The sort of thing you write when you’re under quarantine— a library item strictly for maniacs, in the same ballpark of extremity/uselessness as Gary Chaffee’s jazz patterns, from Patterns vol. 3. In fact that’s exactly […]
Category: Stick Control
Four on the floor: Stone meets Ghana
Here’s something very rare, an idea to base your whole life on: Stone-type patterns based on Ghanaian bell patterns. This is from Jon McCaslin over at Four on the Floor, given to him by the […]
Best books: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles
This book has been out for a couple of years, but fellow Portland drummer Ed Pierce just brought it to my attention: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles. …possibly the worst book title ever, but who […]
Book reviews: Two new Stone books
Two new works by and about George Lawrence Stone have just been released: Technique of Percussion is a compilation of articles Stone wrote for International Musician Magazine in the 1940s-60s. It’s over 400 pages long, […]
Stick control patterns for jazz
Because some novice jazz students get hung up on the idea of left hand “independence”, here is a little set of exercises for helping coordination between the hands when playing jazz time. We’re using some […]
Rubadub with Stone
Reversing a years-long boycott, I’ve been using the book Stick Control quite a bit for drum set applications lately. I guess it’s unavoidable that sometimes in playing the drums, we think in terms of stickings. […]
Stick Control for consistency
Here’s an interesting video by Matt Patella, a drummer and teacher who knows a lot about the whole Stone/Morello world of drum technique. He talks about George L. Stone’s intentions for his book Stick Control, […]
Stick Control flams in 5/8 – 01
This is pretty straightforward, almost something you can do without writing it out— I’ve simply transcribed the basic flam exercises from p. 16 of Stick Control into 5/8. I get bored practicing things in a […]
Figure Control: 4/4 – Nexus riff
Let’s do one of these for the rhythm in the Nexus practice loop. You’ll recall, with this Funk Control / Figure Control series what I do is take a single performance rhythm and put a […]
Stick control patterns in 9/8
Oh, fine: here are some stick control patterns in 9/8, for practicing with the Bill Frisell loop from the other day: You can scour these posts for ways of applying these patterns to the drum […]