these 5Bs are kind of like One thing my German friends made me realize is that I use really big friggin’ sticks. For many years I’ve used one stick: the Vic Firth SD-11 Slammer. It’s […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Rub-a-dub lesson: Doxy
Another rub-a-dub lesson— getting as much of this in as I can before the end of the year, so there’s a robust section on it in the upcoming 2018 Book of the Blog. This page […]
Groove o’ the day: Andy Newmark – Babies Makin’ Babies
Here’s a cool 70s funk groove in a James Brown mode, played by Andy Newmark, on the alternative version of Babies Makin’ Babies, from the Sly Stone album Fresh. I’ve included the main groove and […]
3+2 rub-a-dub phrases
Continuing in eking out a way of learning this rub-a-dub concept, here are a couple of pages of combinations of three-beat and two-beat patterns: Practice these in the written meters, then try putting them into […]
Transcription: Dannie Richmond solo
More Dannie Richmond— his solo from The Clooker, from the George Adams/Dannie Richmond album Hand To Hand. Transcription begins at 6:49. Execution of the technical parts is rather rough; and there’s an actual mistake surrounding […]
Open ratamacues for drumset
More jazz solo vocabulary: my previous page of open ratamacues, adapted for the drumset. It’s pretty simple: we’ve just moved the doubles to the bass drum. I eliminated the triple ratamacues because I don’t like […]
Practice loop: Lopsy Lu – complete form
This replaces my earlier practice loop sampled from Stanley Clarke’s Lopsy Lu— this one has the whole form of the tune. Nice to actually know how to play it, just in case you ever play […]
6/8 rhythmic literacy – 01
This has been a lurking annoyance for me for a long time: students don’t know how to read basic rhythms in 6/8… any of the */8 meters. It looks weird and is often explained poorly, […]
Dannie Richmond comping
Dannie Richmond is one of my favorite drummers, who we don’t talk about much mainly because he’s often hard to transcribe, and a lot of what he plays is so context dependent that it can […]
Year end Cymbal & Gong sale BASH BLOWOUT
Hey, let’s see if I can blow out some of my remaining stock of cymbals before the end of the year. Remember, you can deduct December purchases on your looming 2018 taxes. It would be […]