Here’s a page to print out and staplegun to the wall by your drums: a summary of some major practice rhythms, and their inversions. Sometimes you don’t need a readable page, you just need a […]
Category: reading
Basic 8th note rhythms with variations – two bar phrases
Item for one of my students. I generally have people learn their rock beats through Syncopation— once they can do a few basic beats reading them in the conventional way, we go over to my […]
Kicks and setups with Reed – 01
We covered this cursorily back in 2011, let’s talk about it again, with some more detail. “Kicks and setups” is big band drummer speak for one of the major jobs of a jazz drummer, or any […]
Reed Linear Quarters – beat 4 displaced
With a student I’ve been working on a Blue Note type groove a la Cantaloupe Island, and the linear quarter notes lesson (pp. 8-9) in Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation* seemed a good place […]
Reading round up
I’ve been using my pages of syncopation rhythms a lot in teaching lately— similar to what’s in Ted Reed, but written for a specific purpose, either for a specific drum set application, or to do […]
Charleston inversions
Kicking off 2023 with a library item— file this with the pages of tresillo/cinquillo inversions, and this page. The Charleston rhythm is a form of the tresillo rhythm that found its way into mainstream American popular […]
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 […]
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— […]
Syncopation exercise: downbeats and &s
A full page syncopation exercise with the notes spaced a quarter note a greater. Some practice systems only work well, or work well at faster tempos, when there are certain limitations in the reading material, […]
The big 7
Please pardon the lack of content. I’ve been occupied with other things this week, like our upcoming cymbal meets in Germany, and those couple of gigs with all the odd meters. Which worked out well— I […]
Dodge Drum Chart
An interesting item: the Dodge Drum Chart, by Frank Dodge, edited and published by George Lawrence Stone. It was advertised on the back cover of my first copy of Stick Control, so it’s one of […]