What do we do with this? Someone bored with playing backbeats all night asked this question on the Drummerworld forum: “What do you do to spice up the 2 & 4?” My answer is: I […]
Category: R&B
Practice loop: Ronnie Foster – Mystic Brew
Please forgive my continued very, very light, almost-not-even-there posting these days. We’ll get back to the usual torrents of stuff very soon. Until that happens, here’s a new practice loop: the vamp from Mystic Brew […]
Groove o’ the day PLUS: Roger Hawkins — Mustang Sally
Another Groove o’ the day on steroids, from the studio drummer Roger Hawkins, of the famous Muscle Shoals rhythm section— we last checked him out on him on Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools. Here we’re […]
Soul drumming history with Yogi Horton
Here’s an incredible video which I never knew existed: R&B legend Yogi Horton talking and playing the history of soul/funk drumming— this is just the best thing ever: h/t to my brother, John Bishop, for […]
Groove o’ the day: Bill Withers — Lovely Night For Dancing
This is by 70’s session drummer Alvin Taylor, who’s fairly little-known, but is on a lot of stuff. Here he’s with Bill Withers, on the album Menagerie. The song, Lovely Night For Dancing, is kind of […]
Groove and totally gratuitous lick o’ the day: James “Diamond” Williams — Fopp
I was listening to some Ohio Players, and this, from the intro of Fopp, jumped out at me. It’s not the greatest thing in the world ever, but it’s fun: The 32nd notes are legato, […]
Transcription: Greg Errico — Anti Love Song
I could’ve handled this one as a groove o’ the day, probably, since the variations over the course of the piece are fairly minor, but I felt like writing out the whole thing, and didn’t […]
Transcription: Al Jackson — Over Easy
OK, since I do actually feel obligated to offer you something more than perversely elementary groove transcriptions and lectures on the state of drumming, here’s a transcription of the build-up section from yesterday’s tune, Over […]
Groove o’ the day: now exclusively an Al Jackson feature
I include these Al Jackson grooves not because you can’t figure them out for yourselves, but because in this current technocratic, amazingness-fetishizing period of drumming, I like to keep in the front of my memory […]
Transcription: Superstition — groove variations and fills
Experimenting with a different kind of transcription here. Stevie Wonder’s Superstition— from the album Talking Book, drums played by Wonder himself— is mainly a groove piece, but the groove is highly variable, and writing out […]