An interesting post by Ted Gioia on the potential health benefits of drumming.

Viva drummers!

Sounds Like A Drum makes excellent videos on tuning and maintaining drums. I’ve learnt a tonne from watching them.

This episode on Fixing Your Snare Sound is a good place to start. If you like that, I’d suggest going back to the beginning and working through season one.

If you have nice cymbals, you should take the time to watch this short video. A few simple tweaks to your cymbal setup could save you an absolute fortune in damaged cymbals. Watch it!

Following on from my previous post on the history of jazz:

I haven’t properly listened to old school jazz records in a long time (only the modern stuff), so I’m making amends.

Here are my favourites so far:

• The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions - Miles Davis Quintet

• Oscar Peterson & Ben Webster Hannover 1972 (Live Restauración 2023) - Oscar Peterson Trio

• Thelonious Monk Live At the It Club - Thelonious Monk

• Triple Best of Wayne Shorter - Wayne Shorter

If you have any recommendations, please send them my way!

I’ve been on a bit of a jazz binge recently, inspired by JP Bouvet’s Jazz Foundations course.

I stumbled upon this 1989 radio documentary on the History of Jazz. So far, I’ve only listened to the first episode (out of 32!), but I’m really enjoying Mel Lewis and Loren Schoenberg’s insights.

“Loren Schoenberg, senior scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and Mel Lewis (1929-1990) discuss and analyze the histories, techniques, equipment, and ensembles of jazz drummers in an epic 32 part presentation from 1989.”

The whole series is available on Youtube.