Working on this Elvin project the last couple of days, I noticed that, similar to Max Roach on another recording, he plays the snare drum in the gap in the cymbal rhythm a lot, for […]
Category: Stone
From the zone: ECM feel
Here’s something sent in by Ed Stalling of Missoula, Montana. He mentioned being inspired by my ECM feel post from 2012— which definitely needs to be revisited and some links updated— but he’s got his […]
Stick Control patterns for a certain type of funk
A thing we do here is to rewrite/re-organize existing materials to make them better for practicing certain things. I hate hunting around the page while I practice, flipping pages, dodging things that are no good […]
Jazz fundamentals: more stick control for jazz
Another jazz fundamentals item, that pairs nicely with Monday’s thing. These are some stick control patterns designed to be played on the drumset, for a specific jazz vocabulary lesson. That’s a lot of what we […]
Stick control exercises, mixed rhythm in 2/4
A page I’m using with some of my students, to learn to fill, and develop basic facility on the drum set. We’ve been doing a lot with parts of my harmonic coordination method— which is […]
Three voice / four note patterns
Continuing in the vein of the recent three voice/three note patterns item. Let’s call this series “things I have always been against writing that I am now writing.” I’ve been playing around with an online […]
Four on the floor: Stone meets Ghana
Here’s something very rare, an idea to base your whole life on: Stone-type patterns based on Ghanaian bell patterns. This is from Jon McCaslin over at Four on the Floor, given to him by the […]
Best books: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles
This book has been out for a couple of years, but fellow Portland drummer Ed Pierce just brought it to my attention: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles. …possibly the worst book title ever, but who […]
Book reviews: Two new Stone books
Two new works by and about George Lawrence Stone have just been released: Technique of Percussion is a compilation of articles Stone wrote for International Musician Magazine in the 1940s-60s. It’s over 400 pages long, […]
Stick control patterns for jazz
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 […]
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, […]