We probably did something similar to this way back in ’12 or ’13, when I was writing a lot of stuff on samba. My writing and my knowledge of the style has improved a lot […]
Category: samba
Groove o’ the day: Billy Cobham – The Dancer
Today we have a funk samba groove from Billy Cobham, playing The Dancer on Stanley Clarke’s School Days— one of the biggest fusion albums of the 70s. We’re actually throwing a bone to the open-handed […]
Bossa/Samba bass drum workout
It says “workout”, like it’s some kind of technical challenge, but it’s really a page of exercises for opening up some musical possibilities with your bass drum when playing sambas and bossa novas. A lot […]
Transcription: Airto — Hot Sand
Why am I not always talking about Airto? I’ve spent fewer hours listening to him than most other drummers at the top of my personal influences list; I never had a period of chasing down […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin Jones – Rose Marie
Something from the record I’ve been running in my car all week: The Peacocks, by Stan Getz and Jimmy Rowles. The tune is Rose Marie, a song from the 20s which was a country hit […]
That insane Brazilian cymbal technique
It’s a thing with Brazilian drumset drummers to play really fast, even singles on the cymbal with one hand when playing samba; here Adam Osmianski has posted an excellent roundup of stuff on the technique […]
Partido Alto practice loop and basic grooves
Another practice loop, sampled from the tune Partido Alto, from the Azymuth album Light As A Feather. Ivan Conti is on drums. As I mentioned before, Partido Alto is the name of a Brazilian rhythm, […]
Milton Banana
Here’s a video of Milton Banana, one of my favorite Brazilian drummers, performing near the very end of his life. I don’t know how much he was slowing up chops-wise at this point, but the fundamentals of […]
Cymbal technique for Brazilian styles
It’s kind of a thing among Brazilian drummers to be able to play really blazing singles on the cymbal with the right hand, when playing a samba. Drummers in the modern American tradition— or maybe […]
Brazilian 3
Continuing our recent batch of downloads for odd meter Samba and Bossa, here are some parts for putting together some grooves in 3/2, or in 6/4. This isn’t an incredibly odd meter for Samba, but […]
Daily best music in the world: Samba in 3
Or is it Bossa in 6? And I’ve never gotten a definitive answer on the genre name of this mostly-instrumental, piano trio, jazz-influenced, lounge-oriented form of Bossa/Samba, which we’re listening to here. Right now I’m […]
Brazilian 5
While I’ve got you pumped out of your minds about odd meter Brazilian styles, here’s a page of Samba and Bossa Nova in 5/4: Learn all combinations of the above parts, then improvise variations on […]