The Monday Morning Paradiddle

Hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend wherever you may be.

Don't forget your bug spray. Those little bastards are vicious these days !!!

Now onto my Monday morning ramble...

- A big thank you to Neil Corlett and all the staff and students who participated in the MusiCamp Alberta music workshop held in Red Deer last week. Lorna MacLachlan did a fabulous job of getting the vocal Jazz students to sing together and it was a delight to back them up in the rhythm section with bassist extraordinaire Stefano Valdo. Also some very nice moments during the Friday evening faculty concert with saxophonist Mark DeJong and trumpeter Joel Gray joining Lorna, Stefano and myself in a quintet that performed Lorna and Mark's original compositions.

- How about those Riders ? They managed to pull out a win over the Hamilton TigerCats on Saturday evening with a score of 37-24 at Mosaic Stadium to improve their record to 4-1 this season. Hamilton receiver Arland Bruce III had a career game but Rider kicker Luca Congi kept us in the game and we somehow found a way to win. Looking forward to the matchup against Montreal on Friday evening. Should be a good one. And ugly : )

- Thank you to George Marsh who kindly emailed me the other day following my previous post about him and Matt Wilson.
Check out Marsh's thought provoking book "Inner Drumming" at his website www.marshdrum.com

You can learn more about his fine recordings and books there. If you dig around there are also a number of interesting percussion metronome .mp3's you can download to play along with.

Here are a few more clips of George Marsh performing some solo drum pieces:





- In my previous post I mentioned the passing of British Jazz Drummer and Oscar Peterson sideman Martin Drew. Unfortunately Britain lost another great Jazz drummer recently with the passing of Chris Dagely in a tragic bike accident over the weekend. I recently heard Dagely play in October at Ronnie Scott's in a band that opened for The Bad Plus. I remember being really impressed with his playing as it's always nice to hear another great Jazz drummer who I've never heard of before playing so great. For more information check out this webpage: http://londonjazz.blogspot.com/2010/07/chris-dagley.html

- Looking for something to practice during the summer doldrums ? Check out Pete Lockett's online snare drum book "Symetrical Stickings For The Snare Drum" here. Some really interesting approaches to applying paradiddle'ish stickings to create interesting and practical patterns. Oh yes, and it's free ! If you poke around his website you'll find many other great things to practice as well that should keep you occupied for several summers !!!