...for the jazz cats ...
 

I was a rock guy for most of my life and for the past 2 years have pretty much dedicated almost all my drumming efforts to jazz.

I though it would be cool to have a thread for the jazz cats .....

guys like 8mile, Andrew Hare, Numberless and the like to come and talk about all things jazz

things you are working on, listening to, gear, gigs, blog entries, books, drummers, concerns , revelations, whatever......

this way those who dont enjoy jazz dont have to come here and everyone is happy

who knows...maybe Chunky will start one for the metal cats......and Joe Morris, one for the funk cats ......

lets see how it works out

what say you guys ?

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Wait.... you missed me!

I'm a jazz cat and make no excuses for it. I was born and raised on it from my Dad who was also a drummer from the big band/small group Eddie Condon / Hot Fives world....

Listening to? What day... Trane, Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong, Eddie Condon, Wild Bill, Miles, Sonny Rollins, Monk, heck... even Sinatra. The person I've really been honing in on is drumming great Joe LaBarbera. I encourage you to check him out if you have not. I know how much Elvin has influenced you, Joe's brother gigged and recorded with Elvin.

Working on? I've been through so much over the years with some fabulous teachers since I'm fortunate to live in a town with great music educators (terrible playing opportunities though). As of now it's been all about John Riley's - The Jazz Drummer's Workshop: Advanced Concepts for Musical Development. I work things until I feel comfortable I've truly mastered them - which can take me a lot of time. I ensure I think of as many variations on the exercises as possible before I consider it complete. That being said, I work on about 4 different exercises in that book at any one given time.

Revelations? The 35+ years I've been at this, jazz has always been at the forefront of what I've listened to. I never realized how much my Dad taught me in his living years that would transcend so much into the many years after he's passed on. I keep learning from all the things he said, it's staggering.

Concerns? Will I ever get to Jim Blackley's material before I die.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

my bad d

how could I forget one of my favorite cats?.......Ill pay the fine

so yeah brother...this thread is for you....us.....

I think its a good idea

and yeah I know of Pat LaBarbera....the man can blow

he is on many of Elvins records

your pop played with Eddie Condon??????

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Thanks! No problem... Just wanted to be sure I stood up and was heard...

Pat and Joe are all from my neck of the woods to boot. Heck, Steve Gadd is from my town and was cool having him back when he bailed from NYC to get cleaned up. Would run into him grocery shopping, etc... Weird though....

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

your pop played with Eddie Condon?

tell tell.......

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

No,no, no.. Sorry if I misled. He was totally into the Chicago stuff and gave me a complete oral history on the genre as well as showed me how he played it.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Hey Guys,

Sounds useful and fun.

I will start with a question, does anyone have any good/swinging recordings in 5/4 they could add to Todd's excellent list? If you haven't checked it out here is the link:

http://shipdrummer.blogspot.com/2012...ip+Drummer!%29

I don't know about you guys but 5 has always really eluded me, so Todd's work on this has been super helpful. Any tips/anecdotes/recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Dmacc, that is a truly wonderful gift your father passed on to you.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I like this idea, GVD.

Well, I'm mostly a frustrated jazzer right now, just for lack of playing opportunities. I haven't played a jazz gig in much too long. I keep busy with rock and pop gigs, which is nice, but there's still a void that needs to be filled.

I had a nice little trio thing going for a while that afforded me the chance to play out with good musicians here and there. Unfortunately, my buddy who was the leader of the trio moved out of state for work for a few years, but he's back now and we're looking to get a little group together and start playing.

Last summer, I completed assembling my first-ever real "bop kit." I now have a set in 12/14/18 and a new array of Ks that I really dig. I'm all dressed up but no place to go yet. Hopefully I'll rectify that soon with some gigs.

What I really need to work on are nuance things and I live in an apartment so my practicing opportunities are severely limited. I guess my main focus right now has been on getting my uptempo playing together. I'm talking 360+ bpm and getting comfortable with the comping. Taking most of my cues from Max, it's definitely about relaxing and not trying to do too much, but still, it's an art form and I'm not there.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I'm not one of the cats - do you include jazz hamsters? I kind of clumsily tread on a little wheel next to the jazz cage. Even that's a massive learning curve after all these years of rock and little discipline. So here's the jazz noob perspective:

Working on - soft hands, keeping volume down, flow - basic stuff. The revelation is that it's okay to be down in the mix at times - to be felt rather than heard. It's taken a while for the penny to drop after years of laying down big beats and prominent fills.

My concern is that I will never consistently get my head out of the way and just let things flow. As John McLaughlin said in an interview with Robert Fripp, "The most difficult thing, I think, in being a musician is to get out of the way". Rings true to me. Seeing and hearing his apparently psychic with L Shankar with his One Truth Band, he does it mind-bogglingly well.

Listening to - been trying to catch up on the last 70 years of jazz - I used to mostly listen to fusion. Every day I check out old tunes I've not heard before. Some of my favourite recent discoveries on YouTube are:

Sonny Rollins (Max on drums). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah-j6fALiGw
Monk (Ben Riley): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nttZuuACn-I
Tom Waits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-pTLDP0K4
Trane's Africa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J4YZwFa_1w
Art http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9z9sU5dXnw

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Two tunes in five, both featuring Brian Blade!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2XFBKDIt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpyQWRJnPM

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I have been working the uptempo cymbal a lot as well...I have a pretty good workout regiment for it

my problem becomes comping at those speeds

all triplets kinda become flat 8ths and mentally I know where I should be placing them....but executing some comp patterns at those speeds is something I wont be pulling off live anytime soon

Ive been focussing on a bunch of melodic Max Roach type playing as well......taking some Monk and Art Tatum piano licks and filtering them through my limbs onto the kit

feels really good to me....like something really natural ....very organic for me

there are some things that Max plays that feel so amazingly natural to me ....like I played them in a past life or something

nothing makes me more happy right now than things like this

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

you and I both Grea

I tend to think to much sometimes

especially if there is a drummer I respect at the gig

very difficult for me

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Oh Snap!

I have to get that Binney record, I love Ed Simon! Thanks Numberless!

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Yes, please-- especially newer stuff-- my listening is pretty deficient that way...

8mile, I think everybody's a frustrated jazzer right now... work is pretty hard to come by all around. I'm doing a bunch of playing for free, though!

Since this is a wide open jazz thread, I want to throw in that cymbals have been big on my mind lately-- I've been making a big change in direction in that department. In the last 7 or 8 years I had been increasingly going for thinner, softer cymbals, as I was refining my technique and ability to play quieter, setting up a kind of death spiral of way-too-delicate playing. It came to a head around the time of this gig, when I realized I wasn't being heard, and there was a weird distortion happening in the ensemble dynamics. After that I got a old 3200g 22" Paiste 602 dark ride-- a total monster by current standards-- which actually projects, and provides a nice cushion for bringing my sound back into a realistic zone. And when you crash on it, they hear it, by God. At the Ballard Jazz Festival recently the contrast was really stark-- I got to hear several drummers playing unmiked in the same long room, and none of the thinner K-type cymbals were cutting at all-- the performances were lost. From the playing position they sound like Tony on Four & More; out front, sadly, no...

So, now I'm running around Portland telling everyone to get heavier cymbals, at least for live playing, and my brother's doing the same thing in Seattle, hoping to start a regional movement. I just wanted to throw that out there, and see if anyone has had similar feelings/suspicions...

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Same tune, tune different versions, one with Bill Stewart, the other with Ballard. I guess they can be considered "newer". Tune is "Jive Coffee" by Peter Bernstein.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoO1Y7oVpnY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4PDR...feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlWj9...eature=related

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Wannabe jazz cat here. I'm concentrating on getting the ride pattern down, and starting to comp with the snare. I kind of enjoy it more than the stuff I need to practice for my band, but that doesn't matter so much as I feel the coordination and control feeds through into my rockier stuff anyway. And I just moved cities and in the new place there's a good jazz jam night and a regular 'jazz workshop' which I hope to become part of.

Listening to lots of Blakey, Miles, Coltrane, Monk etc

Uptempo ride is just a dream at the moment

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I'm definitely in!

Listening to: Trane w/ Elvin. Perhaps my favourite combination. I can't get enough of Love Supreme and Favourite things.

Also: For Musicians Only, my god, that's good bebop!

Working on: uptempo fluidity, four voice/triplet Comping, full chorus soloing.

Biggest revelation: time time TIME!

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Not jazz but these are in five:

Living in the Past by Jethro Tull

Time is Right by Manfred Mann's Earth Band

A fair bit of King Crimson's LTIA Part 2 is in 5, but there's other time sigs in there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbdNp4i-Q94

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I GUESS I'm a jazz cat. Sort of. Kinda. I love it. I play it. It's a big part of my life. But in NY there's a real stigma about that stuff. There are people known as Jazz-nazis -- they only like jazz, only play jazz, don't acknowledge and look down at other forms of music. I hate that. It's so narrow, snobbish and ignorant. It's gotten to the point where I want to distance myself from it.

And the reality of the situation is, there are basically two types of jazz musicians in NYC. There are the guys who do real jazz gigs and struggle and there are the kids coming out of schools who want to be "cats" and create a little scene for themselves buy make absolutely no money. Some of them are very good, but 99% of them get tired f playing for free and tuck their tail between their legs within a year or two and go back home and become accountants or open a hardware store.

I also think jazz's heyday is behind us. There's little around that hasn't been done before -- better.

Sorry to be a bummer -- sometimes I think I've been around too long.

Having said that, I think if you never study jazz you're missing out on a HUGE vocabulary as a musician.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

couldnt care less about its heyday being behind us , ahead of us , or on Mars for that matter

I love jazz, I know where to go to find people who love it as much as I do and want to hear it , talk about it, and live it

honestly Im not as big of a fan of the more modern stuff ....I like it....my thing is the classic sound ...never gets old to me

Ive been around quite a while myself, and they way you describe jazz is how I feel about rock music and its scenes

its so damn tired and boring, and new generations keep coming with there Louisville sluggers and clobbering that dead horse ....just wearing different clothes with a new haircut

not sure how many times I can listen to that same old song without wanting to strangle someone

I dont want to be jaded, and swore to myself when I was young that it would never happen to me ...but years of touring, dealing with record companies, managers, promoters, half ass musicians who learn a power chord and want to take over the world, seeing just horrible horrible bands blow up and praised over and over, learning how the industry is really run ...just sort of ruined the love for me

It feels good to return to playing for the love, and being around people who listen and play for the love

...and anyone who ventures into music to make money to begin with needs their damn head examined

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Interesting take on cymbals. My new main ride, a 22" K-Con Medium, hasn't seen a gig yet, so I don't know how it will project FOH. Some of the venues I've played jazz have been wine bar-type places where brick floors and boom-y acoustics make a cymbal that speaks with a softer voice ideal.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

So true. One really does feed the other.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I can really relate to a lot of this, GVD. I get out and see live jazz as often as I can and there's no place where I feel more at home than surrounded by people who love and play the music.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Fair enough. It's funny -- I don't even think in terms of "rock scenes" because they're non existent! lol I guess outside of NYC guys are still doing ZZ Top and Rolling Stones covers in bars and I have about as much interest in doing that as having dental surgery performed by a chimpanzee.

I agree about the classic jazz vs the modern. I tease trumpet players and say "The second that bullet went through Lee Morgan's heart, they should have stopped manufacturing trumpets!"

I did weddings for years because it was a way to make money and a way to play lots of different types of music, but I'm done with that as well. I guess that's what happens. You lose the interest of anything when it gets old. Right now I love recording. Maybe to someone else THAT is old. But you have to find your Muse where and when you can.

And now I think I'm going to play some upright bass to some Miles. Ya got me in the mood. : )




........

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

that actually made me really happy that this conversation got you in the mood to pluck the cables

...but yeah bro....rock scenes are actually rabid right now....but its back to the grass roots style bypassing promoters and labels (which is actually kinda cool)... legion halls , and underground clubs with no liquor license ....these kids are packing these places and buying thousands of dollars in merch and losing their minds

the problem ...the bands SUCK !!!

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Ref jazz ride cymbals....I just got an idea a couple weeks ago that made me kick myself...how did I not think of this decades ago? That is, play with 2 different sticks that
are similar but have different beads especially. I can "simulate going to another ride" by
simply switching sticks hand to hand during the tune. Original idea for me (even though
I've mixed and matched sticks with brushes, beaters etc...just never played with an unmatched pair of drumsticks before). This has been a game changer for sounds I can get
from my set, er..uh, kit.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

interesting

yeah like you said ive played one stick one brush, one stick one mallet, one mallet one brush, and even two different mallets.....but never two different sticks

something to think about for sure

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

The bands suck and the scene is really for the young. Kids need a place to get out there and suck for a while. There are some downtown clubs in NYC that have a few interesting bands (and a lot of crappy ones) and I'll play there now and then for kicks, but it really is for the young guys to cut their teeth. My teeth are worn out! lol! And nothing is going to come of it if you're over 35 anyway -- other than playing for playings sake. Trouble is -- I'm finding it harder and harder to find music that really thrills me enough to bother. That's the problem with getting older -- you become more discriminating but have less options!

Okay, back to the doghouse. (That instrument is impossible by the way).

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

yeah getting old and jaded sucks....Im there with you

whats going on with the doghouse ?....(havent heard anyone call it that in years by the way...its nice to hear )

is it an old finicky instrument ?.....or you mean just much harder to play being more used to electric bass?

do tell....that is one of my favorite sounding instruments on the planet

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I have a modest upright. It's insane that you can spend as much on a great one as the cost of a grand piano. The best bass I ever played was Scott Lafaro's -- didn't even know it was his. It had magic in it.

It's just a bear of an instrument. Very physically demanding. Very limiting. Very difficult to make audible. Intonation is a bitch (unless you're Scott LaFara). But it has a beauty to it.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

are you a smaller guy?.....I know it can be very difficult and physically demanding for small cats

I say this standing 5' 4" myself

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Nope. 5'10" 180. Not physically demanding in regard to overall strength, but more in regard to touch. Those little finger muscles must stay strong and loose and stretched. Oddly enough, it's in complete contradiction to playing guitar -- which requires a more subtle touch.

Sometimes, everything is working on all the instruments -- drums, bass, guitar, piano, upright, acoustic guitar -- and I'm one with the universe. Other times nothing is working, I suck ass and I feel I don't have a right to even own the damn things. Same with voice -- in good voice, it's exquisite, not in good voice -- good lord HIDE!

So is the life of an artist.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

true that brother.....as sure as the moon pulls the tides ....we will go up and down

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

do any of you have the record "Money Jungle" from 1962?

a rare trio of

Duke Ellington
Max Roach
& Charles Mingus

if not you need to get it....out of this world

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Yes. Interesting. Surprisingly "out" for Max and Duke.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

I just started the art of bop, about half way through. I intend to dedicate the next 2 years (maybe more) on jazz and nothing else. I'm finding it hard at the moment to solo, which hopefully art of bop will help me with when I get to that section. My biggest problem is finding anyone to play jazz with

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Yeah, my buddy and I listened to that record religiously for a period of time many years ago. It's incredible music, cats from different eras and styles coming together to brew up something great.

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

keep working brother

and we are here to help you along with anything you need

we are on the same journey......all at different places on the that journey....but the same journey no less

my immediate advice.... listen to lots of jazz

we would all be glad to make suggestions on that as well

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Im floored by that collaboration

the first cut sounds like the creation of hip hop....and Mingus is out of his mind

love it

Re: ...for the jazz cats ...
 

Well, I'm a rock guy deep in my heart too, but over the years I discovered other types of music and happen to love them as much as rock music.

I love jazz, but I'm no "jazz cat", that's for sure, and I doubt that I will ever be one.

I played in a jazz quartet once, a long time ago, the others liked what I did, but I didn't, I felt like a fish out of water, I couldn't get the right feel, the right context, so after a month, I left the band, I've never played in a proper jazz band since, only some bands with some jazz influences.