ECM Drumming Style

Any suggestions on developing it (aside from lots and lots of listening of course)?

Thanks!

Here's something I wrote a couple of years ago on that subject. You can use normal modern jazz vocabulary— broken time played with even 8th notes; or de-funked funk vocabulary, played non-repetitively, without the backbeats, and with a lighter touch. Listen to a lot of Jon Christensen. Four Way Coordination by Dahlgren & Fine might also help.

That's actually what I'm doing right now, your post was the first thing I saw! Thanks so much for that by the way!

Oh, cool, great! I probably need to revisit that topic-- I wasn't blown away by what on wrote, on skimming it again. I'm more pro-Dahlgren & Fine now than I was at the time. There are probably newer books that discuss it, but I'm wary of making too defined a thing out of it. Really it just implies open, modern playing; straight 8ths; being somewhat funk- and Brazilian-influenced, but not overtly so; and playing the instrument with a jazz touch.