For one of my students, a new page of warmups introducing an Afro 6 groove— or various forms of it. It’s as deep a thing as there is in drumming, and to begin understanding it […]
Category: 6/8
Half time funk shuffle – 01
Here’s a page for my students, working through the basics of a half time funk shuffle groove. It gets mentioned a lot more online than it comes up in real life, but it’s a thing. […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell – Love
Here’s a fast 6/4 Afro type of groove from Ed Blackwell, on the track Love, from a duo record with Wadada Leo Smith, The Blue Mountain’s Sun Drummer. There’s no tune, it’s just free blowing […]
Page o’ coordination: Airto’s afro
Page o’ coordination based on Airto’s unique afro 12/8 groove played on the intro of Casa Forte, from Flora Purim’s album Stories To Tell. It’s a good introductory groove for this style— the hands are […]
Counting system overhaul – 01
This guy gets it. Severely long two-part nerd item alert— the following post is an embarrassing mess that will be perhaps useful/entertaining for music teachers and others who think about this stuff all day every […]
Counting compound meters
Recently I’ve begun teaching that way of counting 16th notes in compound meters that I mentioned before. It’s going good. I never had a good way of counting those rhythms, so they were always a little mysterious. […]
Groove o’ the day: Airto Afro 6
An Afro 6* groove played by Airto, on the intro of Casa Forte, on Flora Purim’s 1974 record Stories To Tell. It has some big shot LA musicians on it, including saxophonist Hadley Caliman, who […]
Afro 6 – advanced bass drum ideas/coordination
A page of patterns I’m playing around with, in an Afro 6 feel, that are difficult or unusual for varying reasons— either the bass drum is in unison with the left hand, or the actual […]
More on that Latin system
Breaking down part of that short Latin method from the other day. I like it. It’s easy, and gets us into some pretty fundamental things about rhythm, drumming, using the drum set. This is a […]
Stick control patterns in 6/8
This is part of a larger writing project I’m doing— some things you have to write out to decide if they’re going to be of any use. You can see that the logical sequence here […]