I hate to keep beating up on our man Kollias— well, I’m not beating up on him, I’m making serious points about music… OK, I wasn’t making a serious point about music with the last […]
Category: rock
Lou Reed 1942-2013
It’s a good day to give White Light, White Heat a listen in its entirety— news that Lou Reed has died is breaking all over the Internet right now. I first heard this record on […]
Survival chops: cymbal and bass drum licks
Here is a collection of moderately easy, very functional, right-hand lead licks for the drum set. Normally I would arrive at these by other means— like, by playing Stick Control, Syncopation, or any paradiddle rudiment, […]
Transcription: Alan Myers — Clockout
To celebrate Devo drummer Alan Myers, who just died, here’s a transcription of Clockout, from the band’s Duty Now For The Future album. There are some non-significant variations that happen on each repeat— just play, […]
Transcription: Ralph Humphrey — Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow
Here’s a nice introduction to rock in drumming in 7: Ralph Humphrey’s part from Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow, from Apostrophe by Frank Zappa. I go way back with this song, to 1974 when I […]
Transcription: Roger Hawkins — Chain of Fools
Let’s see if I can crank this out before running out to see Brian Blade play— along with Kermit Driscoll from the Bill Frisell video below. Let it not be said there’s nothing going on […]
Groove o’ the day: Whipping Post
Extraordinarily busy this week, but there’s always time for a groove o’ the day, so here’s Whipping Post, by the Allman Brothers. Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johnson are on drums, apparently playing basically in unison. […]
Best books: the Dahlgren & Fine rock book
Complete Text for the Rock and Roll Drummer by Marvin Dahlgren and Elliot Fine Really Good Music Publishing 66 pages When Really Good Music Publishing reissued a raft of Marvin Dahlgren titles last year, I […]
More with rock beats using Syncopation
Going a little further with my earlier piece on making rock beats using— say it with me— Ted Reed’s Syncopation. In doing this, there will be many duplicate beats, but that’s not important— our purpose […]
YouTubed: “basic rock beat”
Since I’m often told that the Internet, with its abundance of free materials, is rendering teachers obsolete, I thought I’d put that to the test, searching YouTube for beginning rock drumming “lessons”, and not stopping […]