Saturday, May 14, 2011

Rothman book recommendations

While the interview is fresh, I want to give my recommendations for Joel Rothman book purchases. God knows I haven't seen his entire catalog, but these are very strong books:

Basic Drumming - An everything classic. See my review for more information.

Mini Monster Book of Rock Drumming - Embrace the goofy cover. The best overview of rock/pop/funk/backbeat-oriented drumming I've seen. Review coming soon. You may also be interested Rothman's newest book, which I have not seen, Son of the Mini Monster for Rock Drumming: "...concentrates on developing simple to complex-sounding bass drum patterns against a variety of rock cymbal beats in various time signatures."

Drumming And All That Jazz - An excellent overview of primarily triplet-based jazz concepts.

Basic Drum Technique and Beyond - Contains a lot of material further developing things found in Stick Control. Particularly interesting are the parts dealing with stickings of mixed rhythms, and the dynamics section.

Rock with Hand-Foot Drum Breaks - Primarily a book of drum fills including the bass drum, much of this is more like Stick Control for three voices. Very valuable.

Swingin' in 3/4 Time - One of his earlier books, this first came out when the jazz waltz was still a fairly exotic style- Elvin Jones had just joined John Coltrane's band, and was expressing (I think to Charlie Persip?) what a difficult time he was having playing in 3/4. This is still a solid introduction to playing in three, and an excellent companion to Joe Morello's later New Directions in Rhythm. [Note: Mr. Rothman informs me that this book has been out of print for some time, and most of the content has been included in Drumming And All That Jazz above; there do seem to be a few copies of Swingin' in... available through Steve Weiss Music. I think it's worth the purchase price just for the cover.]

The Compleat Jazz Drummer - The big one, 500 pages of materials, with some very unique stuff. Review coming soon. I personally think every student of jazz should own this book.

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