No big woop here, I just happened to need a fairly sparse syncopation exercise, so I wrote this up quickly, and I thought I’d share it. It’s based on the tune Solar, by Miles Davis. […]
Category: exercises
Double paradiddle thing
Matt’s Paradiddle Thing has been so useful to me, that I decided to apply the same methodology to double paradiddles. Don’t be put off by the amount of ink on the page- the system is […]
More on samba feel
Following up on my earlier post on feel in samba, here I have gone a little further in analyzing what’s going on with the repinicado/”tripteenth” (Michael Spiro’s term, I believe) thing in samba, and have […]
Samba Cruzado – third surdo warm-ups
Here are some new preparatory studies for working with samba cruzado, and for getting this third surdo thing happening with the bass drum- I’ve refined my methods a bit as I’ve been working with this […]
Around the drums Max Roach-ily
More good stuff from Bang! The Drum School- a fun page of Max Roach-inspired fills. I like this kind of thing for just practicing getting around the drums- something I never actually did in isolation, […]
Kristen’s rock micro-syllabus
Here I’ve written up a thing I’ve been doing verbally with Kristen, one of my 6th grade students, to acquaint with some of the basic moves in rock-style drumming. Our method has been to run […]
Matt’s paradiddle thing
This is a straightforward paradiddle exercise I wrote up for one of my students. It ends up a pretty robust page of stuff when you run it in the sequences. Practice each measure individually, then […]
Todd’s methods: same-handed flam accents
This is something that came organically out of my own playing- it came up again and again in improvising for years before I finally analyzed it. The only place I’ve seen it mentioned since is […]
Todd’s Methods: adding bass and snare to samba cruzado
Well, we’re all samba all the time around here these days, but what the heck- the point of this enterprise is for me to post things I’m interested in, and working on, and right now […]
Caixa blow out: part 1
Here are a couple of pages of caixa (that’s a Brazilian snare drum) patterns which are in common use in Portland, along with some of their variations from other sources. Includes a partial illustration of […]