LPLB makes a best of 2012 list

Dan McClenaghan at All About Jazz has included my record Little Played Little Bird on his Best Releases of 2012 list. He had this to say:

“Drummer Todd Bishop is an underground treasure. He doesn't boast the highest of profiles, but he has put out two consecutive great CDs for the Origin Records label: 2009's 69 Annee Erotique and now, this nod to alto saxophonist/free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.”

You can get either/both CDs via le sidbar, either in CD or download form... have I mentioned that purchasing my records is a great way to support the blog?

RLB sticking warmups

Following up the “sticking experiment” from a few days ago, I've written some warmups for a more involved piece which will be coming in a few days. Here we're applying the very useful right/left/bass sticking across a variety of rhythms:

The idea is for these to develop into solo ideas for a jazz context, so swing the 8th notes. Don't swing beats containing both 8ths and 16ths, or 16th note triplets; play them straight, but legato. You can move the hand parts to any drums you want, but start with the right hand on the high tom and the left hand on the snare drum. You could also play the hihat with your foot in the place of the bass drum.

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Books in hand

Oh, hey, I just received my own copies of my new book, 100 Grooves. Nine days from order to receipt of the books, with the cheapest shipping. As usual Lulu.com's print job is impeccable, and thanks to the magic of CMYK (which always makes printing in color an exercise in terror), the actual cover is a nice hot pink rather than the garish flaming fuschia that appears on the Lulu page.

Thanks to everyone who has ordered— you should be receiving your books soon. For everyone else, it's too late to order for Christmas, but don't you deserve to get yourself a little new year's present?

Oh, and be sure to check Lulu's coupon page before buying.

Syncopation, Lesson 4, in 5/4

This is really a library piece— I use pp. 10-11 from Syncopation (that's Lesson 4 in the new edition) so many different ways that I wanted to put it into 5/4. We'll be referring to this soon in some other posts, but right now it's just five pages of... potential?

Many of the interpretations we've done before will apply directly to these pages, and some will take some rejiggering. Coming soon...

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Pad practice caveat

As someone who comes from the land of the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and the rest of that nightmare, it's kind of quaintly Canadian that he calls this a “rant”, but Ted Warren says something very important here, which I've been thinking about a lot since he posted it over a year ago:



Pure chops are experiencing a little bit of a golden age right now, and an increasing number of drummers seem to be viewing the act of playing as purely a matter of muscular training and physics, so it's good to remember that the first guiding principle for all musicians should be the sound you get out of your instrument. Forgetting that makes your practice something like, say, going fly fishing in a wading pool, or learning to bake using an inedible flour substitute. Pick your simile in which you learn a technique, sort of, but never actually do the thing that is supposed to be the whole point: making bread that tastes good, or hooking and boating a damn fish. I do think that using a practice pad is pretty much unavoidable, but it is important to remember, and compensate for, what you are not getting from it.

PS: Incidentally, Warren has a new piece up on the subject of sound, that is worth a read.

Dotted-quarter cymbal in 5/4 — two measures

We seem to be having a little bit of an early Christmas/Saturnalia with all of these downloads, as I make up for a slow November. This is yet another extension of one of the Elvin series of posts (which has long since stopped being just about the so-called “Afro waltz”), using here a 3/4 dotted-quarter note cymbal pattern extended over two measures of 5/4. You'll want to have mastered these same patterns in plain old 3/4 before attempting this. Also see the page of one measure 5/4 patterns with this same cymbal pattern.

Here's a fresh link for the left hand tom moves I like to apply to these pages. If you can do these exercises with the moves, while counting out loud (just “1, 2, 3, 4, 5”), you should be well on your way to achieving a pretty unshakable 5/4.

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DBMITW: Milton Nascimento with George Duke

George Duke's Brazilian Love Affair, again. Ao Que Vai Nascer, by Milton Nascimento. I'm glad someone put this onto YouTube, and you will be, too, in a moment:

Transcription: Roy Haynes — Played Twice

I'm always listening to great drummers, but Roy Haynes just sweeps in and blows everyone away here. I love the way he plays this head. This is Thelonious Monk's Played Twice, from The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy:

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Audio after the break:

A sticking experiment

I don't know where I'm going with this idea, but what the hell, if a blog isn't the place to throw up whatever half-baked junk you happen to be fiddling with at the moment...

Here I've applied a basic three-part sticking of R-L-B (B = both hands) to a few rhythms from Syncopation:

My initial idea was that this could be another variety of Reed interpretation, to be applied on the fly, but that seems pointlessly difficult, and not really anything to do with a needed real-world musical skill. Probably a better use for the idea is to use it to generate some materials which would be completely written out, like the second line of each pair above. The goal would be to run some essential coordination idea through some rhythmic permutations in perhaps a more interesting way than the familiar “tables of time” approach. There seems to be a lot of potential in the idea when you include the four limbs, and the combinations of limbs, in the stickings. We'll see.

Get the pdf, if for some reason you want it.