My gifts this month to you are 3 disparate Melody Rhythm Reading exercises:

1. Vocal rhythms of Mannford Mann’s “Blinded By the Light”
2. Sonny Rollins “latinish” Solo rhythms  on “St. Thomas”
3. Charlie Parker’s Solo rhythms on “Cool Blues”

I can’t stress enough how awesome these reading exercises have been for my students!  The play alongs give them a great practice tool, and teaches them how to play music with feel and phrasing.  I hope they help you and/or your students too – see you next year!

You can find the PDF’s and the Play Along links on the Melody Rhythm Reading page.

I sometimes pride myself on my transcription prowess, but every once in a while I am cured of my hubris with rhythms I just can’t quite figure out.  This time, it was the shout figures at the end of Buddy Rich’s “Time Check.”  I am a little embarrassed to admit that I finally resorted to looking at the lead trumpet part that one of my friends provided for me (which you can check out HERE if you like.)  I just added the transcription of the ensemble figures to the Expert category of the Melody Rhythm Reading Page – partly because it is fast, but also because of the difficulty in playing along  with the way the horns phrase and feel the figures at the end – good luck!!

Other exercises/play along recordings added this month Melody Rhythm Reading Page:

Easy Melody Rhythm reading exercise: “Urgent”

Intermediate Melody Rhythm Reading: “The Heart of Rock and Roll” and “Blue Room”

And finally, one Jazz Grooving/Comping play along added: “Blue Room” (Chet Baker)

In honor of my return to work after a year of pandemic furlough, I added a few videos of myself performing at my day job in 2019.  You can check them out below:

• “Be Our Guest”
• “Lion King”
• “Zorro”

I also spent some time updating the indexing of the content on the Drum Fillosophy site.  There is now a global footer at the bottom of all pages where you can easily locate the index pages.  It will take me a few months to complete the indexing, but I hesitate to apologize for the amount of content I have added to the site in the last 2 years since it’s launch!

This month I created a new page that was inspired by my Melody Rhythm Reading page and I have titled it the “Jazz Grooving” page.  My students are getting so much better at playing rhythms with a good feel when playing along with the reading exercises (transcriptions) from the Melody Rhythm page, that I am now using the same concept for working on jazz comping – playing with the greats!  You can read more about it on the Lesson Materials page under the Groove Vocabulary tab, or if you already understand the concept from working off the Melody Rhythm Reading page, then just head over to the new Jazz Grooving page!

I have also added 2 new play alongs to the Melody Rhythm Reading page this month:

• Shiny Stockings – Basie Band
• Moonglow – Jeff Hamilton Trio

I am always looking for ideas and inspiration from other drummers, and am trying to set a little bit of time everyday to check out other drummers posts and lessons on social media platforms.  This in turn inspired me to create a new page on DrumFillosphy.com to share and catalogue some of my favorites.  You can check out this new page and the first 2 posts I transcribed on this new page here: #Inspired

I have also added a new Melody Rhythm Reading exercise to the advance category.  It is an incredibly rhythmically interesting solo by the trombonist J.J. Johnson on the song Yesterdays.  Check it out Here.

This is a light content update for this month for a couple of reasons: 1. I went back to work at Disneyland (yeah!) and 2. I am currently in Maui for a 2 week vacation!!  (Yes I went back to work for 3 weeks after a year off, and then went on vacation!)  Anyhow, besides continuing to add pdf’s and videos to some of the Drum Fillosophy Index pages, you can check out 2 new Drummers of Disneyland Profiles I added this month: Jorge Zuniga and Ron Bruner.

I was inspired last month by a Steve Smith YouTube video to dust off my Charlie Wilcoxon 150 Rudimental Solos book, and played #142 in some unique ways.  You can watch the video HERE.  It is actually the 1st official video for the new Drum Fillosophy YouTube channel, so like and subscribe to help me get the new channel rolling!  Make sure to check out Steve Smith’s video that was my inspiration HERE too!

I also spent a great deal of time this month working on site optimization — hopefully everything is loading faster for you now!

Whenever I receive constructive criticism from Drum Fillosophy users, I make an effort to prioritize them.  Last month, it was suggested that I create an index of all the pdf’s that can be found throughout the site.  So I liked the idea, and I decided to  take  it a step further by also creating an index page for all of the different pages and overlays that are discoverable throughout DrumFillosophy.com. It will take me probably another month to get this all done, but you can check out the progress for the 2 pages with the following links:

• PDF Index
• Page Index

I love the feedback, so if you have a  suggestion/request , you can reach me via the “Let Me know” button at the bottom of the home page.

My first SOUNDSLICE video attempt was time consuming but successful!  I did it with an Eddie Van Halen solo which you can check out HERE.  Which also happens to be one of the 2 new Melody Rhythm Reading additions:

1. Wonderful Tonight – sung by Eric Clapton
2. When Push Comes to Shove – guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen

I have also added a new page where you can now peruse all Drum Fillosophy videos in one place.  Check it out HERE.

Oh, and I literally forgot – I recorded and added 14 new audio examples for my Melodic Stick Control book.  This includes all of the exercises from the Adaptive Overlays chapter, which you can listen to on the MSC Support Page.

I made some time to improve my home recording this month.  You can listen to the first Rudimental Groove lesson HERE!  Find the lesson PDF on the Lesson Materials Page in the Rudiments tab.

Also this month…

• 3 Groove transcriptions uploaded: Ricky Lawson on “Gaslighting Abbie”, Ziggy Modeliste on “Cissy Strut”, and William Kennedy on “Greenhouse”.
• 1 New Expert level  Melody Rhythm Reading exercise added: Charlie Parker’s classic solo on “Embraceable You”.  CP’s phrasing is AWESOME!

I am thrilled to have finally completed the Video Series for my book Melodic Stick Control with the release today of Video 14 – the Combined Exercises.  You can read the description and check out the video HERE!

Coinciding with finishing up the videos, I recorded 20 audio samples from the Combined Exercises chapter.  They will definitely help those of you working out of Melodic Stick Control, but if you aren’t, feel free to take a listen to see if MSC is for you!

Audio Links:

• Melodies 1-4 (Straight & Swing)
• Melodies 5-7 (Swing 8th Notes)
• Melodies 8-10 (Straight 8th Notes)

My New Year’s resolution is to finish and publish my next book by April.  It might have an adverse effect on new content for the next few months, but I will try to keep it coming!  January 1 is off to a pretty good start with…

• 4 Groove transcriptions uploaded: Vinnie Colaiuta on “Seven Days”, James Gadson on “Use Me”, Steve Gadd on “Chuck E’s In Love” and Scott Underwood on “Meet Virginia”.
• 2 New Melody Rhythm Reading exercises added: “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel and “Lights” by Journey.
• Hybrid Rudiments added on Lesson Materials page.

Click HERE to see what was new in 2020.