“You have to see the truth in the simpler ways of playing. That was a real challenge to me. I realized that technique doesn’t mean a s* if you can’t play a back beat in […]
16th note exercise for brushes – solo
Continuing this thing— playing the the 16th note pages from Reed with brushes, with accents and bass drum additions hastily scribbled in while practicing. Here’s the 20 bar solo on p. 23. > = accent / […]
Elvin’s march
“I did go through [Harr’s snare drum book] as a matter of fact. I went to public school in Pontiac, Michigan, so I didn’t do anything extra. […] I didn’t have that advantage of being […]
Three Camps in 3 – jazz waltz -02
Another set of Three Camps-form exercises in 3/4, for the drum set. The first two have alternating triplets between the snare and bass, the last two are based on a dotted quarter rhythm, with an […]
Paradiddle inversion control – 02
We’ve been doing a lot with the highly useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion lately. This is a page I wrote for myself as I’m developing some other Reed methods for it— sometimes you need to see […]
Brute force freedom
Not Mickey Roker, never will be In the Josef Hoffman piano technique post I said: We read this now and put an emphasis on the freedom part, but he’s talking about freedom through massive technical abilities— […]
Daily best music in the world: hey, my brother’s in Downbeat this month
Here’s my brother, John Bishop, playing with Hal Galper and Jeff Johnson at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles. Tune is Ascendant, from one of the great records ever, The Ultimate Elvin Jones. I’ve seen […]
Ari Hoenig show and jam session
There was a wild night last night— Ari Hoenig played at Portland’s 1905 Club, followed by a jam session, led by Ron Steen— a great drummer and long time jazz community leader in Portland. Several […]
Carl Friedberg on touch and technique on the piano
More from Piano Mastery by Harriette Brower— some words on sound and technique at the piano from Carl Friedberg (1872-1955). He was the principal piano instructor at Juilliard in the mid 20th century— Nina Simone […]
16th note exercise for brushes
Another cut and paste item. I don’t practice brushes nearly enough, so yesterday I was hitting that a little bit. Poking around for things I needed to work on, I settled on these pages from […]