Here I’ve composed a syncopated, non-technical, four-tone melodic solo for drum set. It is through-composed, 36 bars long, in eight bar phrases with a four bar tag. Play this with the snares off, and pencil […]
Category: jazz
Rub-a-dub lesson: Doxy
Another rub-a-dub lesson— getting as much of this in as I can before the end of the year, so there’s a robust section on it in the upcoming 2018 Book of the Blog. This page […]
3+2 rub-a-dub phrases
Continuing in eking out a way of learning this rub-a-dub concept, here are a couple of pages of combinations of three-beat and two-beat patterns: Practice these in the written meters, then try putting them into […]
Transcription: Dannie Richmond solo
More Dannie Richmond— his solo from The Clooker, from the George Adams/Dannie Richmond album Hand To Hand. Transcription begins at 6:49. Execution of the technical parts is rather rough; and there’s an actual mistake surrounding […]
Open ratamacues for drumset
More jazz solo vocabulary: my previous page of open ratamacues, adapted for the drumset. It’s pretty simple: we’ve just moved the doubles to the bass drum. I eliminated the triple ratamacues because I don’t like […]
Dannie Richmond comping
Dannie Richmond is one of my favorite drummers, who we don’t talk about much mainly because he’s often hard to transcribe, and a lot of what he plays is so context dependent that it can […]
How to play Autumn Leaves
Playing Autumn Leaves should be a no brainer for a drummer: it’s an easy standard, and one of the first tunes everyone learns. No problem, except some players always do a certain zombie jam session […]
Page o’ coordination: basic jazz waltz – 02
Another page of basic jazz waltz materials, with a dotted-quarter note rhythm on the bass drum, which gives your waltz a more rolling feel. As opposed to the traditional, rather hokey boom-tap-tap feel. Play the […]
Mel Lewis on rub-a-dub
Loren Schoenberg, who conducted the famous Mel Lewis history of jazz drumming interviews, has begun posting excerpts from the interviews on his YouTube page. Which is lucky, because I think the source from which I […]
Rub-a-dub lesson: Au Privave
Something a little more challenging to try rub-a-dub style. Since it’s not just a lick, but a way of playing figures and setups, musical context is important— we’re trying to make some written kicks, so just […]