Lately I keep doing the bulk of the hard work on these things, only to run out of steam in the last 12 bars, but David in the comments was able to shame me into […]
Category: drums
Transcription: intro by Art Taylor
This is Art Taylor’s 8-measure intro from the tune Jackie-ing, from Thelonious Monk’s 5×5. I’m working on a long, challenging Joey Baron transcription and needed a little palate-cleanser, that’s all… What he plays doesn’t seem […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell stick and brush
This is one of my favorite things ever, anywhere: Ed Blackwell’s opening groove on Charlie Haden’s tune Chairman Mao from the first self-titled Old And New Dreams record, on Black Saint (there’s another one on […]
More Stick Control in 5/4
Another nice addition to your 5/4 practice library: Andrew Hare @ The Melodic Drummer has taken my Stick Control in 5/4 thing a step further, applying an Alan Dawson interpretation to it, filling in the […]
Transcription: the Birthday break
For once there’s not much to say– here’s one of my favorite drum breaks in the world, played by Ringo Starr on Birthday, by the Beatles: Get the pdf YouTube audio after the break:
Groove o’ the day: Paul Motian’s tango
I like this feature, and I’m going to try to do a lot more of these this year. Here’s a hip modified tango played by Paul Motian on the tune When We Go, from Rambler […]
Scholar’s corner: Elvin Jones plays the ride cymbal
We’ll see how long this new feature lasts. I’ve been coming across a good number of scholarly works online, most of them not worth sharing– in fact, I have a draft of a long post […]
Groove o’ the day: alternate Afro 6/8
Here is a another, simplified Afro 6/8 groove as played by one of the major session guys for Blue Note Records in the early 60’s, Roger Humphries, here on the tune Mary Lou from Horace […]
Lessons are a whole different thing
Metaphor for complexity. It’s easy to wonder if drummers online are giving away the away the entire store with all of the free video lessons, blog posts and whatnot. With such a massive volume of […]
DBMITW: all Elvin, all the time
This current Elvin binge really snuck up on me. It’s easy to lazily categorize his playing as a style– but then you listen to something like this, which we’ve all heard a thousand times, and […]