[Oh heck, this is from 2014— oh well. Just saw it on Famoudou Don Moye’s Facebook feed today. Whatever.] Good of NPR’s Kevin Whitehead to take notice of Kenny Clarke’s (“inventor of modern jazz drumming”) […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Transcription: Airto – Black Narcissus
From Flora Purim’s album Encounter, here’s more Airto— this time playing a jazz waltz: Black Narcissus. I’ve transcribed the head of the tune, and the first couple of choruses of his playing behind Joe Henderson’s […]
Daily best music in the world: Bulgarian singers
h/t to Ralph Hardimon for this one.
New Orleans street beat – Stone method
This is the first of two pretty-easy methods for developing a New Orleans-style street beat— or rather, for expanding on it, and playing it in a “modern” way. They’ll also be good for getting a […]
Grooves o’ the day: three street beats by Fred Staehle
Kicking off a little series on playing New Orleans-style street beats, here are some grooves by Fred Staehle. These are from Dr. John’s Gumbo, a very famous album of classic New Orleans tunes, recorded by, […]
EZ Reed method with flams and 16th notes
Another “EZ” Reed method for rock/funk fills, similar to our recent triplet method, this time using pp. 24-27 from Syncopation. I won’t break it down completely, but you can figure it out by looking at the […]
Transcription: Airto — Hot Sand
Why am I not always talking about Airto? I’ve spent fewer hours listening to him than most other drummers at the top of my personal influences list; I never had a period of chasing down […]
Deep Blues
An excellent Mississippi Blues documentary featuring Fat Possum artists R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough (my favorite), along with a good fife and drum group, and others. I had a bad VHS dub of this in […]
Practice loop: Ronnie Foster – Mystic Brew
Please forgive my continued very, very light, almost-not-even-there posting these days. We’ll get back to the usual torrents of stuff very soon. Until that happens, here’s a new practice loop: the vamp from Mystic Brew […]
A good book you should all chase down
Look for the book withthe really goofy cover. I just want to take a moment again to recommend you all try to find a copy of the book Syncopated Rhythms for the Contemporary Drummer by […]