This came up while I was practicing out of my book, Syncopation in 3. An extremely ordinary practice system used with Syncopation is to a) swing the top line rhythm, b) fill in the remaining […]
WSRHWL addendum!
A couple of pages to go with my wild, sprawling, scattershot world’s shortest Roy Haynes waltz lesson. That contains a lot of raw concepts for someone who is listening to a lot of Roy Haynes to […]
Transcription: Max soloing
On this second of two days of major acts of white supremacist violence here in this paradise we call “the USA”, let’s retreat into art, with part 2 of the thing from the other day: […]
Three camps: four variations
Four alternative ways of playing the rudimental piece Three Camps, that I’m practicing this week, accented 5 stroke rolls, flam accents, flam drags, and flammed 5s. Learn each measure individually, then play them in the form […]
Transcription: Max comping
That’s the theme of the week now: jazz comping. Here’s Max Roach playing on the horn solos on A Little Sweet, from his record The Many Sides of Max. Each solo is 24 bars long, […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Higgins – Mystery Song
Let’s gooo, this is now a full-time Billy Higgins site. Here he is playing a New Orleans/Poinciana/Vernel Fournier kind of groove, on the Duke Ellington tune The Mystery Song, on Steve Lacy’s record Evidence: Swing […]
Beware of formulas
Making that Shadow Wilson transcription, I was reminded of this video fellow blogger Jon McCaslin shared with me (and Ted Warren of Trap’d), in which drummer Bernie Dresel shares his formula for comping with the […]
Transcription: Shadow Wilson comping
A little bit of Shadow Wilson’s playing on Nutty, from Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, at Carnegie Hall. This is Monk’s second solo chorus, starting at 2:33. The tune is 32 bars long, form is […]
Solo transcription: Billy Higgins – Dear John
More soloing from Billy Higgins, on Dear John, on Freddie Hubbard’s record Bolivia. The tune has the same chord changes as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, which is a 16 bar form, but the drum solo […]
Very occasional quote of the day: too loud
Another choice item from a 1981 column in Modern Drummer, in which Scott K. Fish talks to a lot of great bass players, about drummers: “Faults I hear in drummers? Mainly that they play too […]