Some notes on a chart I had to play yesterday, on a festival gig with a pianist I’ve worked with quite a bit, Jasnam Daya Singh. He’s Brazilian, and quite a heavy composer. For a […]
Category: samba
Tresillo unit – 02
Here’s an addendum to a set of stuff I posted back in January— the “tresillo unit.” That was basically a set of variations on a New Breed system. This is a loosely organized collection of […]
Batucada styles
Just did a gig playing all samba and bossa nova, so I’ve got Brazilian music on the brain. Here’s an old record offering a little round up of styles in Brazilian percussion: Batucada, by Paulinho […]
Funk samba: moving the 1
I was doing this with some students, using a similar groove to Omar Hakim’s Predator groove— vastly simplified. There are a couple of pages of “funk samba” grooves in Roy Burns / Joey Farris’s underrated book […]
Practice loop: medium bossa
Probably my only post this week— we’re having a wild end of 2022 around here, with my family experiencing an ongoing medical emergency, and I’m having to travel to Eugene a lot. So here’s a […]
Paradiddle inversion control – 02
We’ve been doing a lot with the highly useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion lately. This is a page I wrote for myself as I’m developing some other Reed methods for it— sometimes you need to see […]
Groove o’ the day: Linha da Passe
Bright samba groove from one of my favorite Brazilian drummers, Milton Banana, who was most active in the 60s/70s. The tune is Linha da Passe, which you’re most likely find on Banana’s compilation album Sambas […]
First page of Bossa Nova
Working on this with a couple of students, I couldn’t find a simple straightforward page of Bossa Nova rhythms, with all the parts written out. Seems like a basic thing that should exist somewhere. I […]
Page o’ coordination: quasi-samba – bass drum variations
More student stuff! Someone needed a Latin rhythm for a tune he’s playing in a rehearsal combo, and this repeating quasi-samba pattern is what he came up with. So in the lesson we worked through […]
Subtractive method: batucada
This developing subtractive method is becoming really interesting. It makes it much easier to write and communicate more complex orchestrations than in the past— which is not an end in itself, it just makes it […]
Groove o’ the day: Jack Dejohnette – Fiesta
A bright samba groove played by Jack Dejohnette on Fiesta, from Stan Getz’ My Foolish Heart album— a live record from the mid-70s. Tempo is about half note = 130. Here’s the very beginning of […]