The drummer, clinician, and technique expert Bill Bachman has just shared on the Drummerworld forum that he had a stroke recently, which took out his ability to use his right hand. For a drummer, that’s […]
CYMBALISTIC: Cymbal day, 10/4/19
UPDATE: Oops, I’m an idiot— I uploaded the unedited video from the meeting, which has lots of inane conversation on it in between playing cymbals. Below is the correct video, with times matching the cues […]
CYMBALISTIC: Cymbal day today – Seattle event coming up
At the Cymbal & Gong foundry in Istanbul UPDATE: Found some really great Holy Grails— 22″ and 20″ (x2) jazz rides, 17″ (x2) and 18″ crashes! Videos coming soon. A couple of cymbal-related items: • […]
An EXCELLENT time to support the blog
UPDATE: I’m going to keep bumping this to the top of the site this week, but I will be posting every day, so scroll down for new content. It has been a long time since […]
Practice loop: Chenrezig
Some of my practice loops are as much for inspiration as they are about learning a style or practicing drum ideas, or whatever— for example, the Sivad loop or the Attica Blues loop. Here’s another one […]
Uptempo bailout drill
I’m not great at playing superfast tempos. I can sound really good at the magic Roy Haynes tempo (half note = 143, which sounds very cooking to normal people), with diminishing results as we get […]
Page o’ coordination: Tekufah rhythm
Page o’ coordination using the rhythm from the bass line on Tekufah, a John Zorn tune from which I recently made a practice loop. The cymbal rhythm is actually an inversion or mode of the […]
Alternating singles vs. other stickings
This is an elementary question I often get from students, when learning different ways of playing 16th notes: why learn to play a paradiddle when you can do the same thing with alternating singles? They […]
Reed method: 32nd note linear lick
Another easy little practice method, for playing soloistic stuff, using Progressive Steps to Syncopation, which you can play in conjunction with this other recent item. This one uses a favorite Gary Chaffee linear lick that sounds […]
Very occasional quote of the day: mistakes
“The idea of a mistake is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.” – John Cage