Monday, November 11, 2024

Very occasional quote of the day: epic

From Hal Galper on Facebook:

“I’d heard a recording of an interview with Coleman Hawkins that stuck in my brain. He said you had to go to the city twice. The first time to learn the city,  the subways, where the jam sessions were and meet the doorman at every jazz club in town. You can then evaluate your playing relative to the scene, figure out what you had to get together and go home to prepare yourself for your next and hopefully permanent visit. It took me three times 

Boston at the time had two top level jazz clubs. George Wien’s Storyville was across the street from The Stable. The NYC bands came to town I'd interrogate them to find out what it was like to go to the city. Everybody had a different story. That's when I realized what happens to you in New York City only happens to you!

I was failing miserably in high school except for Shop as they called it. Grasping at straws, my parents got the idea to send me to a technical prep school my sophomore year in Boston’s Copley Square, coincidentally just across the street from The Stable, Boston’s local jazz club. I had my lunch breaks there, eventually taking a couple of bongo lessons from the club’s janitor just do do something jazzy. I’d bail on the classes spending the rest of day hanging around the club catching the sounds of Serge Chaloff rehearsing from my perch at the top of the ramp that led down to the basement venue. That was where and when I first met and took my first ever jazz piano lesson with Ray Santisi. He hand-wrote out a lead sheet with the melody to Moonlight In Vermont with some simple, nice sounding changes telling me to come back when I’d learned it. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t read. My 2nd lesson, Ray asked me to play the tune. I sat frozen staring at the lead sheet. He opined “forget it kid, you’ll never play.” I remember hearing the receding Doppler Effect of his shoes as he walked up the ramp and out of the club.                                                                                                      

Back in Salem again I came home, unkempt but unbowed. But It was too late, I’d caught the bug. Didn’t know if I could play. How could I? I knew nothing. I spent my senior year of high school cutting classes, jamming with my first trio in the back room of the school’s music director, Mr. Devoe. My bass player was Mary Burke from Tennessee and local drummer, John Pramis. Mr. Devoe, he got me. With an unending supply of pre-signed absentee approval slips in hand I jammed my way through my senior year ostensibly working on “the senior revue.,” which was actually true. Having the courage of my ignorance I played my first trio concert at the Review. Two originals. The first was in the key of C, the only key I knew a little bit about at the time, following with another in C minor, which I knew even knew less about. I knew nothing about form or structure. Considering the absolute silence that ensued, it was at best a head-scratching performance. 

You want this record.

I was facing a bleak and uncertain future until I learned Massachusetts had a State program offering financial support to disadvantaged students for tuition to go to college. I had lost my left eye in a childhood accident and qualified for full tuition at any institution of higher learning of my choosing. Really? Looking forward the end of the semester I expected to be called down to the Dean’s office because my attendance record was so bad.  He said, “Mr. Galper, if you do’t start doing any better you won’t  graduate.” Prepared, I gave him a mental F—K you, asserting I didn’t didn’t need no stinkin’ graduation because I was going to be a jazz musician. I left triumphant. My path was clear and didn’t attend my graduation.

A year later I was studying with Ray again at Berklee College Of Music. He’d play the piano while I sat  beside him, watching his small hands skitter over the keys in awe. If you were quick enough to stop him and ask, he'd show you what he played. I hadn’t become much of a better musician since our abortive encounter at The Stable and didn't learn a thing that semester. However, I studied with him again a year later and redeemed myself. I was much faster and copped royally!

Ray had been playing 6 nights a week at The Stable forever when he handed his seat over to me! I mean, who does that? I was playing seven nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays with Herb’s big band, the weekends in a Varty Haroutunian’s quintet with Herb Pomeroy and Monday nights with Sam’s quartet or Gene Distatio’s Quintet. One night he came into the club, pulled me aside to remind me of our first two lessons. I had completely forgotten the incident. He told me he’d learned an important lesson as a teacher. “Never second guess a student, they can surprise you.” Considering the context, his gesture was incredibly sweet and generous. He didn’t have to tell me that and he did so without ego. A lesson in humility learned and never forgotten.

“Never second guess a student, they can surprise you.”


Following 3 years of intense study with the great Madame Chaloff I was overly protective of my new chops. Alan Dawson was the drummer with Herb’s big band. A great drummer and a prince of a man but he was a lick-stepper, following my lines too close, duplicating the rhythms I was playing. I Hate That! Duplication is death to the music. Playing what you play isn’t dialog. All that tells me is you can hear. Don’t play my ideas, play your own ideas! Can’t have a conversation if the other person says the same thing back to you. I’d have to breakup my phrasing to get away from him. Not bad training in itself but I was staring to lose my hard won chops. The crazy part of me got out of the box and I lost my cool. Like an idiot I pressed Herb with an ultimatum, it’s either me or Alan. No one else in town could play the band’s drum charts and they had Ray Santisi. I was promptly fired having unknowingly broken protocol, instantly becoming persona non grata in Boston. Lesson learned. I have since never given an ultimatum to anyone. In any case, no matter what, it’s inevitable you’ll eventually bypass the musicians you came up with. You’ll know when it’s time to leave town when they make you leave. You’re a reminder they didn’t stick to the true path. So I left, giving what few gigs I had to Mike Nock, split with my first wife to Berlin to Paris to test the waters. I was back in Boston a few months later  month without a wife, broke with a brick of hash strapped to my chest, the proceeds of which kept me alive for six months. I figured, gee, I guess it’s time for me to go to The City. Duh! 

Stuffed my life into an old blue Navy B4 ever-expanding suitcase and took a bus out of town. Was told to get off at the Port Authority unawares there were two Port Authority bus stations. I got off at 178th St at 2 am with nineteen cents in my pocket, dragging my B4 down a deserted Broadway to West 75th St where I had a couple of friends I’d met the previous summer who’d let me sleep on their floor until I got my shit together. Tried to bum a penny to get 20 cents for the subway but everyone I asked gave me a weird look. Had I known more about NYC culture I would have asked for a dollar. As I walked downtown B4 in hand I kept thinking “welcome to New York Hal, welcome to New York.”  

Looking back, I'm more than ever convinced most of the important decisions in our lives are made below the level of consciousness, something I expect to expound upon in the future.”

Saturday, November 09, 2024

Abstract art

Helen Frankenthaler
Talking about abstract painting, and attitudes towards it in general, countering some things I've heard said many times over the years, sometimes about my own work. Modern painting is easy to relate to what we do as drummers— in both disciplines we deal in simple forms, and the craft of it is not always obvious. People who don't know anything enjoy not respecting either of them. 

Some drummers are happy to be— no disrespect— pure knuckleheads and live their lives strictly in paradiddles and flam taps; I like people who have interest in art beyond that. Therefore, some things to think about approaching this other art form: 


What's similar, and different
It's easy to see an improvisational element in music and in that kind of art. They seem to be analogous to each other, both coming from a similar cultural place and time, with a similar hip modernity. For a long time, though, I could only see how they were different. For example: 

Painting is production craft, music is performance craft. Art happens in a work shop, like any other artisanal endeavor— woodworking, pottery, wine making, jewelry— producing objects to sell. Unlike those applied arts, art-art is made to be somehow enriching for being what it is, as a kind of visual literature or music, inspiring some kind of feeling of emotion or creativity in people. Or whatever someone is looking to inspire.

If paintings have an applied purpose, it's to decorate a wall in a home or business, and some of it is strictly that— commercial decoration. The difference between the two is like a quasi-poetic greeting card vs. legit poetry. The difference may be real obvious, or not. Some artists have gotten very skilled doing abstract art that looks great and is visually impactful, but doesn't say a lot. 

Of course painting is visual and static, and music is aural and changing. Either way we want sustained interest— for people to look at the picture longer, or to listen to the recording again. 

Ellsworth Kelly
Which is where some artists lose me— not enough reasons to look longer. They'll function as an attrative design element as part of a larger space, but there's not a lot to look at in the piece itself. You see Ellsworth Kelly's work in the picture here— he was a great, appealing, creative artist, his work in total is a master class on design possibilities, but there's not a lot to look at in individual works, once you get the initial design idea.  

Some have tried to make painting a performance art, but if the main thing is not the end product, then you're really just doing avant garde theater. As long as the end product is the point, it is a production, work shop craft, no matter how you stage its creation. 

Likewise, with music, whatever you do with the performance aspect of it, the thing you listen to is the sound. Take that away, you're more doing performance art, or a theatrical spectacle, with incidental music. I don't know if anyone ever bought and listened to a Gwar record, for example. 

There is a “performance” aspect in painting, in the sense of real time application of skill, with some or all of a painting are done “live”, in one sitting— alla prima, it's called. Or freehand drawing. Which is usually what we do in music, playing complete performances at once. Commercial music and art, in the interest of production, use a whole range of technical tools and techniques to minimize the need for that real time pure skill performance. More so in commercial art. 


“I could do that.”

In fact, yes, you could. If you chose to. In art or music. Many or most of my drum students can deliver credible performances in some type of music, without being full time players. Anyone can do it, and should. It doesn't make it less good, or worth less. But you have to do it. 

Getting that easy money faking a career as an artist would require renting studio space, outfitting it, stocking it with materials, and then confronting the problem of trying to make something other people want to look at, that people who look at art all the time would approve to show in their gallery, and that someone might want to spend money on to own it. You would find that it takes many hours of your time, and considerable dedication, not to mention financial investment. You would also have to be able to convey belief in your own work, which you can't do cynically— hard to get away with it, and sustain it. After you do all that, you really are just an artist.   

Art likers will counter this with, no, it really is amazing, it is really hard, and piling on the superlatives, which is really not the point. Something does not have to be hard to do— or time consuming for the artist— to be worth looking at. Elvin Jones played Up 'Gainst The Wall in three minutes and thirteen seconds. I'm sure this very large Jackson Pollock painting below was done in an afternoon. What's the difference?  

Jackson Pollock


As a technical matter, anyone could have composed John Cage's 4'33". They would have to think of it, and then present it, put it into a performance. Then the real trick is getting it published, and publicized, and getting others to perform it, and listen to it, and have it be persistent in the culture as a work of art. Even if you're convinced that the work is a pure fraud (you'd be wrong), John Cage had to organize his entire life around perpetrating it, he could only do it if he had built up some credibility as an artist. You couldn't say he wasn't committed.  

There's more below the fold....

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Triumph of the worst

‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

kak·i·sto·cra·cy

noun

1. Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

2. A state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.


Quite remarkably and apparently decisively, the United States of America has elected D***** T**** to be the nation's president. Running a virtually incoherent, intensely negative, divisive, openly racist and sexist campaign, that was virtually content-free in how it would improve the lives of Americans. 

The rule about Americans, clearly, is that an electoral majority of them are vastly dumber, more shallow, more gullible, and more intellectually, ethically, and morally bankrupt than your worst assessment of them. And more racist, and sexist. Incredible pig ignorance, and inability to know (or care?) when they're being relentlessly and transparently lied to. The low satisfactions he offers them were attractive enough to motivate them to get out and vote. 

What will happen is that he believes he was elected dictator for life, having been giving some form of immunity from prosecution by the Supreme Court he largely appointed. He will have fewer limiting influences, fewer sane, non-corrupt voices around him. He will have the support of a Republican party that largely believes he is destined to rule as a king, if not worships him as a virtual deity. 

...quite sanely, you do not understand what that man has ever done to deserve to be regarded that way. Neither do I. 

But he is old and losing energy. The worst excesses of his administration will be conducted by his underlings, whom he will not have the energy or interest to supervise. We'll see how effective they are at that. 


Hope: We all didn't just vanish over night. T**** and his vice president and their policies are deeply unpopular with about half the United States population. We were not stripped of our political power. There is still a legal system, both federal and local. There is a federal bureaucracy which the new administration will be seeking to dismantle and disempower— we will see how durable it is. The military has been well aware of its constitutional role, and institutionally resistant to committing crimes at the behest of the executive branch. 


There will be another election in two years. He may well try to stay in office beyond his legal term— if he lives that long— but I don't believe he will cancel elections altogether. But Republicans will increase their voter suppression efforts. He is an old man, and is deteriorating mentally and physically. It is unknown whether he could ever be so mentally disabled that the American people would not re-elect him, should he seek an unconstitional third term at age 82.  

The power of his movement is that it encourages corrupt, horrible, criminal people to believe this is their time to rule completely. In their hubris, they commit crimes, which will be resisted at some level, and for which they may eventually be prosecuted. 

The country and the planet has seen worse, darker times. Possibly worse times than these have been the normal state of affairs for most humans, and things did improve. Barbarians don't just breed more barbarians— intelligent civilized people came from them, civilization came out of barbarism. 

Young people came out decisively for Harris— they are the actual future, and they will remember this outrage. 

Doom is not an option— there are people who pose as allies, who really are abusing us emotionally with doom content. Shut them out. The situation sucks, that's all. Remember your love and do your work. 

And who knows, maybe when he is sentenced for his 37 felony convictions later in November, the judge will simply throw him in prison. 

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

-Toni Morrison


You may want to follow my Twitter feed— I'm sharing as much encouraging/hopeful opinion/analysis as I can find. 

Monday, November 04, 2024

RIP Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones passed away early this morning. I'm not equipped to write anything meaningful about him, so here are some links: notices from the Associated Press, and from Variety.

“I've never been bored or lonely in my life. I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I  love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to French. How can you get bored?”


A short video of Jones in the studio with Herbie Hancock, 1984. And a Rolling Stone piece on the making of the “We Are The World” song and video, and another about the Netflix documentary on him. 

And famously colorful interviews in GQ, and in Vulture. From that interview— this is really how art works, our whole lives are based on this principle:

“God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money. You could spend a million dollars on a piano part and it won’t make you a million dollars back. That’s just not how it works.”

As a kid I was most aware of his TV music. There's a lot of forgettable music on TV, even if you heard them a hundred times. A few of them etch themselves in your brain, they're so well structured. There's not one wasted note here, everything has a function, everything connects to something else and leads to something else:




And a more trivial item— from Bill Cosby's first series in 1969-71. I saw it when I was very young, and then when it was syndicated in the late 80s. Jones got screen credit for the song, and that's when he jumped out at me as someone with whom to look deeper: 





See the links for more meaningful stuff. RIP.

Saturday, November 02, 2024

Service announcement

SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT: I'll be lightly posting for the next few days here— in the process of reroofing my house, a big ol' hole was knocked in the ceiling of my office. So we'll be repairing that, and refurbishing the place generally. 

Plus, if you haven't heard, there's an election happening in the United States, and I'll be feverishly following news developments there. 


THAT ELECTION: I hope everyone is voting, and voting Democratic. If you're voting for the criminal, clearly unfit, racist, sexist, morally and otherwise repugnant guy there's nothing I can say to convince you at this point. You've had ten years to figure out what his deal is. 

If you're wavering because of Gaza: what's happening there is criminal, and has been abetteted by the Biden administration, but the only hopes of mitigating it lie in a Harris presidency— Biden will be the last Democratic president to have such uncritically servile Israel policy. A Trump administration would be absolutely unreceptive to anti-genocide pressure, and would likely result in total annexation of Gaza, and liquidation of the population, by whatever means. 

And Harris or Trump is the decision— one of them will be president in January, and one of them will clearly be vastly worse for Americans, American society, humanity, and the planet.  

Basically: the United States is the most powerful country in the world, and as citizens we have a moral responsibility to elect leaders who will inflict the least harm on the planet.  

So yeah. If you are acursed with an account on that repugnant hell-site Twitter— now “X”— you can follow me there if you want to keep up with election developments. Be forewarned that my stuff there is a good deal more adult/juvenile than what I do here. Mostly juvenile. It's a pressure valve, leave me alone.  

I also recommend The Majority Report podcast for updates/analysis. 

See you on the other side.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Fills in a 3/8 framework - 01

UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took them out, and added one more rock phrase. 

Big item, closely connected with the other recent things we've been doing with fills— see especially this beats to fills post, and this one, and this collection of right hand lead tweaks. The general idea is to hang the fills off of 8ths notes, and including the surrounding cymbal/bass drum hits in the equation— it's all about frameworks for doing that, and what to do on the fill itself. 

Here I've written a lot of fill possibilities to play over the space of three 8th notes— a cymbal hit, plus two 8ths of drums— covering the full gamut of fills from simple and functional, to very dense and soloistic. 


Play each of the fills, in each sticking, many times, working out moves around the drums, and accent possibilities— and any further embellishments that occur to you. On the mixed sticking patterns, you can accent the singles. There are a lot of fill ideas, but any single one of them that you learn to use really well is a big deal.  

At the top of the page we have the basic framework, with the 3/8 idea played once in 3/8 time, and twice in 3/4 time, and as a running pattern over three measures of 4/4 time. Accents are the important cymbal crashes, slashes are to be replaced by any of the fill options. On the second page there are some practice phrases for practicing them in rock, jazz, jazz waltz, and 12/8 feels: 


Everything other than the slashes and accent is ad lib time— play what I've written, or whatever you want in that style.  

Get the pdf

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

History of cymbal manufacturing

An interesting article by Fritz Steger, author of A History Of Drums Made In Germany, written in German: Welches Becken passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise? In English that's “Which cymbal suits my music and playing style?”— which is a little misleading, because before he gets to talking about which cymbals passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise, he gives a pretty detailed history of cymbal manufacturing, mainly in Europe, mainly since the 1800s. 

For you non-German speakers, and myself, also a non-German speaker, here is the English translation (from Google translate) of the history portion. Thanks for DFO user type85 for sharing the link— he has a cool YouTube channel you'll want to subscribe to.

This article is intended to provide a basis for the development of drum cymbals and their various metal compounds from ancient times to the present day. After a historical introduction and presentation of the important manufacturers, the second part deals with the sound properties of cymbals and the various alloys with their advantages and disadvantages.


Part I: Where do cymbals actually come from?

Cymbals are of Asian origin and can be found on Assyrian monuments (2nd millennium BC). They were also part of Indonesian gamelan music in the form of tuned bronze gongs. According to Greek belief, they took away the power of demons, so they were beaten at funerals for the deceased. Western miniatures show them up until the 15th century; then they seem to have been forgotten, probably because the art of hammering them was lost. 200 years later, they reappeared in what is now Turkey and found their way into local military music with their Janissary music during the Turkish wars. Soon after, they also found their place in classical music.

In the 1913 Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, cymbals are defined as “a percussion instrument made of two convex bronze plates, hammered to the same thickness, about 40 cm wide, made in all sizes, without a specific pitch, with leather handles threaded through the hump.” “For special effects, the edges are gently clinked together or one of the cymbals is struck with a timpani mallet. Art music makes sparing use of this instrument; but in military orchestras and lower-ranking bands, which of course attach one cymbal to the bass drum and thus coarsen the effect, it has become indispensable.”

Since then, hand-made cymbals have fascinated drummers and percussionists in Europe and the “new world” with their complex sounds, rich overtones and unique character. But what makes them so special? The starting point of every cymbal is its alloy – the metal mixture that gives it its basic sound properties.


It's long, the rest of it is below the fold: 

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Latest practice loop archive

Here we are, the latest archive of all my sampled practice loops, mostly categorized by style, mostly with tempos. I also have folders with all the loops I use the most, and with the ones that will be most useful to the most people, in all styles. 

Put them on your device and run them through headphones, and practice whatever you're practicing. I think it's the best way to practice, because: 

A. It's real music from real records. All the playalongs recorded for that purpose that I've used seem phony. Playing with them is not the same experience. 
B. I believe your memory for recorded sounds is very good. Memorized recorded sounds are a natural form of this mythical “internal clock” people are so fond of theorizing about. 
C. Because of that, I think this way of practicing is very good for your musical time— so long as you're actively concentrating on your time and accuracy while you're doing it. The only thing better is to play with a slow click— metronome sounding the 1 only, or every other 1. In fact you should do both of those things. 
D. Playing with loops gives all the dumb things you have to practice a chance to sound like music— you play them musically, with a musical touch, in a way that matches the vibe of the recording. In essence you're testing out musical ideas vs. the music of the loop. 
E. It's fun and tricks you into practicing longer.

Download the archive (5.7 GB)

In light of this splendid gift I've given you, this is a great time to contribute a little something to the site— a recurring cash contribution (see the sidebar), buy a book (sidebar), or buy one of these wonderful Cymbal & Gong cymbals you have inexplicably not bought yet. Or get some lessons— in person if you're in Portland, or on line. I don't make significant money through this site, so a few people doing any of those things are a big encouragement for me in doing it. Thanks! tb

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Two measure Reed phrases - 01

Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and this puts most of them together on one page.  These are all pretty tight rhythms, with no greater than quarter note spacing between notes. 



These will make good jazz solo phrases, in a right hand lead triplet interpretation, here based on pattern 8 on the page (written here with the RH part on cym/bad; the other usual way to do this has RH playing accents on the snare/toms, no bass drum, and LH ghosted on the snare): 


They'll also make slightly less-good funk phrases, with a half time feel funk rhythm in the first measure, and straight 8th right hand lead in the second (again, RH in second measure can also be played on SD/toms, no BD):



Thursday, October 17, 2024

Bill Stewart

I've been listening to a lot of John Scofield this week, and realized I basically never talk about Bill Stewart here. It's weird, he's on anyone's short list of top living jazz drummers, particularly of those who became known in the past 35 years. As a massively influential drummer, he became well known right between Joey Baron and Brian Blade. 

I first heard him on Scofield's 1991 record Meant To Be, and it was one of those epochal moments, like the first time I heard Dave Weckl— like this undeniably is the new thing. I associated what I was hearing with Roy Haynes, who was getting revived about that time via Pat Metheny's record Question & Answer, and it seemed cool that Stewart seemed to be influenced by him. 

In particular there was one spot where he just played some quarter notes— Big Fun, the track below, at the end of the head— from which I took a big lesson, about using the full range of what you could play, having creative access to all of it. Any time something like that jumps out at you, it's a big deal. 


He definitely seemed like a completely fresh animal, a new generation of player— highly musical, a highly skilled improvisor, clearly with broad tastes, a very sharp musical intellect, and creative with all four limbs. He seemed to be on a new level with all of that, while not being merely amazing.  

He has been massively influential in terms of sound— I'm thinking about his sound on three fairly early recordings, that were very influential on me, at least: Scofield / Meant To Be, Pat Metheny & John Scofield / I Can See Your House From Here, and Joe Lovano / Landmarks. It's a very cute sound, with a cranked snare drum, and high, round-sounding toms and bass drum. It's very clean, pretty, and musical— maybe Jack Dejohnette's sound was the closest recent influence to it. It's so ubuquitous now that it seems inevitable, but the other big people before Stewart were Joey Baron and Jeff Watts, both of whom used bigger bass drums, and had punchy or medium tunings with their toms, respectively. 

His cymbal didn't jump out at me so much, but it's clearly an exemplary sound— a smaller, more transparent K sound than Brian Blade's, the other big recent influence in that area. Youtubers have turned his sound and technique into a meme— of course it came simply through him dealing with a slightly too-light cymbal, a familiar situation: 


And listen: I'm not being disparaging calling his sound cute, it's a particular vibe to me, like Jan Garbarek here:
 


He has a distinctive touch on the snare drum as well— expressed here in a New Orleans-type street beat groove, which was hip “new” thing about that time. Since then it has become an expected regular type of groove in jazz, largely* off the strength of what Stewart was doing with Scofield. 

* - I can't not mention Jeff Watts here, who had the famous recording of Caravan with Wynton Marsalis, and also Terri Lynn Carrington, who played the groove on a previous Scofield record


Finally, here's a great interview with him, by Pablo Held— I hadn't listened to it before writing this, and I'm happy to see a couple of my observations confirmed.  

There's a great part about improving time at about 43 minutes in: 


So, I don't know why I don't talk about him much— partly I've been more immersed in older players since I've been writing this site. He's clearly a durable artist, he's doing the real stuff— I'll listen to some players, and they may be great, but their concerns clearly seem different from mine, and I can't sustain a lot of interest. Stewart is not in that category, I'll be listening to him a lot more in coming weeks. 

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Best books: The Drummer's/Musician's Lifeline

Looking at two little books co-authored by Peter Erskine and Dave Black— The Drummer's Lifeline, and The Musician's Lifeline, subtitled, respectively, as Quick Fixes, Hacks, And Tips Of The Trade, and Advice For All Musicians, Student to Professional.

The Musician's Lifeline is the larger and more broadly focused of the two, and is more interesting to me. It's packed with advice from a whole lot of famous players, relating to every aspect of doing music as a job, career, and art form, largely in one-liner format. It's a little values sketch of a particular community* of musicians— many top jazz and studio professionals, performers, educators, and the tier under them— what they think about, how they generally look at things. It will be most valuable to jazz studies majors— this is the field your education is for.    

* - And it's my same community, though in terms of career accomplishment I'm in the category scrappers below the least-biggest person here. Everyone in the book is doing big gigs, or more likely is the big gig. But I know a few of these people, been in workshops with many of them in school, and/or there's one degree of separation with many more of them, via my peers. 

The Drummer's Lifeline is shorter, with a lot of duplicate materials, but with more that is narrowly of interest to drummers, mostly from Erskine and Black. The unique materials are largely minutia, mostly related to gear— I don't sense a larger philosophical center to it as with the other book. 

Much of what the books cover will be familiar to professionals, and to many serious students. There are some choice bits that were new to me. And it's good to have obvious things restated and reinforced. There's a lot that will be good for people to hear early in their playing life, before they learn it the hard way. 


On the other hand, we live in a neurotic age. If you're prone to general anxiety over ever doing anything wrong... or prone to focusing on minutia at the expense of actually playing your instrument... or to preparation neurosis, where you're permanently in a state of feeling a need to do more to be ready to play with people... maybe you don't need more voices in your head issuing dire instructions. Musician's Lifeline in particular gets a little overbearing just from the sheer volume of wonderful advice.  

At least the sources are unimpeachable— these are not just a bunch of chattering youtubers. You can readily dismiss any contrary advice you've been worrying about. And there is some helpful advice dismissing some areas of worry— like where Erskine realistically assesses the variety and difficulty of most of the reading he has had to do in his career (that is, basically never any Zappa level stuff).

They're worthwhile, and you should be buying books. Get them from Steve Weiss Music: 

The Drummer's Lifeline by Peter Erskine & Dave Black - Alfred - 191 pages
The Musician's Lifeline by Peter Erskine & Dave Black -  Alfred - 126 pages

Monday, October 14, 2024

First inversion paradiddles around the drums

Updating a very crummy looking page I wrote in 2012— some calisthenic patterns moving the highly hip and useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion around the drums. 


Drill them blazing fast, and also for control and accuracy at moderate tempos. Don't have a big hole where you sound bad with these because the tempo isn't fast enough. As it says, practice ending the patterns with a bass drum on the last 16th note in the measure, plus a cymbal/bass drum. 

Get the pdf

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Simple four limb unison warmups

Here's a set of simple four limb warm ups, that are heavy on the unisons... an underrated practice item. Take your pick, run p. 38 of Syncopation with 4-5 of these, at a reasonably bright speed, before a rehearsal or gig. 

If you can't do any of them— take half an hour and work them out, you may be missing the boat on something basic coordination-wise, there's a hidden weak spot in there that may be interfering with you in other areas.  
 


Summaries of all of those systems: 

1. Play the melody rhythm with all limbs in unison. 

2-4.
Play melody rhythm on cymbal and bass drum, fill in spaces with snare drum/hihat (played w/foot). 
Play with R on cym / L on snare 
L on cym / R on snare
alternating sticking
5. Play melody rhythm with both hands in unison, fill in spaces with both feet in unison. 

6-9.
Play melody rhythm with three limbs in unison, running 8th note on remaining limb: 
hands + BD over HH (foot)
hands + HH (foot) over bass drum
feet + LH over RH
feet + RH over LH 
10-12. Same as 2-4, with swing interpretation, filling in triplets. 

13. Same as 5, swing interpretation filling in triplets. 

14-17. Same as 6-9, swing interpretation with triplets. 


And of course, you may want to do the 8th note things in a swing interpretation. 


[h/t to my student Matt S. for mentioning #5 as something Dejohnette was doing, setting this whole thing off.]

Monday, October 07, 2024

Meter-within-meter phrases

A page of meter-within-meter phrases— three beat rhythms played over four measures of 4/4:  


You'll want to be very familiar and comfortable with this kind of rhythm— it happens a lot in jazz, and if you get lost you're dead. Count through the sounding rhythm of each phrase: 


Also play just the first two measures of each line, played twice to make a four measure phrase. 

You can do this with my book Syncopation in 3/4— four measures of any materials in 3/4 = three measures of 4/4. 

Saturday, October 05, 2024

Stick Control with a backbeat

Another little oddball Stick Control related item, for drum set: some Stone-type sticking patterns with accented unisons added, on beats 2-4, and on beat 3. Introducing the idea— if you like it, you could obviously go a lot further working out of Stick Control itself. 


Play the right hand on the cymbal, left hand on the snare drum. Ghost the non-accented LH hand notes, play all the RH notes at an even volume. Add bass drum however you like— a particular kind of nut case could use the reading in New Breed for that.  

See also this other oddball item, and the right hand lead with a backbeat Syncopation system. Similar minor items. These things exist in the cracks between the actual major drumming vocabulary items, to create openings for other things to happen. 

Get the pdf

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

CYMBALISTIC: new cymbals in!

CYMBALISTIC: A fresh round of cymbals is in— it's been a rather slow year, so I haven't been getting a ton of new stock. You should be using these things. Cymbals. Made by Cymbal & Gong. Every time I play I'm delighted to be using them. 

Let's round up everything I have in stock, all by Cymbal & Gong— hit that link for videos/descriptions of all of them. These are all “jazz-weight” cymbals— considerably lighter than your average A. Zildjian. I use them for all kinds of music, I haven't felt the need for anything heavier.    

10/2 UPDATE: Videos are up for two new Special Janavars, 20" and 22" and a newly-patinated 20" Extra Special Janavar. Check them out.... 

Also, fair warning:
 The few Janavars (Special and Extra Special) I have in stock will likely be the last ones available before Spring 2025. If you want one, you'd better act fast... 
 

Two thin 22" A-type Holy Grails - heavy patina
These are Blakey-style bruisers, with a big, aggressive sound. Very responsive dynamically— you can make some big mistakes with these, but they get out of your way fast. A skillful player should be able to do something great with these. 




NEW - 20 and 22" Special Janavar
The 22 is only slightly heavier than those two A-types, but is a whole different experience. Controlled and focused jazz sound, but with the feel and fullness you associate with a lighter cymbal. 




Two 20" A-type Holy Grails
They're modeled after “trans stamp” era A Zildjians, and everyone should have one. These are absolute work horse cymbals— which is not real inspiring as a sales pitch, except it is actually a big deal when you get a cymbal that just sounds like a cymbal, that you can do everything with. And they're not without character. They're jazz weight, but seem to function more like a light-medium. 




22" and two 20" Extra Special Janavars
These have been extremely popular— Janavars with K-type hammering and lathing. The 22 has the regular Holy Grail patina, and it's a very full, lush jazz ride sound. If you found a Turkish K that sounded like this you'd go out of your mind, and you would dedicate years learning to play it. One 20" has the customary heavy patina, that gives it a drier, more funky tone.




NEW: The other 20" Extra Spacial Janavar is a fascinating case— in its natural state it was problematic, with an indistinct stick sound and a rather viscious high pitched squeal. I had Tim at Cymbal & Gong give it a heavy patina, and now it behaves like an old, heavily played basher:





20" Special Janavar Crash-Ride, and 15" Hihats
Ordinary Janavars are bright, full, fairly uncomplex cymbals. The heavy patina (hence the "Special") gives them much more character, a bright-but-funky jazz sound. I have a couple of online students who have these, and I always enjoy listening to them in the lesson. People have been loving them.

UPDATE: Two more of these coming next week— a 20 and a 22!




Other Holy Grails— 16" Crash, 14" hihats
The 16" crash isn't a real hip size these days— see my list of cymbal size bigotry— but I've been using one lately, and I get it, the 16 has its own niche. This one is medium thin, and is very similar to my own. Rides well, like all Cymbal & Gong crashes. The hihats are a solid set of light-mediums, with a slightly exotic bottom cymbal that gives them a little wild edge when played open. Cool cymbals. 





14" Wide China
Seems like a niche effect item, but these are very fun. Not just for wailing on, you can touch it occasionally and it brightens up the whole timbre of your sound, in a slightly wild way. I keep one set up about half the time, and it blends nicely with the other cymbals.  




I'm pleased to see so few Cymbal & Gong cymbals available used, and there are a lot of them in circulation by now— people hang onto them. The solo artisan guys are getting a lot of attention at the moment, but I see many more of their cymbals for sale used, despite having vastly fewer cymbals in circulation. Curious.  

Anyway, hit the “email Todd” link here or the contact form on Cymbalistic to get one of these, or if you'd like me to select one for you at Cymbal & Gong, or custom order something for you! 

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Very occasional quote of the day: go ahead

“Don't be afraid. Go ahead and play.”

- Charlie Parker, quoted by Miles Davis, interview by George Avakian

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Transcription: Max Roach - Commutation

Here's Max Roach soloing with his left hand on Commutation, by J.J. Johnson, on Johnson's record First Place. A nice little self contained lesson item— there's some trading after this solo I didn't bother with.

Tempo is about 256, solo begins at 2:36. 


All the notes are played strongly, except the ones in parentheses. You'll notice not all the left hand stuff lines up perfectly with the cymbal. 


Friday, September 27, 2024

Three Camps in first inversion paradiddles - UPDATED

Updating a really horrible looking page I wrote ten years ago. Musescore actually kind of rocks, this took me no time at all, and looks way better. Musescore would make me work to make it look as bad as the old version. 

It's Three Camps, adapted for your paradiddle inversion burnout needs. Play it a lot, and fast: 


This is in Frank Arsenault form— the third camp different than I've seen it elsewhere. We get to play the third camp twice, without the extra repetition of the second camp afterwards. 

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Musescore: conclusions

So, that Billy Cobham transcription pretty well settled it: Musescore is a perfectly fine replacement for the soon-to-be-self-annihilating[? -tb] Finale. For my purposes: writing drumming materials, and lead sheets. 

There are a few very minor things I need to figure out, but the basic thing is solid. In a couple of weeks I'm as fast as I ever was with Finale— a lot about it is clearly better than Finale.

The whole endeavor is more orderly, with all the necessary stuff nice and visible. In Finale things are scattered under any of several menus. In Musescore of the universal style settings are under one giant menu (under format>style), and all the local style settings are instantly available under the properties tab. 

Note entry is more obscure at first, but ultimately more economical than Finale— it takes fewer keystrokes/mouse clicks to do the same thing. Editing generally is easier. It does behave surprisingly at times— better familiarity with the basic modes will help with that. 

Non-default spacing of staves is a little funny— it's done not by setting the actual width/spacing of the staff, but by adding a blank frame, which acts as a spacer. You can adjust that with the mouse, or set an exact size in the frame's properties. Not as direct as the staff size properties in Finale.  

Tuplets are great. Select the overall note value, then the type of tuplet you want to divide it into. EG, select quarter note, then triplet = eighth note triplet. Nesting tuplets is also easy, just select a note of the tuplet, and make a tuplet out of it. In Finale they're a pain, and often behave very strangely.

Not having a universal “text tool”— for just plopping a cursor anywhere— takes some getting used to, but it's fine. All text has a particular function, with a particular default placement. Musescore is more conducive to an orderly looking page. 

Some general thoughts/suggestions:

Make your template first
Using the settings under format>style decide what you want all your documents to look like, and save that in a file named template (and template_bac for when you accidentally save a change you don't want). Open the template for every new thing you're going to write, and immediately save it under the file name of whatever thing you're writing.   


Use the keyboard

You can't be doing everything with the mouse. Learn all the shortcuts for the major things you need to do. Get used to num pad = rhythm / hot keys = the notes / arrow keys = reassign notes that have no hotkey

And get used to hitting the esc key. In note-entering mode, it's easy to accidentally alter your score. Type some notes, hit esc to make changes to them, or to do something else.   

And the arrows, and ctrl, shift, strl-shift, alt, and shift-drag (with mouse, to select an area). And the number pad. I need to get better at navigating the document/program just with the keyboard— pointing at something with the mouse really slows things down.   


Rebuild the drum set palette

It's in a wild order as far as placing notes on a staff is concerned. So if you type in a note and then revoice it with the up/down arrow keys, you'll cycle through the instruments in this order: 


It's kind of random. Apparently the only way to fix that is to remake the entire thing:

  1. Go to edit drumset.
  2. Select an entry, and delete its name. 
  3. Click the No. column so the entries are listed 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.
  4. Fill in new instrument names starting from the bottom of the staff and ascending— of the opposite. 
  5. Give the instrument a name, assign it a proper notehead, move it to the correct line on the staff, and assign it a shortcut. I put all of my stuff on the same stems, so I set everything for default voice 1, stems up. If you want bass drum/hihat pedal on separate stems, select default voice 2, stems down for them.
  6. Be thorough and do them in order— anything you have to add later will appear out of order at the end of your palette. 
  7. I assigned hotkeys as: A - snare, B - bass, C - crash, D - floor tom, E - high tom, F - hihat/foot, G - cymbal (I put both hihat and ride above the top line of the of the staff, and indicate one or the other with a written note. If they're both playing at the same time, I'll put one on another line however is convenient). 

That will give you a palette like this, which is much quicker when revoicing instruments up or down the staff. And also just using the key as a visual reference. 


From bottom to top— instruments on the same line separated by slash: 

Hihat with foot
Bass
Floor tom 2
Floor tom
Snare drum / rim click
Mid tom 
High tom
Higher tom
Hihat or ride / bell / misc diamond notehead / highest tom
Cymbal 2
Crash / China
Splash

WARNING: That may wreak holy hell on MIDI applications, I have no idea how it will affect that, and don't care. For now— I may come to regret that. Probably save two forms of your template— one with the default assignments intact, another with the new ones.


There you go. Onward and upward. Get Musescore here

Monday, September 23, 2024

Afro 6 - new basics

For one of my students, a new page of warmups introducing an Afro 6 groove— or various forms of it. It's as deep a thing as there is in drumming, and to begin understanding it we want to approach it from a few different angles. This is mostly for the hands, see also this page which works out the coordination with the feet


Play those, be able to count in 3 or in 4, depending on the time signature, as in ex. 1 and 2. It may help to count the combined rhythm of all the parts before playing a pattern, and/or to work it out as a sticking— including R hand, L hand, and Both hands. 

Get the pdf

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Squarepusher beat

This came out of a mistake by a student, when we were working on some basic ghost note materials. Some things considered to be “advanced” come up naturally in the form of mistakes and general indiscipline. My student's timing was wrong for what was written on the page, but it was perfectly in time for this kind of techno beat— he mentioned Squarepusher, so that's what we'll call it.  

Here are some things to play with, starting with the seed idea: 


You can see sort of what's happening there— ordinary 16th note ghost note stuff, with some notes offset by a 32nd note, maybe doubled, and extended a little bit, with the goal of sounding hyper and disjointed. 

Tempo and sound should be frenetic. Eventually. Crank your snare drum, or play them on one of those useless little 10" snares. Add bass drum as you see fit. 

Get the pdf

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Double time Reed tweak: one step beyond

Launching to the outer limits of what you can reasonably do with Syncopation, verging on losing the melody rhythm as a point of reference. Or not, see what you make of it. 

Using one of the more useful double timing things (the second item on this page of warmups), and changing what we do with bass drum. Reading from pp. 34-45 in Syncopation.

After playing the plain right hand lead version of the book rhythm with hands only, the steps are: 
  • Do the added 16ths— single Ls = two 16ths / LR, two Ls = LRRL, three Ls = LRRLRL. 
  • Add bass drum on beat 1. 
  • Add bass drum to the added RH 16th notes— immediately after the snare drum. 
  • Add bass drum on any remaining isolated notes of the melody rhythm. 
Here, figure it out: 


This actually creates a kind of a double time rubadub. The bass drum added on beat 1 is a little random— don't do it if it creates any kind of problem. Like if there's not a cymbal note on 1. 

On the second page of the pdf I wrote out how lines 2-3 of the p. 38 exercise will go, with each step. 


Doing all this systematically while reading full page exercises in Reed is rather difficult— we can give ourselves a pretty wide latitude for errors/inconsistency with that— if you can read p. 38 at a bright tempo with the bass drum part landing somewhere between items 4 and 5, you'll be doing pretty well.   

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Daily best music in the world: a good first jazz album

If we learned about music in a nice orderly way, where everything started at a logical beginning with music that was clear and expository, this would be a good first record for finding out about jazz: Oscar Peterson Trio + One. With Ray Brown, Ed Thigpen, and Clark Terry. 

Everything is stated real plainly, for real clear reasons. All the features of the genre are here— to the extent that jazz is a genre. And it's a good sounding recording, with Thigpen playing the drums in a modern way. 

I could have used this sooner than I ever listened to it— I had to figure out how to support this kind of setting on the gig. I came to this music differently— the first things I sought out were by Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, and Miles Davis. Also “classic” jazz, but also rougher, less obvious music. The functions weren't so plain. Listening to a lot of Tony Williams and Elvin Jones I was looking to create a lot of drum energy, but I wasn't so clear on the underlying musical duties, even as I knew the music, forms, and vocabulary generally.  

Here's one track, you can go buy the CD

OK, two tracks: 

Friday, September 13, 2024

Funk warmups - cymbal on offbeats

A page of groove fragments, really, for one of my students— to help get oriented working out of New Breed. We were having some difficulties with this particular cymbal rhythm.   


You could play this page by itself, or use it to work out how the coordination will work when playing a similar system in New Breed. 

Get the pdf

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Boo Ann's Grand

Jack Dejohnette open drum solo from Boo Ann's Grand, on the Jackie McLean 1967 album Demon's Dance. Tempo is about 241— about as fast you can do this kind of stuff. This is burning for jazz stuff using triplets. 

The solo begins at 5:23, and is 48 bars long, less two beats— the band comes in two beats off the 1 of the transcription. 
 

Naturally at this speed you can put a big slur marking over much of the dense activity. A lot of things written as unisons are not lined up precisely. Much of it is Elvin-like activity; he doesn't come off the cymbal much, except on the paradiddle-diddle thing in the fourth line, and at the beginning of the sixth line. He does some interactive snare and hihat stuff at the beginning and end. 

Playing this note for note would be insane. Analyze it for general principles, ways of playing, things played within one phrase. Some things are certainly happening from physical momentum that would be hard to duplicate if you played it literally. Something can be structured to the person playing it, but if they ghost some notes, it can look really fragmented on the page. 



Sunday, September 08, 2024

Daily best music in the world: Elvin recorded wrong

A little listening experiment. My brother played this record for me, I forget how he set it up— clearly there was something wrong with it, he wanted my reaction. 

I said, this is somebody I should know, but couldn't place it. Sounds weird.




You can see on the thing that it's Elvin Jones... recorded in a highly strange way, with this weird, thin, cymbal sound. He's a very distinctive, recognizable player. I have listened to him as much as anybody, on many recordings of vastly differing recording quality. We were both a little stunned— not that my ear wasn't good enough to tell it was him, but that you could make someone sound so alien to himself by recording him weirdly. And why would you do that. 

Fascination not in a good way. The playing of course is great.  

Friday, September 06, 2024

Transcription: Billy Cobham - For Someone I Love

Here's that Billy Cobham transcription— just of a busy portion of Freddie Hubbard's solo on For Someone I Love, on Milt Jackson's record Sunflower. I'm learning a lot about Musescore doing something this damn complicated. 

Ignoring form altogether here, the transcription begins at 4:25, a few measures into Hubbard's solo— the first few bars are very light, you can hear where he plays the ruffs/triplets at the beginning of the page— and cutting out after the last big insane lick, out of sheer exhaustion. Tempo is about 74 bpm. 


If it looks like a fragmented nightmare, take it up with Mr. Cobham. He packs a lot of stuff into some small spaces. I have some questions about bar 10— the end of yesterday's sixtuplet lick— but I can only let this guy beat me up for so long. It is what it is.  

UPDATE: There's a slight fault in the notation in measure 21— each of those drags should be played as a nested triplet. There are supposed to be three dots (...) printed about each of them. Correction coming when I can get to it...

Get the pdf

Thursday, September 05, 2024

Billy, switch to decaf babe

Getting cocky about my Musescore skills now, working on a Billy Cobham transcription, from Milt Jackson's album Sunflower. On the tune For Someone I Love, he does sort of an insane thing that almost crashes the album. The whole thing is really loose anyway. 

It happens after 4:45, during the trumpet solo: 


The actual transcription isn't complete, but here's a chunk of what he plays there: 


It's kind of cursed, I can count through the surrounding four measure phrase, but I can't get the last measure of the lick (not pictured) to resolve to 4/4. I blame Satan. 

Anyway, it's essentially an eight note pattern— two paradiddles (or paradiddle inversions, I don't know how he was thinking it) played on the hihat and snare drum, with feet added. Here are some possible inversions of it, in 16ths and triplets: 


Probably wise to learn the triplet form with hands only at first. I would want to know where the beginning of the eight note pattern falls, and each paradiddle, and the quarter note pulse— most importantly. Print it out and mark it up. Have fun, make some enemies, transcription coming soon.