The are some great drumming blogs out there written by knowledgeable drummers who share their insights and experience for their readers’ delectation. One of my favourites is the Cruise Ship Drummer blog written by Todd Bishop.
On a regular basis Todd offers transcriptions of individual grooves and full pieces of music, drumming exercises, videos and he’s also published a couple of books based on his blog posts.
100 Grooves Vol. 1 contains a broad range of grooves played by drummers from Airto to Zigaboo Some of them have appeared as blog posts but most are hitherto unpublished. It’s a brilliant little book, about two-thirds of an A4 in size and just short of a hundred pages. It’s always in my bag and I’ve been using it with my students as a great way to keep things fresh and introduce new music – just flip it open anywhere and have a go at whatever presents itself. We might learn to play the groove by reading it and then see if what’s played sounds anything like the recording from which it was transcribed, we might use a groove as a gateway to a new style of music or as a basis for some improvising.
Let’s see what happens when I flip open any old page:
Charlie Persip’s groove on D’s Fink by Lee Morgan. Cool.
100 grooves Vol. 1 goes more or less from easier to harder and includes Rock, Jazz, Funk, Soul and Latin styles from drummers including Al Jackson, James Gadson, Art Blakey, Mike Clark, Harvey Mason and some bloke called John Bonham. I’ve had a lot of fun with this book.
Get it here.