With hyperactive fast-16th-to-32nd notes kind of dominating drummers’ collective mindspace today, I love hearing some utterly happening 8th note-based playing: Also:
Category: drums
Cracking 5/4: rock variations
I wasn’t planning on making this part of this series, but it happened to come up. I was prepping for a recording session today which will involve a couple of tunes in 7/4, and I […]
“If I think of something beforehand then I should not play it.”
Pianist George Colligan has posted a really great interview with drummer Jeff Ballard on his blog, Jazz Truth. It’s really hard to excerpt anything from this because it’s all so good; I put in a […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Cobham in 7/8
Today we have another odd-meter Billy Cobham groove from the track “b. Spectrum” from his 1973 album Spectrum: He plays the unaccented notes stronger than is customary today, and puts a light accent on the […]
Cracking 5/4: the basics
It took me a long time to come around to accepting the type of method we’re going to use here; for years the Syncopation-based interpretive method– in which you think more like a horn player, […]
Groove o’ the day: On the Corner
Today we’ve got Jack Dejohnette’s James Brown-like groove on Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X from Miles Davis’ On The Corner: There’s an overdubbed part by Al Foster that’s more forward in the mix, so it’s a […]
Cracking 5/4: the library
Essential. Again following my normal process of doing the easy stuff first, here is the library of practice materials I’ve used for finally getting my act together in 5/4. Normally you would put this at […]
Hemiola applications: funk
Here are some very straightforward funk applications derived from the 3:2 polyrhythm in 4/4 in the hemiola basics post. By isolating each measure, revoicing the parts slightly, and adding obvious things like a downbeat on […]
Cracking 5/4: listening
Here’s the first in a series on playing in 5/4. Since everything in music follows from listening (and this is the easiest type of post for me to write), we’ll start with some recorded examples: […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell
Here’s another simple afro feel played by Ed Blackwell on Mu, the duo record with Don Cherry. It’s also available on the Cherry album Cool. This also could’ve been written as two measures of 3/4 […]