New Amazon store up

Just a quick note to direct your attention to the new Cruise Ship Drummer! Amazon store in the sidebar. It's full of recommended music, books, gear, and other drumming junk, and when you order through the store, we get a small commission (emphasis on small), which helps us keep bringing you quality content on a near-daily basis.

While we're being mercantile, other ways you can support the site include:

• Making a cash donation via the “donate” button in the sidebar. Just look to the right and scroll down a bit... there it is... 
• Buying the 2011 Book of the Blog (vol. 1, 130+ pages of transcriptions— I'm hoping to get vol. 2 completed before 2013...). Just hit that link, or click on the big yellow-y thing in the sidebar. 
• Buying my records. Either CDs (hit the purchase CDs link in the sidebar) or digital download. 
• Getting me something from my Amazon wish list, through the Astore. 

Transcription/GOTD: Betty Davis — Nasty Gal

H/t to my brother on this one— he played me this record. This is from the title track of Betty Davis's album Nasty Gal. Davis (*née Mabry) was married to Miles Davis in the late 60's, when she influenced him to revamp his music and image, before going on to make a few records of some of the most outrageous funk ever. Drums are by Semmie “Nicky” Neal, Jr., who I've not heard of otherwise. I've written out the opening of the tune, with the two measure groove, with repeating fill, that he plays for the bulk of the tune, as well as the three drum/vocal breaks, and a sample of the ending groove:

This is a great lesson on how to play fills in funk— that is, at an even volume with no drummery BS. There's a good review of Davis's first record here, with background on her relationship with Miles.

Get the pdf | get music by Betty Davis

Audio after the break— you want to hear this one:

DBMITW: Milton Banana

Here's some great playing from one of my favorite Brazilian drummers, Milton Banana:



Bonus Banana after the break:

First lesson in 5/4 — swing feel

A rare two-pager today. Here I've put a little flesh on the bones on the process I outlined in my earlier Cracking 5/4 series, with an easy first lesson coordinating snare drum and bass drum parts with a basic time feel, and learning to make a few simple choices. The goal here is not to give you hip licks to play, but to give you some things that can come out easily while you concentrate on listening to the other musicians, and not getting lost.  

Swing the 8th notes, and play the snare and bass drum softly, for the most part. In actual playing you'll play much more sparsely, using fragments of these ideas rather than the complete patterns.

Get the pdf

Groove o' the day: Harvey Mason — The Traitor

Here's a funk groove from the Herbie Hancock album Man-Child which has both Mike Clark and Harvey Mason on drums. It sounds like Harvey to me, but I could be wrong. It was released in 1975, the heyday of playing the snare on the 'a' of 1. The tune is “The Traitor”:

Play the &s on the hihat very lightly; also ghost the snare drum notes in parentheses.

Get The Traitor | get Man-Child

Audio after the break:

USPS Priority rules, USPS Priority rules, USPS Priority rules

Request it. 

Have I ever mentioned that shipping by USPS Priority rules? It just smokes the private sector competition. I just received a pre-serial 17" Paiste 602 ride (a funny little cymbal) shipped from Hopkins, Minnesota on Wednesday the 3rd— it's now Friday the 5th. And I live way out west in Portland, Oregon, if you didn't know. Last week I received packages from Lima, Ohio and freaking Tallahassee, Florida which also took two days to get here. I think another package from Steve Weiss Music in Massachusetts might've taken an extra day.

Priority shipping (including the flat rate boxes) is the US Post Office's ordinary level of service for packages, roughly equivalent to UPS Ground in cost. UPS and Fedex, by contrast, take three days to move a package across the street, and a full five business days plus a damn weekend (unless the shipper gets it to them promptly at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning) to get something from further away.

Given an option, I always select USPS when shopping online; if there's no option, I request it in the “notes” field of the order form.

DBMITW: The Hawaii 5-0 fill, redux

What this Hawaii 5-0 nonsense is about, for people under the age of 40-something. 

Get Tale Spinnin' by Weather Report

More Stick Control in 5/4

Another way of using Stick Control in 5/4 came up in my practicing recently, as I was working on Mevlevia. What I've done is change the rhythm to three beats of 8th notes and two beats of 8th note triplets, which helps the patterns fit into 5/4 a little better:

So the connection with the Stone exercises is clear, I've put the hands on separate lines and also given the sticking in Rs and Ls. Particularly when practicing these just on snare drum, you can also add accents to coincide with beats 1 and 3 in the original patterns, like so:

On the drums I'm playing the RH on the cymbal, doubled with the bass drum, and the LH on the snare or toms. Or you could play the RH part with both hands, and the LH part with the left or right foot.

Get the pdf

Transcription: Bob Moses — Mevlevia

Here's a quick take of a tune that will be part of my set on the Europe trip this year: Mevlevia, from the Gary Burton record Ring, with drumming by Bob Moses. This is one of those Real Book tunes that— along with those Michael Gibbs tunes— rarely gets played. At least when I was in college and actually used the Real Book. It's a great tune though, is in 5/4, and is pretty quintessentially “ECM”:

I've just given the drum performance during the head only; Moses plays fairly repetitively throughout the piece, and my hand is fatigued from using the mouse, so that's all we're doing. He uses that 3/16 lick at the end several times later on in the piece. There's more going on with the cymbals than I've indicated— he seems to be using both hand on some of those notes, and moves between what sounds like a couple of Paiste 602 flat rides— maybe an 18 and a 20 or 22— which I haven't bothered to try to sort out.

Audio of the track is not available on YouTube, so you'll either have to buy a used LP from your local used record store (or from Amazon), or from iTunes. If you're reading this blog, you should probably own it. If you don't own the Real Book, a lead sheet for the tune is viewable online.

For more in/on 5/4, hit the odd meters or 5/4 labels at the bottom of the post. My transcription of Jon Christensen's playing on Jan Garbarek's Dansere might be especially relevant here...

Get the pdf