Marvin Dahlgren video channel

Everybody's going to want to check this out: Marv's Legacy, a new(ish?) YouTube video channel with Marvin Dahlgren talking about practicing his books— Four Way Coordination, Accent On Accents, Drum Set Control, etc.  

I've only just started viewing them, but this video seems to be a straightforward explanation of the methods presented in the book. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the videos and seeing what insights he offers based on several decades worth of actually teaching the materials. So far he sticks pretty close to the text. 

It's nice to know what the authors were thinking. But there are other ways of doing things— obviously I also have my own ideas on how to use the book. 

Speaking of Dahlgren's legacy, I'm not sure of the status of a number of his books published by Really Good Music— a small firm run by the father of pianist Geoff Keezer, Ron Keezer, who passed away during COVID. They sold photocopy printouts of about ten books of his that I've never seen anywhere else. Last I checked the site was down. Sheetmusicplus is showing titles published by Really Good Music LLC, but none of the special Dahlgren titles yet. 

[h/t to stevil @ DFO]

Marvin Dahlgren has died

Someone sent me the following note today:

My friend, Marv Dahlgren, the great percussionist, and drum book author, has passed on to his celestial reward, at 92 years of age.

I visited Marv a few months back in the hospital, and he learned his time was not long.

Besides being the longtime percussionist with the Minnesota Orchestra, and author of the yearly re-printed techincal drum set bible, "4-Way Coordination," he flew Corsairs off carriers for the Navy in WWII, fighters for the National Guard, and taught stunt flying as a sideline throughout his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra. He also launched Dahlgren's Drum Shop, on 10th Street in Minneapolis, and it was premier shop of its kind, akin to Roy Knapps in Chicago and Frank Ippolito's in New York.

Marv taught percussion at the University of Minnesota in the 60s-80s, and later, at McNally Smith, in St. Paul. Many of Marv's students went on to professional careers in music (hence, the Twin Cities is lousy with really good drummers!).

On the drum and percussion scene, Marv befriended Elvin Jones while authoring "4-Way Coordination." They became friends when Marv took a practice pad set to New York and had Elvin display his mastery with broken triplets on it. Near the back of "4-Way" are some solos directly taken from that experience. Whenever Elvin was in town, Marv and Elvin would get together (Once, in the 70s, at the Longhorn Bar, where Elvin was appearing, he was on a bad turn with his drinking, and refused to play until Marv showed up to tell him things were okay). These two were as far apart in their personal makeup, but loved each other dearly; testimony to both their characters and their love of music.

Marv's percussive passion in jazz was as a vibraphonist. And he played with his own groups in Twin Cities jazz clubs throughout his tenure with the Minnesota Orchestra.

A personal blessing for me is that Marv, later in life married my aunt Joanie, and their marriage was the stuff of romances. 
Marv was as classy as a man gets, yet had no arrogance or guile. He was a percussive obsessive; and once, at a lesson, I asked him how to play a certain figure. "Actually, I do it 16 ways."

"Just show me one, okay Marv?" I responded.

What a mind.

Salut' my friend. We drummers have all benefited from your rotations on this mudball we call Earth.


We all know him as the co-author of 4-Way Coordination, but he wrote a ton of other things that are just about as challenging. I reviewed a few of them here.

UPDATE: Here he speaks about his experiences as a fighter pilot:

Best books: the Dahlgren & Fine rock book

Complete Text for the Rock and Roll Drummer
by Marvin Dahlgren and Elliot Fine
Really Good Music Publishing
66 pages

When Really Good Music Publishing reissued a raft of Marvin Dahlgren titles last year, I was especially curious to see how Marv (along with Elliot Fine, in this case) would handle the question of how to play rock drums. I've gotten to do a little more work with this one since that original notice, and it's definitely a product of those two authors; the methodology is completely original, using their own special mathematical/logical, independence-oriented approach. Applied to rock and roll, that's very unusual.

After a fairly abstract introduction to using the four limbs on the drum set, there are sections on 8th note rock, triplet rock, shuffles, rock with 16th notes, and 8th note rock with right hand variations, plus a large section on fills. The authors' unique four-limb staff is used throughout; some of the fill pages using the toms are a little difficult to read, using different note heads for each tom.

tom notation

The major method used throughout the book involves playing snare drum variations (or fills) along with ostinatos played with the right hand, and/or the feet. The left hand parts either are generic, given names like “Latin”, “rock and roll”, or “bossa nova”, or are logically derived from the bass drum part (by adding snare notes before or after BD notes, for example), or are completely independent.


More, with examples, after the break:

On Marv Dahlgren's prodigious output and the purpose of a library

Three bucks to purchase,
hundreds of hours to master.

As I was idly visiting the Really Good Music Publishing site-- the people, you'll recall, who have reissued several out of print Marvin Dahlgren books- an overwhelming amount of material-- checking to see if they had come out with volume 2 of his Variations on Three Camps book, I discovered that they have not released that book yet. Which is fine, because just the first couple of pages of variations have been dominating my pad practice time since I got the book.

No, that volume has not been released yet. Instead, there are a ten or so other new or reissued Dahlgren books: Drum Set Control in 3/4 Time, Drum Set Control in 5/4 Time, Hihat Control, 16th Note Stickings, Triplet Stickings, Setudes (drum set etudes), and on and on. The man is a machine.

Between all of that, his more famous Four Way Coordination, and his slightly-more-familiar Accent On Accents (Vol. 1 and 2)-- all together more than a lifetime's worth of practice materials; in fact very few drummers could claim to have exhausted the possibilities of any one of those books-- you begin to have to confront the question of the point of it all. Why have on hand piles of books if there is virtually no possibility of ever being able to master them? Why buy more books when you haven't completely learned the ones you have? What the hell are we doing?

A few thoughts on those questions after the break: