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 […]
Category: technique
Basic short roll studies with continuous motion
UPDATE: Download link is working! I’ve got to stop putting “EZ” on every single normal-difficulty thing I post. This is an easy page of roll studies I wrote to prepare a couple of younger students to […]
Bill Stewart on cymbal technique
Here’s a nice video of part of an interview with Bill Stewart, speaking with Quincy Davis of the University of Manitoba, in which he discusses his cymbal technique. It relates to my earlier ranting and […]
Drumming technique
I want to talk about technique: the way it gets talked about it on the internet, vs. my own practices and attitude about it. We’ve had lots of adversarial posts lately— hopefully entertainingly so. A side […]
Things other people say that I think are stupid
T.H.I.S. S.U.C.K.S. I’m sorry I said stupid. I just wanted you to read this. If you hang out on the internet a little bit, you start noticing patterns in people’s views about drumming, and that […]
Getting your practice pad time in
Just copy every detail of this photograph and you’ll be fine— KIDDING!!! I see this question on line pretty often: “How do I get my snare drum chops together? Which system do I use?” I have a […]
That insane Brazilian cymbal technique
It’s a thing with Brazilian drumset drummers to play really fast, even singles on the cymbal with one hand when playing samba; here Adam Osmianski has posted an excellent roundup of stuff on the technique […]
Cymbal technique for Brazilian styles
It’s kind of a thing among Brazilian drummers to be able to play really blazing singles on the cymbal with the right hand, when playing a samba. Drummers in the modern American tradition— or maybe […]
Snare drum workout in 4/4
Working out of Buster Bailey’s snare drum book Wrist Twisters— one of the great books of technical snare drum studies, by the way— I came across a simple pattern I liked, and I wrote up […]
Very occasional quote of the day: “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
A pull from Ethan Iverson’s Whiplash/Buddy article, which deserves its own space: A story about Mel Lewis: Mel hated giving lessons, but finally a kid talked him into letting him come by a record session […]
VOQOTD: Dejohnette on chops
The first of many valuable things I’m sure we’ll be mining from the Percussive Notes archives. Here Jack Dejohnette, interviewed by Charlie Perry, says something we hopefully already knew, but which bears repeating: P: You […]
Gladstone (et al) method for Stick Control
I stumbled across this piece of drumming lore, posted in 2006 on the Drummerworld discussion forum: Billy Gladstone’s way of practicing Stick Control. According to a guy posting anonymously on the Internet. It does sound […]