Here’s a very small but useful tweak of a tweak: remember the Reed system with alternating triplets, hitting the accents on cymbals + bass drum… except we’d leave out the LH cymbal hits? It’s a good […]
Category: Reed interpretations
RH lead triplets – useful excerpts from . 38
This is a little bit of a half baked item, illustrating something we did in a lesson. Should be useful for teachers, may not make a ton of sense if you’re not familiar with this […]
Reed tweak: RH lead with a backbeat
Another real simple tweak to a basic right hand lead method used with Syncopation: adding a half time feel backbeat. We’ve been doing a lot with this lately, and it’s turning into a very robust […]
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 […]
A basic waltz vocabulary – 01
I was working with a student on a jazz waltz, played at a brighter tempo than he was real comfortable with, so we needed to come up with some easy things to add to his […]
Subtractive method: one practice approach
A lot of commitments right now, and posting will continue to be light through next weekend. Congratulations to Justin in Omaha for getting the 22″ Extra Special Janavar “Emilia”— there is now one of those […]
Reed tweak: quasi-right hand lead
I really do try to practice when I practice, not just do writing sessions for the blog. But these things just come up. This is yet another small change to the straight-8th right hand lead […]
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 interpretation: slow tempo / fast singles
I guess you could do this with Reed— or just practice the page below by itself and start using it. NOTE: After completing this post, I see that I wrote two very similar things back […]
Reed singles drill
Simple system for working on singles, that I worked up with a student who plays a lot of Metal. I don’t know anything about Metal drumming, so we have to work together to come up […]
That last Reed tweak: one further
Going one further with that last Reed tweak in 3/4, in which we played alternating triplets, beginning every measure with the right hand. Normally with alternating triplets, every second measure would start with the left hand, […]
Finessing Reed funk phrases
A baseline thing to do with Reed funk methods is to practice in two measure phrases. For example: one measure cut time funk* / one measure RH lead**. * – CUT TIME FUNK: Reading from […]