The “Afro” feel in 9/8, or 3/4, is not exactly a standard feel, but it does come up. Like, in Portland, a tune by the drummer/composer Lawrence Williams gets called quite often, among several different […]
Category: exercises
Stone method for uptempo jazz — 01
Most of the regular drumming literature is poorly adapted to the special conditions of very fast tempos in jazz; the practice materials are either too dense, or are triplet-based, which obviously isn’t going to work. […]
Partido Alto variations
The partido alto rhythm, in this case; it’s also a Brazilian song style, a type of funk groove, and a tune (see below). It’s one of the major rhythms in Brazilian music— several of the batucada […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat splash in 5/4
Here’s the disconcerting third dropped shoe in this recent spate of hihat splash pages o’…, now in 5/4, and I… Wow, I think that may be the ugliest, most incomprehensible sentence I’ve ever written. I’m […]
Syncopation exercises in 3/4 — 01
This is a straight library piece: some syncopation exercises in 3/4, similar to the one-measure exercises in the middle section of Ted Reed’s Syncopation, for doing all of the usual things you do with that […]
Locking with clave — 01
This is derived from an idea discussed by David Peñalosa in his book Rumba Quinto. In rumba, an Afro-Cuban genre, the quinto is the highest-pitched conga drum; the quinto player is the lead player, improvising […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat splash in 3/4 — 02
Hey, I kind of like these things— we’ll see several more pages o’… with hihat splashes, in the near future. This format has become one of the major things we do here, as I’ve had […]
Three Camps in first inversion paradiddles
2024 UPDATE: This page looks really awful. I’ve just posted a much nicer looking version of it. Here’s an adaptation of the traditional snare drum piece Three Camps, played with first inversion paradiddles— the very useful […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat splash
Here’s a relatively easy jazz waltz page o’ coordination, with a minor twist— we’ll be incorporating an open sound on the hihat, played with the foot. This is a jazz feel, so swing the 8th […]
Son clave basic coordination
Here’s a companion piece to our page of Rumba clave coordination, this time using Son clave. The format is basically same: the first patterns are logical, and the later ones build a few common Afro-Cuban […]