Continuing the thing from the other day, here are some drum set variations on Three Camps, in 3/4 time, in a jazz waltz feel. I practice this same type of thing using my book Syncopation […]
Daily best music in the world: Wilby Fletcher with McCoy
Here’s what I was talking about the other day, about Wilby Fletcher. At some point plays the cymbal rhythm I discussed. It doesn’t matter, the whole thing is incredibly powerful.
Three Camps in 3
A few practice items coming up. Here’s the traditional rudimental item Three Camps converted into 3/4 time, two different ways— accenting the quarter notes, or accenting the swing dotted half notes. That latter is harder […]
Cinquillodiddles
This one occurred to me thinking about Wilby Fletcher playing with McCoy Tyner… The cinquillo rhythm— I’m calling it that now for ease of reference— is a very useful one measure Latin rhythm, and a common […]
Daily(?) best music in the world: Elvin Jones Trio LIVE
Awesome live recording by one of the greatest trios ever, the Elvin Jones trio with Joe Farrell and Jimmy Garrison. Here they’re playing in Berlin in 1968. Nothing to do here but listen:
Counting compound meters
Recently I’ve begun teaching that way of counting 16th notes in compound meters that I mentioned before. It’s going good. I never had a good way of counting those rhythms, so they were always a little mysterious. […]
Listening to Blue Mitchell
Put on your headphones, here’s a little listening this morning: this is Blues On My Mind from Blue Mitchell’s album Out Of The Blue. A lot of blue there, and blues. Playing on it are […]
Reed tweaks: 16ths doubled
This is a small change to a very basic Reed method, that makes it a lot more interesting, to me. I don’t seek these things out, they just happen while I’m practicing. I play with […]
Triplets to paradiddles
A brief set of exercises illustrating the similarity of alternating triplets and paradiddle inversions. We want connections between things that seem different, even when there’s a seeming hard mathematical difference, like between a triplet and […]
Josef Hofmann on piano artistry
Some quotes from the pianist Josef Hofmann from Piano Mastery by Harriette Brower. Published in the 1920s, it’s the type of thing you’d have to go to the library and dig around in the stacks […]