On George Colligan’s Jazz Truth blog there is a group email sent out by a student who sounds nearly as dickish as I was in college, with the heading: The George Colligan Standards List…LEARN THEM […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Groove o’ the day: Tony Williams — Footprints
Here’s a Latin-style groove Tony Williams plays at one point in the odyssey of jazz percussion that is Footprints, a tune by Wayne Shorter, from Miles Davis’s album Miles Smiles. The tune is in 6/4, […]
How to play Dear Old Stockholm
Dear Old Stockholm is the English title of a traditional Swedish song, which, you are probably aware, has become a jazz standard. I don’t know who first started playing it as a jazz tune, but […]
VOQOTD: Elvin’s advice to young drummers
“PRACTICE, and play. Play any kind of music anywhere, weddings, carnivals, dances, circuses. Play and make sure that you give it your best. Be the best out there. I’ve played burlesque shows and recently I […]
Doubling up a ballad feel with Syncopation
Happy new year, everybody. I’m practicing a lot of slow tempos lately, so here are some Reed interpretations that will be familiar to all jazz students, written out to suggest double time during a ballad. […]
Page o’ coordination: bass drum variation in 6/8
Are you getting to the point that you can work these up in a few days, and then retire them, yet? We’ve done a big pile of these POCs, but they cover a fairly narrow […]
VOQOTD: choosing cymbals
I’d go to the bin, I’d get two fourteens, I’d go to the eighteen bin, get an eighteen, then I’d go to the twenty bin and get a twenty, and that was that—none of that […]
Sunny Murray, the bebop tradition, and Milford Graves
“Take it easy, now… there’s no work in this shit, they’re gonna jump on your ass…” — Sunny Murray to a young, interested, Hans Bennink Here’s an interview by Dan Warburton, with one of the […]
Transcription: Les Humphries — Ching Miau
In honor of Yusef Lateef, who we just lost a few days ago, at age 93, here is the thing that inspired yesterday’s post: Lex Humphries playing on Ching Miau, a one-chord modal tune in […]
Page o’ coordination: across the barline in 5/4
This is a classic situation when you start improvising in 5/4: you get a little cocky about your ability to just vibe the meter and come out OK, and in a few moments you observe […]