Throughout the Covid era, the Drummer's Collective have been offering online workshops with some fantastic guests, including Jeff "Tain" Watts and, most recently, John Riley. For me, one of the highlights of the evening was when John shared with us an exercise developed by Philly Joe Jones using the ubiquitous Saul Goodman timpani book. Not only is it a neat little exercise, but it was in Philly Joe's own handwriting from his stint in London.
The gist of the exercise is that Philly Joe simply took some of the crossover exercises from Saul Goodman's Modern Method for Tympani and applied to the drumset. The book is a staple of percussion study and has been used by countless students since it was first published in 1948. I still have my copy sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere from the last time I played timpani, which was probably 15 years ago or more, so I might just have to pull it out and get some use out of it again.
That's cool, I need to dig out my copy of MMFT, it's probably in my mom's basement!
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