Hey, it looks like one of my posts was a catalyst for a video by a semi well-known opaquely-named YouTuber. He has been the victim of some kind of smear campaign to make his videos […]
From the zone: ECM feel
Here’s something sent in by Ed Stalling of Missoula, Montana. He mentioned being inspired by my ECM feel post from 2012— which definitely needs to be revisited and some links updated— but he’s got his […]
Transcription: Art Blakey fours – Well, You Needn’t
Just a couple of solo 4s from Art Blakey, from the 1953 Miles Davis 10-inch release, Vol. 3. You’ll most likely find it on a later Blue Note compilation. The tune is Well, You Needn’t. […]
Reed method: bass drum with quarter note triplet filler – key
See, this is what I’m talking about— writing/organizing materials a certain way, you get practice ideas you wouldn’t have gotten just practicing the books. I could have used this 30 years ago, but it came […]
Syncopation exercise: two notes per measure – 01
Another syncopation exercise written with a special set of parameters— this one just has two notes per measure, with quarter note or greater spacing. Last year I did a page of one-line exercises that way. This […]
Very occasional quote of the day: the point of doing things
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to […]
Another set of patterns for improvisation
File this in the same category as the recent “extended shuffle” stickings page— it’s a unified set of patterns based on a simple idea, organized to make them easy to improvise with. They’re not new […]
Listening and loops for jazz students
For my jazz students, here is a list of much loved, mainstream, historically important recordings to listen to in your first few years of learning. I’m also in the process of updating the practice loop […]
Three Camps for drum set – inverted – 05
Another page working on normal jazz drumset vocabulary using Three Camps— we’re sort of inverting the basic version, except I’ve taken a few liberties with it to make a normal Elvin-like texture out of it. I […]
A great jazz ride cymbal
This question was asked on a drumming forum: “What makes a great ride cymbal?” I answered it for jazz cymbals specifically, because that’s what interests me, and that’s the music where the ride cymbal […]
Beginning of the end
Well, that was the longest week of my life. I’m still recovering, and after I’ve recovered I probably won’t want to write about this. I hope everyone is celebrating the electoral defeat of the most […]
Stick Control patterns for a certain type of funk
A thing we do here is to rewrite/re-organize existing materials to make them better for practicing certain things. I hate hunting around the page while I practice, flipping pages, dodging things that are no good […]