December 2014 Issue – Volume 39 • Number 12
On 01st Dec 2014
Articles in December 2014
Gregg Bissonette
Sure, he can floor you with chops. And his lightning-fast ability to understand and play exactly what the song needs is legendary. But it’s his heart and soul that always seal the deal. It’s no secret that the music…
Catching Up With Ginger Baker
A recent documentary on the legendary drummer warns us to beware of Mr. Baker. But the latest record by this unsinkable, grooving, global bohemian delivers a more positive and powerful message: Behold Mr. Baker! This past June, legendary Cream and…
All Together Now! Focus on Unison Exercises
Practicing unison exercises is an excellent way to determine the accuracy and precision of your four limbs as they function together. Like links in a steel chain, the sturdiness of your groove depends on the strength of your weakest limb.…
Aric Improta
It’s all in the work. When Night Verses’ firebrand isn’t touring the world, he and his bandmates are holed away for hours and hours, refining, improving, refining, improving… When we spoke with Aric Improta, his band, Night Verses, had…
Omar Tavarez
Miami is the quintessential melting-pot city, where no one blinks when a country-hip-hop ditty like Pitbull’s “Timber” tops the charts. But simplicity can be deceiving, and the drummer/ musical director in charge of making the rapper’s multicultural style sound perfectly…
The Paradiddle Polyrhythm Pyramid
Sharpen Your Rhythmic Awareness and Control The following exercise was going to be called the Paradiddle Polyrhythm Rudiment, but I felt that it was too long to be just one rudiment. Instead, it makes for a formidable polyrhythm exercise in…
Consecutive Flams Part 1: Spaced Out
This month we’re going to kick off a challenging three-part series on flams. All of these exercises will consist of single flams followed by sets of two, three, and four flams. Then we’ll reverse the order to end up back…
Frankie Dunlop
Francis “Frankie” Dunlop, a great jazz drummer of precision, sensitivity, inventiveness, and deep swing, passed away this past July at age eighty-five, after a long struggle with illness. Born December 6, 1928, into a musical family, Dunlop possessed determination that…
