It's About Time

[Clintuplet]

Anyone heard of this book? Randy? How about a review from anyone who has.

[davfrancis]

Yup!

I got it last week, primarily to use with a particular student who expressed a desire to improve his time.

The starting point is to get you vocalising while playing - a little like the Gary Chester aproach of using the voice as a "fifth limb"

There then follow some independance studies - just bass drum lines to read under various HH SD RC patterns.

The real meat is in the playalongs where you get...

a two bar caount off then a lot of silence with occasional Bass drum notes on beat 1 or 3 and occasional snare notes on beats 2 and 4. The idea is that you play through the silences and if you keep good time your BD and SD notes will land with those on the recording. This is done at three tempos.

The same thing then happens with a one bar count off, a two beat count off and finally a one beat count off.

This alone would do wonders for your time awareness IMHO.

Also a few exercises for swithching between feels and also keeping time in fills.

I would say it is WELL worth the money.

One other cool thing is to hear a playalong tune performed by a variety of drummers: Dennis Chambers, Ricky Lawson, Curt Bisquera etc.

One of these really stood out to me, I was listening in the car to the CD and didnt know who was playing but on one of the tracks the time just felt phenomenal... won't tell who it was -just yet.

Interested to hear from other folks who have this book!

[Randy walker]

sorry, never seen this one. [img]frown.gif[/img]

[davfrancis]

Author is a guy named Fred Dinkins - I believe he is an instructor at MI.

I've lent it out so I cant check the publisher but I think its Warners.

[Clintuplet]

Thanks DF. I love that quote Fuse. I always rewind the tape to hear it again. Here's the link: http://www.warnerbrospercussion.com/0731b.htm

[FuseU1]

DF...who is/are the author[s], & what is the publishinhg co?

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- "Drumming comes down to time, groove, & listening [the ear]."
- "Agility & technique is about teaching your limbs to obey your ears."
- "First of all, there's time...period...it's about time, time, time, time, & more, - time. There's time - and then there's time. And groove. I can't express how much it's just all about the time."
- "James Taylor has a song called, 'The Secret of Life [is Enjoying the Passage of Time],' and that is IT. You have to love the space in between your notes more than you love your playing. You better just love & cherish every moment between those notes."
- Billy Ward, MDF '00

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 29, 2004 05:05 PM: Message edited by: FuseU1 ]</font>

[FuseU1]

Thx, DF; Clint [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]