Because some novice jazz students get hung up on the idea of left hand “independence”, here is a little set of exercises for helping coordination between the hands when playing jazz time. We’re using some […]
Category: Stick Control
Rubadub with Stone
Reversing a years-long boycott, I’ve been using the book Stick Control quite a bit for drum set applications lately. I guess it’s unavoidable that sometimes in playing the drums, we think in terms of stickings. […]
Stick Control for consistency
Here’s an interesting video by Matt Patella, a drummer and teacher who knows a lot about the whole Stone/Morello world of drum technique. He talks about George L. Stone’s intentions for his book Stick Control, […]
Stick Control flams in 5/8 – 01
This is pretty straightforward, almost something you can do without writing it out— I’ve simply transcribed the basic flam exercises from p. 16 of Stick Control into 5/8. I get bored practicing things in a […]
Figure Control: 4/4 – Nexus riff
Let’s do one of these for the rhythm in the Nexus practice loop. You’ll recall, with this Funk Control / Figure Control series what I do is take a single performance rhythm and put a […]
Stick control patterns in 9/8
Oh, fine: here are some stick control patterns in 9/8, for practicing with the Bill Frisell loop from the other day: You can scour these posts for ways of applying these patterns to the drum […]
More paradiddle combinations in 3
More Stick Control-style paradiddle combinations in 3. I find these really useful: Once again here are the basic ways to do these on the drum set— the only way I do these. I basically never sit […]
Paradiddle stick control patterns in 3
I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m using a lot of Stick Control-type stuff in practicing lately. Sometimes you just want things written as a sticking. Here I’ve written out some paradiddle variations in […]
Stick Control – CSD! version
UPDATE: Download link working. You’d think I’d have that part of it down. Everybody and his literal dog practices the first page of the book Stick Control, as do I— at least I teach it, […]
Hand motions for Stone flam studies
It’s a funny thing, there’s endless online conversation about how to play an open roll, and virtually nothing about flams. They’re off the radar for some reason. And with the book Stick Control, NOBODY every […]
EZ uptempo jazz method – 01
There is at least one other EZ uptempo jazz method— oh look, here’s another one— but this one is first in a series of similar things I’m writing now. If you learn to be creative […]
Stone on drumset: sixtuplet exercise
We’re doing quite a bit with the book Stick Control on the drumset these days. There are a lot of things I don’t like about the book— mainly that it’s based on abstract sequences of […]