There’s an excellent piece on the Modern Drummer site getting views on metronome use from a number of top drummers and educators. I’ve excerpted some of the best bits, but go read the whole thing. […]
Category: practice
How much to practice something
1. Get wood chisel. 2. Remove everything that doesn’t look like Billy the Kid deftly gunning down Bat Masterson before the throng of stunned onlookers, a yapping yellow hound at his feet. 3. SUCCESS! One […]
Coordination “kernels”
Here’s one for the teachers. This is an approach I’ve found helpful with students having difficulties with coordination on written patterns in jazz and Latin, and a good alternative/supplement to the usual solution of “slowing […]
The great Jeff Berlin metronome controversy
This has been floating around for some time. His observations are mostly good, but I don’t happen to agree with his conclusion. Watch the video, and I’ll give a few thoughts about it: His major […]
Talent and practice
I guess the “Gen Y Entrepreneur and Investor” author of this piece Why natural talent is overrated knows this stuff from reading a book, but there are some good things in here about practice. Maybe […]
Bill Evans speaks
Here’s a nice, timely (given the last post) find from Ted at Trap’d: pianist Bill Evans talking at length about music:
You must hack
That imperative comes from Running Linux, a classic manual on the use of the Linux computer operating system. What it meant in context is that to take advantage of the full power of the OS, […]
Things I like: drum writing
Here’s a new feature: things I like about things. Today we’ll talk about something I’m seeing a lot of currently: practice materials. 1. Things that fit on a single page. It’s nice aesthetically. Give me […]
Cherished notions bite the dust
I need a bushier goatee for this gig. I’ve been experiencing all kinds of growth with my playing in recent years, which I attribute partly to me forgetting things I for years thought were really […]
Pad practice survival
When I first started I used to practice the rudiments while watching TV, I found it boring so TV helped distract me. –Jack Dejohnette One of the harder things for me to master was the […]