We’re laying it on pretty thick with the Reed interpretations right now, but I just went over this with a student, so I need to put up one more. It’s a swing interpretation with partially […]
Category: drums
Rudimental Reed: ruffs
Today’s Rudimental Reed entry is pretty straightforward— just make a ruff out of any note that doesn’t have an (untied) 8th note before it. That’s an awkward way of phrasing it, but I think you’ll […]
Groove o’ the day: Art Blakey with Hank Mobley
This is from the 1955 album Hank Mobley Quartet (it doesn’t appear to have been reissued recently, so you’ll have to just buy the mp3). The tune is Avila and Tequila, and Art Blakey plays […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell — 6/8 variations
Here are some more variations on the Afro 6/8 feel, played by Ed Blackwell on the tune Mopti (an old favorite from Flatland days, which I’ll be reintroducing to the set on the Europe trip […]
Transcription: Ian Paice — Lay Down, Stay Down
[UPDATE: pdf download link works now!] I don’t get how herds work: suddenly everyone, everywhere is talking about four stroke ruffs. They happen to be all over this piece, played in 16th note triplet form […]
Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon
Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon’s All-American Drummer: A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, […]
Houghton’s triplets
From Steve Houghton’s book Studio and Big Band Drumming, here’s an alternate sticking method for making triplets out of Syncopation. For most people the most familiar method is to play the melody notes— the written […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin Jones — Tumblin’ Tumbleweed
Just back in town from a short quasi-vacation at the Oregon coast, and nothing on deck except, groan, another hip, generic “Latin jazz” groove, played by Elvin Jones on the tune Tumblin’ Tumbleweed on J.J. […]
Todd’s waltz — two measure phrase
Well, we should all have developed a pretty crushing medium-tempo waltz by the time we’re done here. Elaborating on my earlier “Todd’s waltz” piece— so-called (by me alone) because I don’t very often hear this […]
Groove o’ the day: a Blue Note waltz
Let’s do an easy one. Here’s Billy Gene English sketching out a simple, Blue Note-y, quasi-Latin waltz on the tune Wavy Gravy, from Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue: Swing the 8th notes. You can think of […]