This came out of a mistake by a student, when we were working on some basic ghost note materials. Some things considered to be “advanced” come up naturally in the form of mistakes and general indiscipline. My student's timing was wrong for what was written on the page, but it was perfectly in time for this kind of techno beat— he mentioned Squarepusher, so that's what we'll call it.   Here are some things to play with, starting with the seed idea:  You can see sort of what's happening there— ordinary 16th note ghost note stuff, with some notes offset by a 32nd note, maybe do ..read more

Launching to the outer limits of what you can reasonably do with Syncopation, verging on losing the melody rhythm as a point of reference. Or not, see what you make of it.  Using one of the more useful double timing things (the second item on this page of warmups), and changing what we do with bass drum. Reading from pp. 34-45 in Syncopation. After playing the plain right hand lead version of the book rhythm with hands only, the steps are:  Do the added 16ths— single Ls = two 16ths / LR, two Ls = LRRL, three Ls = LRRLRL.  Add bass drum on beat 1.  Add bass drum to the a ..read more

If we learned about music in a nice orderly way, where everything started at a logical beginning with music that was clear and expository, this would be a good first record for finding out about jazz: Oscar Peterson Trio + One. With Ray Brown, Ed Thigpen, and Clark Terry.  Everything is stated real plainly, for real clear reasons. All the features of the genre are here— to the extent that jazz is a genre. And it's a good sounding recording, with Thigpen playing the drums in a modern way.  I could have used this sooner than I ever listened to it— I had to figure out how to support thi ..read more

A page of groove fragments, really, for one of my students— to help get oriented working out of New Breed. We were having some difficulties with this particular cymbal rhythm.    You could play this page by itself, or use it to work out how the coordination will work when playing a similar system in New Breed.  Get the pdf ..read more

Jack Dejohnette open drum solo from Boo Ann's Grand, on the Jackie McLean 1967 album Demon's Dance. Tempo is about 241— about as fast you can do this kind of stuff. This is burning for jazz stuff using triplets.  The solo begins at 5:23, and is 48 bars long, less two beats— the band comes in two beats off the 1 of the transcription.    Naturally at this speed you can put a big slur marking over much of the dense activity. A lot of things written as unisons are not lined up precisely. Much of it is Elvin-like activity; he doesn't come off the cymbal much, except on the paradid ..read more

A little listening experiment. My brother played this record for me, I forget how he set it up— clearly there was something wrong with it, he wanted my reaction.  I said, this is somebody I should know, but couldn't place it. Sounds weird. You can see on the thing that it's Elvin Jones... recorded in a highly strange way, with this weird, thin, cymbal sound. He's a very distinctive, recognizable player. I have listened to him as much as anybody, on many recordings of vastly differing recording quality. We were both a little stunned— not that my ear wasn't good enough to te ..read more

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Here's that Billy Cobham transcription— just of a busy portion of Freddie Hubbard's solo on For Someone I Love, on Milt Jackson's record Sunflower. I'm learning a lot about Musescore doing something this damn complicated.  Ignoring form altogether here, the transcription begins at 4:25, a few measures into Hubbard's solo— the first few bars are very light, you can hear where he plays the ruffs/triplets at the beginning of the page— and cutting out after the last big insane lick, out of sheer exhaustion. Tempo is about 74 bpm.  If it looks like a fragmented nightmare, take it up wi ..read more

OK, first complete transcription using Musescore, doing basically everything I need it to do for this site. Same recording I've been working with, Flight For Freedom by Oliver Nelson, from his record Skull Session, with Shelly Manne on drums. There was some dispute over whether it might have been Jim Gordon instead— we'll listen to one of his tracks from this record and check out the difference.  This is the first minute of the track:  I think he's using a four piece set plus a couple of concert toms. Mostly rides on the hihat, and he hits that ugly sounding swish cymbal quite ..read more

Getting further into Musescore with an easy Shelly Manne transcription, a rock arrangement called Flight For Freedom, from Oliver Nelson's record Skull Session. I like Manne's rock playing— it's a little different, with a great deep sound and pocket.   These are things I had to figure out while making it, in the order they came up.   I first had to make some adjustments to my template:   Cleaning up palettes Under the palettes tab, there are a number of things I don't need: clef, pitch, key signature, etc. Click on the unwanted thing, hit the [...] options bu ..read more