A very dense page today, but it’s not for you, it’s for me. I was practicing the original 3/16 Control pages along with my Watermelon Man loop, and thought some of the permutations would be better […]
Category: exercises
Metric modulation a la Silverman – 01
A student brought in a copy of Chuck Silverman’s Practical Applications: Afro-Caribbean Rhythms for Drum Set, and we worked through a part of it together, dealing with metric modulations— or more accurately superimposed metric modulations […]
Uptempo drill a la Riley
Major rehash alert: an uptempo jazz drill I was playing yesterday, using what John Riley once called “my C major scale”: an SSBB pattern in 8th notes, with notes omitted. The page below is very […]
EZ simultaneous clave exercises
Awhile back we noted that if you play a simple rhythm in an alternating sticking: And move one hand to a different sound: …you are playing the Son Clave rhythm in the 3-2 and 2-3 […]
Quintuplet jazz? – 02 – bass drum added
Continuing that suspect page of jazz rhythms in quintuplets, here are some more practice patterns with bass drum added: See that post view from the outside of a swing feel for some explanation of this […]
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 […]
From the zone: left hand developer
Here’s a cool little exercise from a great drummer from Los Angeles, Sinclair Lott: You can see what’s happening there— a table of time with a RLL sticking, with accents on the downbeats. Which makes […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat in the space
Here’s a page based on this ongoing Elvin Jones transcription— I observed when he was playing time on the hihat, he would tend to close it before the beat. I also saw him doing that […]
Page o’ coordination: Juju
I’m transcribing a little bit of Elvin Jones’s playing on the Wayne Shorter tune Juju, which I originally did off the LP around 1988. It’ll take some time to finish it, so here’s a page […]
Stickings a la Funky Primer
This is part of why I write so much stuff— you never know what a particular student is going to need, and in what form. For whatever weird reason, somebody will do really well with […]