Monday, September 19, 2016

Very occasional quote of the day: Bozzio studies

I always loved this photo from the
original interview. First copy of MD
I ever read. Also had Jim Keltner
and Ed Blackwell.
In his 1981 Modern Drummer interview with Robin Tolleson, Terry Bozzio discusses his study methods when he was in school, and the books he worked out of:

[I] studied Haskell Harr's books. And then I got into Stick Control, which I thought was a little bit better practical application of that, rather than having all the fancy notation. And I studied that, and I studied out of Ted Reed's book Syncopation, and Louie Bellson's books, and this other book Portraits In Rhythm by Anthony Cirone. That's a real good book for dynamics, and classical snare drumming. [...] I studied [...] that Morris Goldenberg snare drum book.  
So I would go up there with head phones and a cassette recorder, and practice and work out Tony Williams Lifetime licks from this tape thing, and write them all down. My whole way of learning at that point was sort of to take all the drummers that I loved, like Tony and Eric (Gravatt) mainly, and whenever they would do a lick that I thought was really cool, I would write that lick out, and practice it, and learn the technique involved, and then make up my own licks using those techniques. And that's probably the main way I learned to do what I do, at least musically. That's a good thing to do, because that way you don't get stuck with just doing their licks, but it does open up a lot of doors. Because when a lot of people start, they hear things and they don't know what
the hell is going on. You just have to listen to that section over and over to get it.

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