Elaborating on a question I answered on a forum— someone was asking about the playing in the video below. Here is a little bit of analysis of it, and some suggestions about how you should […]
Category: soloing
Solo ideas in 3/4
We’ll be seeing more with this format— solo and fill ideas for a certain amount of space between cymbal/bass drum accents. It’s the normal frame for fills, but I don’t see fill studies written that […]
Transcription: Philly Joe trading
Here is Philly Joe Jones trading eights and fours with Bill Evans on Minority, from one of my favorite records, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It’s a good tune to learn. I’ve written just the drum […]
Four on the floor
It is said that, on the drum set, there are snare drummers and cymbal players— I would also say there are bass drummers and hihat players. I’ve always been a hihat player— meaning, I’ll often […]
Cliché control – 5 stroke singles
Another Cliché Control page for learning to solo in jazz, combining stock licks. This time centered around 5-stroke singles: RLRLR or RLRLB. We’re squarely in Philly Joe / Art Blakey territory here— and a lot […]
World’s shortest jazz solo exercise
A quick little item— I know I’ve posted it before in other forms, maybe this time will be the best. For jazz students, this may be the most useful thing on the site for soloing […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Shelly Manne on soloing
“I think you should approach every drum solo the way a good improviser approaches soloing; you shouldn’t know what you’re going to do until the time comes to do it. Miles Davis said that you […]
EZ jazz solo method: alternative triplet stickings
Let’s begin expanding the quick and easy jazz solo lesson from the other day— here are some alternative triplet stickings you can use with it. You’ll recall that it consisted of a “stock” pattern element and a […]
A quick and easy jazz solo lesson
UPDATE: Download link works now! This is an easy, non-technical method for learning jazz solos/breaks/trading, which I devised in lessons with an older Skype student. It involves a few basic patterns, and several easy practice […]
Philly Joe solo lesson
In that last Philly Joe Jones transcription— his solo on Sub City, with Bud Powell— I noted a pattern of using his 8th note bass drum phrases to break up the mainly-snare drum passages. It’s […]
Soloing on a form
don’t let this happen to you “My idea of a drum solo is that you play like you sing. It comes from different things you listen to. And the beauty is always in the simple […]
Syncopated melodic solo – 01
Here I’ve composed a syncopated, non-technical, four-tone melodic solo for drum set. It is through-composed, 36 bars long, in eight bar phrases with a four bar tag. Play this with the snares off, and pencil […]