“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 things.” — Kenny Clarke, from 1984 […]
Category: soloing
Maximizing syncopation rhythms
This is something I was doing with a Skype student recently. We’re working on jazz solo vocabulary, currently getting fluent with common jazz rhythms using basic drum set orchestrations— developing a basic Billy Higgins/Frankie Dunlop-like […]
A simple solo method
Here’s a simple, non-technical solo method I was just working on with a student… …a SKYPE student… did you know I teach lessons via Skype? I do. Anything you ever have questions about on the […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Max Roach – how you build a solo
Max Roach by Jean-Michel Basquiat “What makes a piece an art piece is design. Design. If you play any instrument, if you don’t create design…. If the artist doesn’t know how to utilize space and […]
Barry Altschul on playing melodically
This is an excerpt from a pretty amazing 1981 Modern Drummer article by Barry Altschul, in which he discusses the drummer’s relation to tunes, form, and melody, and playing melodically: It is […] the drummer’s […]
Todd’s tom tom thing — part 1
This is something that has come up organically in my own playing, which I’ve been trying to get a handle on more systematically— we saw a little bit of this before with my “quasi-African” tom […]
Getting lost
Or not. Here are a few pointers on a subject with which I am all too intimately familiar: getting lost while soloing over over a form, and while reading: SOLOING First, whatever various hells break […]
Basic solo vocabulary with Syncopation
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything downloadable of my own, and you don’t want to hear me prattle on about cymbals and crap, so here’s a basic solo vocabulary builder I’ve been working […]
Umdaga, part 1
This is a very simple pattern I use a lot- I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the basic DNA instructions of my playing: right/left/bass. I didn’t exactly make it up, but […]
Getting started soloing over a form
This is more a roughly-progressive series of guidelines than a step-by-step how-to; this is a much larger subject than can be fully addressed in one little blog post. Players spend years or decades developing a […]
Some of them just can’t count.
There’s a great extended piece over at Four on the Floor on the subject of form in soloing, and how to hip the other musicians to the fact you are adhering to it: Of course […]
Joey Baron master class, last part: Make Music With Whatever You’ve Got
Joey Baron master class at the New School, 1994: last part ELVIN JONES: I worked a gig at the Vanguard with Red Rodney and Ira Sullivan, it was like a bebop thing, and Elvin Jones […]