A summary of something I’ve been doing lately. I hadn’t practiced for about a week, so to get my act together, I drilled some standard jazz methods using that recent page of practice rhythms. I […]
Category: exercises
Cliché control – 5 stroke singles
Another Cliché Control page for learning to solo in jazz, combining stock licks. This time centered around 5-stroke singles: RLRLR or RLRLB. We’re squarely in Philly Joe / Art Blakey territory here— and a lot […]
Stick control in 12/8 – “Afro logic”
Here’s what that page of 6/8 sticking patterns was setting up— and that funny joke photoshopped page from Stone: sticking combinations in 12/8, oriented like the Afro “short bell” rhythm, with one pattern on beats […]
Reed interpretations: 16th notes in a triplet feel
A simple system here, that nevertheless has a number of possibilities, that I was playing using with my own book, Syncopation in 3/4, along with the Bill Frisell / Where In The World loop in […]
Stick control patterns in 6/8
This is part of a larger writing project I’m doing— some things you have to write out to decide if they’re going to be of any use. You can see that the logical sequence here […]
Reed tweak: paradiddle fill in
Some of these Reed systems are so sprawling that you can spend months working your way through them. This one is nice and limited. There’s exactly one thing to do, and relatively few lines from […]
Subtractive patterns for jazz snare and bass
Continuing to develop this subtractive method, here are some good patterns for snare drum and bass drum in a jazz feel. I’m digging the system. It allows me to put whatever part I want consistently […]
Page o’ coordination: basic triplet texture in 5/4
Continuing this little series. You could warm up for this by just playing the original 4/4 page, repeating beat 1 at the end of each measure— effectively playing ||: 1-2-3-4-1 :||. Like we originally played […]
Hemiola funk patterns in 5/8
Here’s a nice easy page of hemiola funk patterns in 5/8— based on our friend the 3:2 polyrhythm. World’s fastest way of getting your students playing hip stuff in 5, if you already (wisely) ran […]
Page o’ coordination: prep for subtractive method with Rumba bell
Continuing this subtractive thing using another common Latin bell rhythm, a Rumba rhythm, Guaguanco. There isn’t typically a bell used in Guaguanco, but played on the drum set, it’s the equivalent of the bell rhythm; […]