VOQOTD: Dave Liebman on rhythm

   

Eighth notes are the main denomination of jazz time, much like the penny is to the American dollar. Although one may not play only eighth notes, they still serve as the underpinning of jazz time, similar to what the clave beat is in Afro Cuban music, meaning if not necessarily stated it is implied. A note here on terminology: what are called eighth notes in jazz may also be conceptualized as triplets with a space between the first and third part of the three part division, or it can be seen as a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth note. For the purposes here the distinctions are not important. In short, when a jazz musician sees eighth notes written on a page, (s)he immediately plays the rhythm either like a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth or the above described triplet.

Read more by Liebman here.

Read what I've written about swing.

More humor

This ear worm has seriously been plaguing me all day, and I see no reason why this should just be my problem:

PUT! A! BIRD! ON! IT!

Speaking of the record: being from the Pacific Northwest, I've never felt we projected any kind of cultural identity to the rest of the world. Even within the region all we ever had to latch onto were Prefontaine, Henry Weinhard's beer, Nirvana, and Drugstore Cowboy. Usually when I'd go overseas if people knew where Oregon was, all they would know about it is that “it's rainy.”

So I was kind of happy to actually be able to live up to a stereotype when we were performing in Europe in November. A friend of one of our Brussels musicians, who was familiar with Portlandia, heard where I was from, and was getting a kick out of quoting this to me all evening:





It took me a little while to remember my own merch:

RLB sticking applied

This is that previous right/left/bass sticking applied to Exercise 9 from Ted Reeds's Syncopation (p. 45 in the old edition). The entire piece follows that sticking, except for a couple of spots. I've written in the stickings where the reading is more difficult, and at the couple of spots where we deviate from the pattern.

Feel free to learn this one line, or shorter phrase, at a time. The hand parts can be played on any drums; maybe start with the right on the high tom and the left on the snare.

Get the pdf

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.

Get the pdf

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...

Get the pdf

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.