My band Outside Pedestrian is returning to The Drum Lab in Laguna Hills, CA! We will be reprising our jazz clinic and workshop from last year. From 4-5pm, we will be presenting a clinic in which we will perform and discuss several of our compositions and standards. From 5pm-7pm, workshop participants will have the opportunity to perform a selected standard with the band and receive feedback.
Reservations with Deposit Recommended – Contact The Drum Lab (949) 460-0054 for more information. Check out the highlights from last year’s clinic.
These exercises, which utilize 3-16 kick drum patterns (dotted 8ths), will help build your polymetric groove vocabulary. We’ll start with playing just the kick drum pattern against a quarter note to get familiar with the three measure phrase–notice the 4 against 3 polyrhythm. Then we’ll mix in the measure positions with 8th notes on the hats and snare drum backbeats in order to create more usable grooves. Enjoy! Buy PDF $2.99
Here is one of the few videos I’ve seen of Buddy playing in a trio setting. This one was at the Berlin Jazz Festival from the mid 1980s. It was during a section of the big band concert where they were showcasing the smaller trio. Playing with Buddy are Bill Cunliff on piano and the late Dave Carpenter on bass. They absolutely kill this version of “If I Were a Bell.”
Drumming Analysis: One of the musical attributes I love about Buddy is his superb ability to support as well as solo. During the start of Cunliff’s solo, Buddy lays down a simple yet beautiful swing ride beat with just a cross stick on beat four. On the second chorus of Cunliff’s solo, Buddy adds in the hi-hats on two and four and comps on the snare drum, perfectly supporting and building with the pianist. Buddy supports Carpenter’s bass solo nicely and then he trades some really musical eights with Cunliff.
I really dig how much fun Buddy looks like he is having while playing this tune. There are a few moments where it seems like buddy is channelling his inner-kid–most notably at 0:43. Another notable moment is Buddy’s signautre one handed roll at 5:18. Enjoy!
Here’s a challenging drumming independence exercise that also sounds musical. It’s a sixteenth note paradiddle between the snare and kick drum where the right hand is replaced by the kick drum – KLKKLKLL – That frees the right hand–which is playing every third sixteenth note on the cymbal stack. The icing on the cake is adding eighth notes with the hi-hat pedal. However, since the pattern is rather busy I decided not to include the hi-hat foot in the notation.
