don’t let this happen to you “My idea of a drum solo is that you play like you sing. It comes from different things you listen to. And the beauty is always in the simple […]
Category: soloing
Syncopated melodic solo – 01
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 […]
Very occasional quote of the day: soloing
“My idea of a drum solo is that you play like you sing. It comes from different things you listen to. And the beauty is always in the simple things.” — Kenny Clarke, from 1984 […]
Maximizing syncopation rhythms
This is something I was doing with a Skype student recently. We’re working on jazz solo vocabulary, currently getting fluent with common jazz rhythms using basic drum set orchestrations— developing a basic Billy Higgins/Frankie Dunlop-like […]
A simple solo method
Here’s a simple, non-technical solo method I was just working on with a student… …a SKYPE student… did you know I teach lessons via Skype? I do. Anything you ever have questions about on the […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Max Roach – how you build a solo
Max Roach by Jean-Michel Basquiat “What makes a piece an art piece is design. Design. If you play any instrument, if you don’t create design…. If the artist doesn’t know how to utilize space and […]
Barry Altschul on playing melodically
This is an excerpt from a pretty amazing 1981 Modern Drummer article by Barry Altschul, in which he discusses the drummer’s relation to tunes, form, and melody, and playing melodically: It is […] the drummer’s […]
Todd’s tom tom thing — part 1
This is something that has come up organically in my own playing, which I’ve been trying to get a handle on more systematically— we saw a little bit of this before with my “quasi-African” tom […]
Getting lost
Or not. Here are a few pointers on a subject with which I am all too intimately familiar: getting lost while soloing over over a form, and while reading: SOLOING First, whatever various hells break […]
Basic solo vocabulary with Syncopation
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything downloadable of my own, and you don’t want to hear me prattle on about cymbals and crap, so here’s a basic solo vocabulary builder I’ve been working […]