Here’s Pete La Roca trading 4/8s (four bars horn, eight bars drums) on Homestretch, a blues on Joe Henderson’s album Page One. I’ve written out the full choruses— four total. On the fourth chorus there’s […]
Category: soloing
Larry Bunker / Shelly Manne / Donald Bailey on solo structure
In a drummer round table in Down Beat magazine (March, 1973), Larry Bunker, Shelly Manne and Donald Bailey discuss soloing: Larry Bunker: When I solo I always think in terms of the structure of the […]
Altering a solo motif
UPDATE: Pdf download link is fixed! Talking a bit about how you think while soloing— some mental cues for what you do with a solo motif, by which I mean “something you played that you […]
YouTube solo analyzed
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 […]
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 […]