I hope you— students and teachers— are using my Reed method for playing rock beats. I think it’s one of the better things I’ve come up with— it’s just a more musical way of learning […]
Category: rock
Transcription: Terry Bozzio / Dancin’ Fool – the cool parts
This is one of the cooler things in drumming to come out of the late 70s— Terry Bozzio’s fills on Frank Zappa’s Dancin’ Fool, from the album Sheik Yerbouti. I must’ve listened to this 500 […]
Rock beats: simple displacements
Here’s a page of patterns for illustrating/learning some creative possibilities with a basic rock beat, using some simple displacements— playing one or more notes “late”, moving them over to the &: Learn the patterns individually, […]
Double bass drum: 5 and 7 stroke singles
A student request. This is the first thing I’ve ever written for double bass in my life— I don’t play it, it’s not my thing. It doesn’t matter. This page of exercises will work for […]
Orchestrating and embellishing backbeats
What do we do with this? Someone bored with playing backbeats all night asked this question on the Drummerworld forum: “What do you do to spice up the 2 & 4?” My answer is: I […]
EZ Reed method with flams and 16th notes
Another “EZ” Reed method for rock/funk fills, similar to our recent triplet method, this time using pp. 24-27 from Syncopation. I won’t break it down completely, but you can figure it out by looking at the […]
A Funky Primer: double-time feel lesson
Getting back into teaching out of a book I haven’t used in some time: A Funky Primer, by my former college professor Charles Dowd. I felt it was getting a little dated, and I was […]
Cut time funk method: two-measure grooves
I’ve been working quite a bit with this cut time funk method from last year— part of what I’ve been doing instead of writing more blog posts. I’m not just writing junk to burn up […]
Two-beat rock fills
Here’s a page of basic two-beat rhythms for use as rock/funk fills, which I wrote for my intermediate students. You can and should play these on any one drum, or move them around the drums. […]
Practice loop: Black Sabbath – The Wizard
I’ve been making and using a lot of sampled loops lately— it’s a fun way to practice. And this is a fun one: the main riff from The Wizard, from Black Sabbath’s first record. It’s […]
Daily best music in the world: crash course in rock & roll
Here’s a playlist I put together for one of my new students, a 5th grader who is talented and motivated, but hasn’t heard a lot of music yet. Hopefully this will help get him hooked: Track list […]