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:

Elvin-like 5/4

Here's another in this fairly massive Elvin series, which I wrote to develop this unusual cymbal pattern in 5/4, with the 8th notes on beats 3 and 5. The first measure is the cymbal-and-feet ostinato, and the second measure is the Elvin-style pattern, with the left hand in the gaps in the feet parts. The remaining exercises are left hand independence exercises adapted to work well with this particular ostinato.

By now we've accumulated a bunch of pages of this sort of thing, but don't be overwhelmed by that; learning any one of them thoroughly is a serious accomplishment. You will have the basic thing together, and subsequent pages will happen much faster. First get them together playing the left hand normally on the snare drum, then do the tom moves, with the LH playing a rim click on the snare.

Get the pdf

New lessons site up

Here's part of what I've been doing this week instead of posting here— completing my new private lessons site. If you're in the Portland metro area, don't hesitate to get in touch re: private lessons. Struggling drummers are my specialty, so don't go thinking you need to already be a smoking player. I don't offer Skype lessons yet, but if I get a few requests I will be encouraged to get that together more quickly— probably one or two lucky students will get a few free lessons while I get the technical kinks ironed out.

Oh, and if you're a teacher and/or performer and would like me to put together a similar site for you, contact me and we can discuss it.

A few De Koonings

A little palette-cleanser today. Here are some comments on some nice Willem De Kooning paintings I've never seen reproduced anywhere before, and a little thumbnail sketch of his career— minus the well-known “high” phases. First, from the mid 50's, a collage of cut-up works on paper. He probably went through hundreds of pounds of this cobalt blue and cadmium yellow annually:

More after the break:

Groove o' the day: Grant Green — Cantaloupe Woman

Here are two different Blue Note/soul/boogaloo-type grooves on the tune Cantaloupe Woman, from albums by Grant Green.

First, from the great session drummer Ben Dixon (who also wrote the tune), as played on the 1965 Blue Note album His Majesty King Funk:

Then on the 1971 album Visions, played by Idris Muhammad (or possibly Harold Caldwell— I think it's IM, though):

In both examples the bass drum notes in parentheses are optional— those notes are played maybe 50% of the time. The snare drum hits are played at roughly an even volume, with the buzzed note in the second example maybe a little lighter. None of them are loud.

Audio after the break:

DBMITW: Fela Kuti — Zombie

Continuing with light posting for a few days, as I have a lot of other work to do, so here is all of Fela Kuti's twenty-something-th album, Zombie, with the great Tony Allen on the drums:



The album title is a reference to the Nigerian military, which retaliated brutally against Kuti for it.

The map is not the territory...

...and this is not a pipe.

Sometimes I worry that with the things we cover here— and the way we cover them— I give the impression that those are the most important things about learning the drums and being a musician. Actually, we just talk about the things we can talk about; that doesn't necessarily mean that they are the most important things. There is often little to say about the things that are actually important.

Like, playing with people is just the true arena for learning music, and being a musician. That's where everything happens. If you're not doing it, there's not much to say about it except, “start doing it now, even if you suck at it. Especially if you suck at it.” And listening: there's nothing to say that's going to replace, or assist in, actually parking it in front of the stereo with some records on a regular basis. To be a musician you have to do those two things a lot, and there's no way to talk, study, or practice your way around them.

Transcription: Philly Joe Jones — Hi Groove, Low Feedback

We'll continue light posting through this week, as I'm in the middle of a big booking push, and then heading to the coast. But here's an interesting Philly Joe Jones transcription, from Hank Mobley's Hi Groove, Low Feedback, from his Blue Note album Hank (or Hank Mobley Sextet, it says on the back of the sleeve).

The transcription covers just the intro and head. There's a little confusion during the first couple of measures of the tune— Philly Joe's opening fill appears to throw the bassist a bit; everyone else appears to be more or less where they're supposed to be. Several times Philly Joe accents on the hihat with his left hand while playing the ride cymbal with his right, so I've put the hihat part on the tom tom line when that happens.

Get the pdf

Audio after the break:

DBMITW: Upa Neguinho

A few versions of the famous Edu Lobo song. You can safely skip to 0:50 here:



More after the break: