It includes some short drum set studies and exercises on some finer points of rhythm and interpretation, mainly in jazz, and then multiple short profiles of well known players, with playing examples in their “styles”, referring to specific recordings.
For awhile it was posted on Scribd, but it wasn't possible to download it; now you can download it, but don't count on that being the case forever. They do have a lot of good stuff under the documents tab— some bootlegged currently available books, and some out of print or non-commercial publications. You should buy the actual print books whenever possible.
* - One of those wonderful new internet businesses that gives away everything in the world for next to nothing, while at least making sure they get paid, even if nobody else does.
Motto: “That's our money!”
3 comments:
I came across this book when I was just starting to play the drums in 1982, in a library in Nuremberg, Germany. To this day I have no idea how it got there. But it gave me a first insight and many important clues and led me on the right path and for that I am very grateful to Billy Mintz. I never knew how he played the drums himself, and when I heard him for the first time much later, it really touched me, and he's definitely one of my all-time favorites.
I hope it gets reprinted soon; it's one of the best books I know about jazz drumming. It shows a lot of context without dissecting the music. I like it better than the Riley books. Those are very good, but they explain too much for my taste. Mintz's book encourages much more of your own exploration based on the actual music. But maybe people just use the Riley books in a way I don't like.
By the way, the copy has been removed from this site.
I don't know if Billy still sells copies from his site, but I think everyone should definitely send him money if they use an illegal copy. From what I understand, he was quite criticized for this book at the time because it was so unusual for the time. But it's great, even after all these years.
Yep, I feel the same way-- the Dejohnette book filled that role for me. There's a British or Canadian writer who did something similar-- Richard somebody?-- a lot of ideas sketched out briefly, which you take and develop at the drums. I haven't seen him referenced in about 10 years.
Love Mintz's playing-- he and the saxophonist John Gross (who was in Shelly Manne's band in the 70s incidentally) are well paired. Last time I saw him he was playing two 22" 2002 rides.
I had this book when I was learning to play in the 80's in the UK it is one of the best books on the market and technically brilliant. I have just started back playing again after years of not playing and I'm trying to find it in my old archives and hope I haven't lost it👍
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