I couldn’t possibly improve on what Jon McCaslin has said about the passing of this great drummer, so just go read his notice.
Author: Todd Bishop
“What’s with that constant cymbal tapping in jazz drumming?”
HEY ROACH, what’s with the constant cymbal tapping? “…and why do they use the exact same beat on every song? And who invented this awful, one-man-band percussion concept, with the abrasive and irritating sound of […]
VOQOTD: note to himself
Play at least ten minutes a day on the drum set. — Paul Motian
Page o’ coordination: Songo — 01
Here we’ll develop some bass drum variations for playing Songo, a popular Afro-Cuban/salsa drumset style, in case you’ve never heard of it. The first exercise is the ostinato, played with the hands only— the parts […]
Groove o’ the day: Shelly Manne — Way Out West
Here are a couple of very famous things by Shelly Manne, from the album Way Out West by Sonny Rollins. Sonny could be a little perverse in his tune selections, often choosing things that would […]
Mel Lewis on cymbals
More on cymbals from Mel Lewis’s 1985 Modern Drummer interview. This is pretty much the bible of the subject, as it relates to jazz: Number and type The average drummer usually uses two to four […]
Blocking drumming-related spam
Thanks, we get it: “you’re a restaurant”, now please GTFOOMF. After months of becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the results my drumming-related web searches, this week I installed the Google search results blocker extension to my […]
VOQOTD: Al Foster’s listening habits
From the Small’s interview archive: “He’s in it all the time. He’s listening all the time. He’s got kind of a small range of stuff he listens to over and over again: Monk, Bird, earlier […]
DBMITW: Eddie Palmieri
While we’re on the Salsa music, here’s a Mozambique entitled Comparsa De Los Locos, by Eddie Palmieri, from his Vamonos Pal’ Monte album from 1971. Nicky Marrero plays drums, along with several percussionists. What the […]
Clave capers
Please don’t ask me about the title of this piece— I just wrote the first two words I thought of. I think there’s a Billy Taylor tune called Cuban Capers I played once… it’s not […]