There’s a famous-among-drummers scene from the early 70s film Zachariah— a “psychedelic” cowboy movie with a big musical component. It features a purported drum solo by Elvin Jones, which gets shared around the internet as […]
Year: 2016
Practice loop: The Meters / The Same Old Thing
A new funk practice loop, sampled from The Same Old Thing, by The Meters. Use this with these two recent pages, or any of my funk stuff. The tempo is about 106 bpm. The 16th notes […]
Linear phrases in 7/8 – two measures
Dropping the other shoe here, so to speak, following the one-measure linear patterns in 7/8 from last week. I think we’ve got all the two measure patterns here that can’t be made by combining the […]
John Cage’s 10 rules for students and teachers
From Open Culture, an amazing site you should visit, 10 rules for art students and teachers, written by Sister Corita Kent, and popularized by John Cage: RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then […]
Basic funk ideas: four iterations – 01
A companion to our Basic funk with mixed stickings page from the other day. Here we take that same set of patterns, run them through some standard funk/fusion orchestrations, and learn to transition smoothly between […]
Linear phrases in 7/8 – one measure
More fun with linear patterns in 7/8 time, with more to come. Using Gary Chaffee’s 3-8 note linear patterns, we’ll look at the only three possible combinations that fit in a single measure of 7/8: […]
Basic fluency in 12/8
Right, so it looks like we’ll be doing a lot with this triplet feel this week— mainly getting comfy improvising within this 12/8-style blues, soul or pop groove. Think Lopsy Lu, Higher Ground, Isn’t She […]
Basic funk with mixed stickings
Bad title, because I prefer to think of these as based on a cymbal rhythm, not a sticking, but whatever. Next title will be so apt it will blow the doors off this place. These […]
Linear patterns in 7/8 – RLBB
UPDATED 8/27: Added one thing to the pdf. Another page of stuff to play with last year’s smoking John Zorn “Solitaire” practice loop in 7/8, this time developing a very common four-note linear pattern, RLBB— an […]