On George Colligan’s Jazz Truth blog there is a group email sent out by a student who sounds nearly as dickish as I was in college, with the heading: The George Colligan Standards List…LEARN THEM […]
Category: jazz
How to play Dear Old Stockholm
Dear Old Stockholm is the English title of a traditional Swedish song, which, you are probably aware, has become a jazz standard. I don’t know who first started playing it as a jazz tune, but […]
Doubling up a ballad feel with Syncopation
Happy new year, everybody. I’m practicing a lot of slow tempos lately, so here are some Reed interpretations that will be familiar to all jazz students, written out to suggest double time during a ballad. […]
Page o’ coordination: across the barline in 5/4
This is a classic situation when you start improvising in 5/4: you get a little cocky about your ability to just vibe the meter and come out OK, and in a few moments you observe […]
How to play Stablemates
The bop tune Stablemates, by Benny Golson, is something of a test piece for drummers. As now-Portland pianist George Colligan said, “Stablemates can be revealing for a drummer….”, and Golson himself said “It moves around […]
Transcription: Jon Christensen — Keep It Like That- Tight
Here’s Jon Christensen doing some nice open, dynamic playing on a slow, static vamp: Keep It Like That — Tight from Terje Rypdal’s self-titled album on ECM from 1971. We love Christensen because he’s a […]
How to play Jordu
About time I did another one of these: here’s Jordu, by Clifford Brown, as played on the definitive recording, Clifford Brown & Max Roach, on EmArcy. It gets played a lot at the high school […]
Drum intro: Art Blakey — Straight, No Chaser
Every part of this is just so classically Art Blakey— except maybe his touch, which is somewhat gentler than usual. This is his intro on Straight, No Chaser, from Thelonious Monk’s album Genius of Modern […]
Transcription: more Frankie, more Jackie-ing
Let’s really Dunlop out during this fundraising drive. Here’s part 2 of yesterday’s most— Frankie Dunlop’s actual solo on Jackie-ing, from Thelonious Monk’s Live In Stockholm 1961 album: Note that he feathers the bass drum […]
Making bass drum punctuations while feathering
A couple of the problems I have with the idea of playing time with the bass drum (“feathering”) in jazz are: 1) it’s easy to play the feathered notes too loud— a very hokey thing […]