The Best Rudimental Study Book (If you want to swing 'em).

J

jazzerooty

Junior Member
I've been a professional drummer my entire life. But I never stop learning. I learned to apply rudiments to jazz phrases from the Wilcoxon Swing Solos book, and listening to Philly Joe Jones. The book I've been working from lately is The Philly Joe Jones Solo Book. Philly took many of his rudimently based solo concepts from Swing Solos, and then extended to concepts in his own playing. The Philly Joe Solo book is made transcripts of most of Joe's solos, which are very snare orientated. I'm finding it invaluable for applying various rudiments and stickings into a swinging context. Lots of solos, so you have to pick just a few to work on at a time. But I'm seeing good results (and I'm older than baseball!).
 
I've got it but I still havent found the time to work with it. Mainly because I need to copy everything in musescore to make it more readable. I appreciate the work in hand notating the solos by the author but I find them hard to read on a stand
 
To clarify: I'm not generally doing whole solos. What I do is find a phrase that knocks me out. I highlight it with a yellow marker, then copy it into a notebook I call "Phillyments," then lean to apply it to 4, 8, 16, and 32 bar phrases. Back in the 70s, I studied with Paul Lagos, who lived with Philly Joe (and picked up some unsavory habits). But Joe taught him to--whenever he invented a phrase--to write it in a staffed notebook and put a number on it. You learn it cold, then try variations on various parts of the kit. You'll always have these phrases at the ready, and you're building your own style.
 
jazzerooty said:
But Joe taught him to--whenever he invented a phrase--to write it in a staffed notebook and put a number on it. You learn it cold, then try variations on various parts of the kit. You'll always have these phrases at the ready, and you're building your own style.
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I’ve done that and wondered if anyone else did it or if I just couldn’t remember the ideas well. Internalizing new solo licks is a ridiculously slow process for me. I like your idea of applying them to the different length phrases. I think I need to be more methodical about my approach and resist telling myself “this is taking me too long to learn”.
 
jazzerooty said:
I've been a professional drummer my entire life. But I never stop learning. I learned to apply rudiments to jazz phrases from the Wilcoxon Swing Solos book, and listening to Philly Joe Jones. The book I've been working from lately is The Philly Joe Jones Solo Book. Philly took many of his rudimently based solo concepts from Swing Solos, and then extended to concepts in his own playing. The Philly Joe Solo book is made transcripts of most of Joe's solos, which are very snare orientated. I'm finding it invaluable for applying various rudiments and stickings into a swinging context. Lots of solos, so you have to pick just a few to work on at a time. But I'm seeing good results (and I'm older than baseball!).
Click to expand...
I’ve had my eye on that book for a long time, but part of me thinks I should transcribe myself.
I do like your idea about a notebook of solo ideas. I do that for jazz piano, I should it fit drums too!
 
For me the core jazz items in Rudimental Swing Solos are Rolling In Rhythm, Swinging Accents, Roughing The Single Drag, Study In Accents, Modern Flam Accents. All pure Philly Joe stuff.

I learned it all, but it didn't really change my playing— I just don't solo with rudimental stuff on the snare drum.

Elvin Jones, and I'm sure a lot of other people, played book 2 of Haskell Harr also. The march Elvin plays on several records is lifted directly from that.
 
toddbishop said:
For me the core jazz items in Rudimental Swing Solos are Rolling In Rhythm, Swinging Accents, Roughing The Single Drag, Study In Accents, Modern Flam Accents. All pure Philly Joe stuff.

I learned it all, but it didn't really change my playing— I just don't solo with rudimental stuff on the snare drum.

Elvin Jones, and I'm sure a lot of other people, played book 2 of Haskell Harr also. The march Elvin plays on several records is lifted directly from that.
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Todd: Try and find a copy of Whitney Balliett's New Yorker story from '69. In it, Elvin mentions his first primer, the Rubank book on basic snare drumming by Paul Yoder. He said he learned that book backwards and forward.
 
jazzerooty said:
Todd: Try and find a copy of Whitney Balliett's New Yorker story from '69. In it, Elvin mentions his first primer, the Rubank book on basic snare drumming by Paul Yoder. He said he learned that book backwards and forward. The book is still available to this day.
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A WALK TO THE PARK

PROFILE of Elvin Jones, the jazz drummer, describes a jazz session at Pookie's Pub. A juke box played Billie Holiday singing "My Yiddishe Mama." The …
www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
 
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