Here’s a great post by Sam Nadel, on a subject I think a lot about— which I alluded to in the recent African ritual music DBMITW— “the importance of being reckless”: “Part of the problem […]
Category: performance practices
What it is: swing rhythm
Extremely preoccupied with tour preparations, obviously, but fortunately I have a couple of things on deck: Swing interpretation is something we use a lot here, and I’ve mostly assumed people know what it is— you […]
VOQOTD: George Marsh on playing odd meters
“[Y]ou don’t have to play the first beat of an odd meter loudly. You have to know where it is, and the musical phrases should flow through the downbeat. Usually that takes playing the downbeat […]
Cracking 5/4: issues and things, and conclusion
In this final-for-now post on playing in 5/4 I want to talk about a few stray issues, and things that you may observe happening, or happening to you. This is a work in progress for […]
Recording session post-mortem
I was in the studio last weekend, recording some very challenging, highly arranged, often counter-intuitive music for a 6-piece quasi-jazz outfit, and had a few random thoughts about it: Recording easy music for your own […]
“If I think of something beforehand then I should not play it.”
Pianist George Colligan has posted a really great interview with drummer Jeff Ballard on his blog, Jazz Truth. It’s really hard to excerpt anything from this because it’s all so good; I put in a […]
Observations about the volume of things
One of the things on my mind a lot lately has been the issue of projection- making your performance be heard clearly by the other musicians and by the audience. While performing and hanging at […]
Playing in 2
I got a nice note from Ben at the excellent Melbourne Drumming Online blog (adding him to the blogroll- be sure to pay him a visit), requesting that I write something about playing in 2- […]
Free jazz handbook
That’s free as in free beer, not as in Albert Ayler. Jamey Aebersold, the godfather- I guess- of jazz playalongs, has a very useful book covering the basics of jazz improvisation of available as a […]
Other people write good things
Of excellence. I haven’t been giving my fellow blogs enough love recently, but they’ve been producing a veritable tidal wave of excellent stuff: Trap’d has a long post about playing with large ensembles, with an […]