It’s a *mechanical* tool, from way back. I had a conversation with a student about counting subdivisions when you practice— “the grid.” It’s a common thing to do, that I don’t recommend— not all the […]
Category: time
Dealing with it: bad time
We’ll see if this becomes a regular feature: dealing with it. If anyone has thoughts, ideas, frustrations in real life playing situations, mention them in the comments, and maybe I can write something about it. […]
Time and whatnot
Object To Be Destroyed by Man Ray It is often said that in a musical ensemble, keeping time is everyone’s responsibility. And in some hypothetical quantum universe or other fantastical musical fairyland, people may actually […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Buddy’s time
From the bassist Chuck Bergeron who was in Buddy Rich’s band in the 80s: “One afternoon, after a couple of nights of feeling that he wasn’t happy with where I was placing the beat, I […]
Microtiming jive
Microtiming is a term that gives me hives every time I hear musicians use it. To me it suggests misaligned priorities, a disappearance up one’s own rear end, and the resulting degraded musical abilities. The […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Motian on time
“I believe that ‘time’ is always there. I don’t mean a particular pulse, but the time itself. It’s all there somehow like a huge sign that’s up there and it says time. It’s there and […]
Very occasional quote of the day: time in perspective
A good few lines about time from Robert Glasper, in an interview with Ethan Iverson: People worry about the metronome, “I’m not gonna move, I’m not gonna move!” because that means you are good. If […]
Gadd on time
Another item from Rick Mattingly’s 1983 Modern Drummer interview with Steve Gadd. It’s encouraging that a lot of the very common fuzzy talk about time makes no more sense to the greatest studio drummer in […]
Wagner in Apocalypse Now
Fascinating piece by Walter Murch, film editor and sound designer on the movie Apocalypse Now, several other Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas films of the 70s, and a lot of other things. Murch tells […]
Species of ride cymbal interpretation in jazz
Following up on George Collligan’s commentary on this subject: The way you play the cymbal pattern is really the center of your artistry as a jazz drummer, so let’s do a little survey of the […]
“Skiplet” analysis— a line of music
Continuing with the analysis portion of this skiplet-based method of jazz coordination-thingy, in which, in order to learn independence vs. a jazz time feel, we orient everything around the three close-together notes of the cymbal […]