Here’s a nice performance on brushes by Tootie Heath, on Five Spot After Dark, from McCoy Tyner’s album Today And Tomorrow. I don’t know how it passed under my radar that he died just last […]
Concert piano clickbait
Here’s an interesting YouTube account, giving concert piano the full clickbait treatment. It’s kind of fascinating, applying all the usual BS traffic-baiting moves to this area of music, that is nothing if not highly serious— […]
RIP David Sanborn
So long to the saxophonist David Sanborn. He was one of the great lovers of all kinds of music— you can watch his show Night Music on YouTube, it was on in 1988-90, and he brought on […]
HOT TOPIC: beat displacement
Make them all go SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m about to finish my out of town project that has been consuming a lot of my time, so hopefully we’ll resume regular posting soon. …aaaand I just got a […]
Very occasional quote of the day: mesmerized
“The fault with most drummers is they get carried away, mesmerized by the sound of the instrument.” – Larry Ridley, Jr. Modern Drummer, July, 1981
What it is: reading music
The world is teeming with resources. I was just involved in an extended, very contentious online discussion on the topic of reading music— Is it good to be able to read? Is it better to learn, […]
Reed tweak: linear fill in another setting
A similar item to another recent thing, with a Reed system I use pretty often, but don’t talk about much— with the hands plaing the book rhythm, and the bass drum filling in the spaces. […]
Subtractive method: key to BSSB-SBBS
If you’re not doing anything with this system, you should give it a try. It’s a way of orchestrating rhythms from Syncopation (or rhythms from wherever) between the snare drum and bass drum, based on […]
Best books: Working Space
Here’s an old favorite, by the painter Frank Stella, who died this week: Working Space— you can read it online at that link. It’s pretty dense, but there’s a lot to learn about art in it. […]
Something strange
This person is making a lot of videos composing accompaniment for drum solo videos by some well known players, “adding music”, as he says. The first few minutes explain this was done, then there’s an […]