Absolutely killing tune here— Jodo by Freddie Hubbard, from his album Blue Spirits. Pete La Roca is on drums. Soloists are Hubbard, Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, and La Roca. I sometimes forget La Roca is […]
Feel and style
Just a brief discussion of the musical terms feel and style. In normal professional musician usage they are often interchangeable, referring to the type of accompaniment to be played by the rhythm section. What kind of a […]
Transcription: Ralph Penland ensemble figures
From Freddie Hubbard’s Keep Your Soul Together album, here’s Ralph Penland playing an ensemble section from a very nice tune, Brigitte. I saw Penland play a couple of times in Los Angeles when I was […]
EZ Reed method: Jack’s way
This is a very basic method improvised by a student of mine— for younger students, or as a remedial thing for others. It’s good for orienting students in the Reed thing, playing full drum set […]
Metal in 6/8
Following up on this post about that 80s Heavy Metal triplet groove— a student who is mainly a Metal drummer requested some help working out some vocabulary for a song in 6/8, and these are some […]
Robyn Flans fundraiser
Scott Fish has shared a fundraiser for fellow former Modern Drummer writer Robyn Flans— her name was all over MD in the 80s, and she’s a major contributor to the literature of drumming. Please read […]
World’s shortest jazz solo exercise
A quick little item— I know I’ve posted it before in other forms, maybe this time will be the best. For jazz students, this may be the most useful thing on the site for soloing […]
CYMBALISTIC: Second Line Chinese cymbal!
CYMBALISTIC: Oh, I also have for sale a sweet little 14″ Second Line Chinese cymbal— paper thin, at 550 grams. It took awhile for Cymbal & Gong to settle on a design for their Chinese cymbals, […]
Gaps in our counting system
In the comments on that extremely valuable izquierdadiddles post, a friend of the site from the Czech Republic remarked on stickings in his native language, and on the American system for counting 16th notes: [We] Czech drummers […]
Funky 7s on the drums
Some street-beat style 7 stroke roll related things that came up spontaneously when I was practicing today. This had a little bit of a funky Maracatu-type street beat feel the way I was playing it— […]