The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley (Book and Play Along CD)

This I think is the most complete book on Jazz drumming I have got to date. It is also totally accessible to beginning drummers.

The book is thorough, complete and appropriately detailed John starts out his book with a brief history of Jazz drumming and the development of jazz drumming equipment through the years.

In the next few pages he covers the basics of Jazz drumming (See here for free lessons). I feel that if you can master the first few pages you will have the basic fundamentals of jazz playing straight away. That is not say this is easy as it is not, but you will have hugely improved the co-ordination between your hands in developing an ability to play triplets with a swing feel.

As the great Tony William's is quoted as saying "Having learnt the ability to play a swing pulse consistently and evenly without anything else getting in the way of the pulse"

One of the great side benefits is that that this will really help you in playing shuffles probably the hardest drum co-ordination thing I have learnt to do.

He then moves onto soloing covering various ideas on how to build solo's and providing a number of examples with play along material on CD to help.

Next comes brushes, John covers a great deal of good solid ground in how to drum with brushes and this is an area of the book I have used a lot myself recently in preparation for my Grade 5 Guildhall School of Music. Many of the great drummers talk about how playing with brushes is a fundamental thing in being a drummer so at least having a basic knowledge of brush work will be good for you.

Lastly, he gives a listing of a number of classic jazz tunes and explains how they are structured and the basic groove/beat employed. For example the classic track Moan'in by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Art was the drummer.

The book has a play along CD which is very good. The book is littered with lots of quotes which help to expand his teachings and re-enforce a lot of what he is saying.

Overall an essential purchase for any drummer wanting to play jazz

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