know, instead of saying “skiplets”— a very […]
Page o’ coordination: Jimmy Cobb Afro
Page o’ coordination based on Jimmy Cobb’s playing on the tune Not A Tear, played by Wynton Kelly. The main groove Cobb plays on this tune is actually identical to the groove from Andrew Hill’s […]
Reed tweak: four beats per drum, cycling
Here’s an easy way to modernize your melodic phrasing when playing an ordinary thing using Syncopation— everyone knows about playing the melody parts from the book on the snare drum and bass drum, along with […]