Here’s a fun tune I’ll be playing on tour next month: Paul Motian is the Owl of Cranston— I have no idea what that means, but it seems to fit. I guess I’m not the […]
Groove o’ the day: Ed Blackwell — 6/8 variations
Here are some more variations on the Afro 6/8 feel, played by Ed Blackwell on the tune Mopti (an old favorite from Flatland days, which I’ll be reintroducing to the set on the Europe trip […]
Tour poster
One of the things I’ve been working on instead of blogging:
Rudimental Reed: paradiddles
Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed’s Syncopation, this time using paradiddles. Here’s that well-known opening line from the […]
Transcription: Ian Paice — Lay Down, Stay Down
[UPDATE: pdf download link works now!] I don’t get how herds work: suddenly everyone, everywhere is talking about four stroke ruffs. They happen to be all over this piece, played in 16th note triplet form […]
Half-time feel rock using Syncopation
Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed’s Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we play quarter notes on the hihat, and […]
Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon
Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon’s All-American Drummer: A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, […]
Europe tour coming up
Hey, I’ve got a European tour coming right up at the end of October, and I’d like to invite anyone in the vicinity to come hear me play, and say hello. I’ll be doing music […]
DBMITW: more George Duke
This is a little bit of a listening test from George Duke’s Brazilian Love Affair, again, with Ricky Lawson on drums. It would be easy for a lot of people to give this a cursory […]
Houghton’s triplets
From Steve Houghton’s book Studio and Big Band Drumming, here’s an alternate sticking method for making triplets out of Syncopation. For most people the most familiar method is to play the melody notes— the written […]