A small complaint on genre in music, that has been hanging around my drafts folder a long time. Whenever I’m slow to write any new stuff, and am desperate for content, I dump one of […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Straight 8ths in funk Afro 12/8
Something I’m working out, that needed to be written out to do it: straight 8ths on the bass drum within a funk-style Afro 12/8 groove. I work a lot with this whole area of groove. […]
Solo transcription: Billy Higgins – Third World
Here’s a drum solo by Billy Higgins, from the tune Third World on Freddie Hubbard’s album Bolivia. I’ve never played this tune and didn’t count out the form. It starts with 8 bars of an […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Joe gives advice
“When I was playing the Vanguard with Freddie Hubbard, I went back to the kitchen and Philly Joe was there. He said, ‘You’re playing good. You gotta kick Freddie’s ass, make his lips burn.’ All […]
Beats to fills
Here’s a connecter idea, using some rock beats written normally, a la Funky Primer, but playing them as cymbal accents with fills, as in this rock fill drill— hitting accents on the cymbal/bass drum, and […]
Embellished filler with RH lead triplets – 01
I’m pretty sure I’ve written something like this before, but navigating my voluminous archives is no easier for me than it is for you. This is a sketch of some ideas in an upcoming[??? -tb] […]
Mozambique inversions
Library item that occurred to me while writing that last post. That Mozambique bell rhythm seems significant beyond just using it to play a Latin beat, hence this page, running it through its inversions. Half […]
Elvinized Mozambique
An item I was working out with a student— making an Elvin Jones-like Latin groove/texture out of a Mozambique rhythm, for medium tempos, with swing 8th notes. It’s an entry, just the first, most obvious […]
Building a hybrid Reed interpretation
A short item— that’s all I have time for lately: some hybrid Syncopation-based systems are brewing, where we do one basic thing, and alter it one step further, creating some connections between ideas, and opening things up, […]