One of my stupidly-named rudiment variations from 2011 here, without the original superfluous hyphen. In this spelling it might entice some people to say para-DID-lee-ah, of which I approve. It’s a five note paradiddle, RLRRL. […]
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Daily best music in the world: Ornette in Berlin ’71
Ornette Coleman playing in Berlin, 1971, with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. It occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve seen any decent video of Blackwell playing before— there have long been […]
Larry Bunker / Shelly Manne / Donald Bailey on solo structure
In a drummer round table in Down Beat magazine (March, 1973), Larry Bunker, Shelly Manne and Donald Bailey discuss soloing: Larry Bunker: When I solo I always think in terms of the structure of the […]
Down Beat Drum Talk 1964: the bass drum
Continuing the talk about the use of the bass drum in jazz, particularly with regard to keeping time, aka “feathering”, here is an extended exchange from Down Beat Magazine’s March 1964 issue, between Elvin Jones, […]
Groove o’ the day: Samba in 7
Here’s a bright samba groove in 7/4, played by Airto on Misturada, by the group Quarteto Novo. These are excerpts from the drum solo, starting at 0:49. Tempo is about quarter note = 220. I […]
Survival in the age of the pig
In other news, the flossy haired criminal swine has been inaugurated. I switched to situation-normal-all-effed-up mode a few days after the election, and haven’t been worrying too much. Not because he’s not going to do […]
Welcome to the new site
UPDATE: Naturally, there are some problematic things— a lot of my images from the old site are behaving strangely, so the older posts might not look real great. I’m probably going to be forced to […]
Triumph of the worst
UPDATE: Toning this down a bit— mainly removing a very unkind assessment of the American electorate— and moving on. My current state of mind is that I’m not going to worry about all the horrible […]
RIP David Sanborn
So long to the saxophonist David Sanborn. He was one of the great lovers of all kinds of music— you can watch his show Night Music on YouTube, it was on in 1988-90, and he brought on […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Higgins – Mystery Song
Let’s gooo, this is now a full-time Billy Higgins site. Here he is playing a New Orleans/Poinciana/Vernel Fournier kind of groove, on the Duke Ellington tune The Mystery Song, on Steve Lacy’s record Evidence: Swing […]
Hey, you should get drum lessons with me
NOTE: I’m going to keep this pinned to the top of the blog for a little while. Scroll down for new stuff. You know what, I don’t think I get as many students via this […]