...for the jazz cats ...

A

Anthony Amodeo

Guest
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 ?
 
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.
 
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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 Master Drummer's Workshop. 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.

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??????
 
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....
 
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....

your pop played with Eddie Condon?

tell tell.......
 
your pop played with Eddie Condon?

tell tell.......


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.
 
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/2012/06/cracking-54-listening.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fshipdrummer+%28Cruise+Ship+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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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.

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
 
My concern is that I will never consistently get my head out of the way and just let things flow.


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
 
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/2012/06/cracking-54-listening.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fshipdrummer+%28Cruise+Ship+Drummer!%29

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...
 
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
 
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.
 
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.

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
 
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