Search - Take It To The Street - A Traditional Approach to New Orleans Drumming on DVD

Disappointing

Tom Schmidt | San Francisco, CA | 10/18/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This is a disappointment, especially for a DVD created in 2005. Instructional drumming videos (and later, DVDs) have been around for over 20 years, and even in the early years many products contained supplemental material to augment the visuals. Not on Moore's DVD. Essentially this is what each section is like:

Moore: "Check out this groove".
[Moore plays a semi-complicated New Orleans rhythm.]
Moore: "Now you can play a variation on that groove like this."
[Moore plays a further complicated New Orleans rhythm.]

Wash, rinse, repeat.

What this DVD needed was some PDFs with transcriptions of Moore's examples, that could be printed out and used to practice with. That way you could use the DVD for copping the feel of New Orleans drumming, and the PDF for the detailed parts. As noted, many instructional drumming videos are presented like this. The fact that this is made by Mel Bay makes it all the more disappointing (and surprising).

Of course, if one really wants to figure out what he's playing, it's not impossible. Get ready to use the rewind button on your remote though. Especially if you're a beginner.

I give it 2 stars because Moore's a decent player, and the live performances are good. As a learning tool though, I find it extremely limited and behind the times of current instructional videos.

If you want a comprehensive and extremely well made package on New Orleans drumming, buy the book "New Orleans Jazz and Second Line Drumming" by Johnny Vidacovich, Herlin Riley, and Dan Thress. You can augment that with the DVD the book was based on: "New Orleans Drumming""