Ghost notes are currently an extremely hot topic in internet drumming land— it seems funny that there would be so much hoopla about an embellishment, but whatever. I use them all the time in my […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Very occasional quote of the day: Steve Gadd on reading
“Reading improves just from doing it. It wasn’t easy for me, but thanks to the encouragement of my teacher, John Beck, I stuck with it and it has been very useful. The more you do […]
Stick Control in odd meters – 01
One thing about practicing odd meters: they really force you to know what you’re playing. You have to understand rhythm and you have to know exactly where you are all the time— unless humiliating trainwrecks […]
Very occasional quote of the day: studying Zen
“Do not be too interested in Zen.” —Shunryu Suzuki, Zen scholar, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Transcription: Ndugu Leon Chancler – Earth
Happy holidays everyone. Instead of finishing the other transcriptions I said I needed to finish, I started a new, really long one: Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Earth, from Joe Henderson’s album The Elements. I don’t […]
Very occasional quote of the day: classical in jazz
“[T]hese days I think there can actually be too much ‘classical’ sounding stuff in jazz. In a master class I heard Paul Bley warn about this. Bley thought it was better for young jazz musicians […]
Inner Drumming
One of the more interesting drum books ever written is Inner Drumming, by George Marsh. Marsh is a big Tai Chi practitioner, and his linear drumming method, using a novel, artistic system of notation, is […]
Daily best music in the world: Headhunters
A complete set by Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, with Mike Clark on drums, recorded in 1974. For most of the time I’ve been a drummer, there was no opportunity to see things like this— actually the […]
End of year news
Wow, posting has really slowed down to a crawl here in December. Truth is, I got way too ambitious with some transcription projects, and never got them finished. We’ll see if I can get at […]
Rock beats: simple displacements
Here’s a page of patterns for illustrating/learning some creative possibilities with a basic rock beat, using some simple displacements— playing one or more notes “late”, moving them over to the &: Learn the patterns individually, […]