In another installment of “Bill’s Youtube Videos He Watches Over and Over,” I bring you Joe Morello:
Joe was Dave Brubeck’s drummer for years and years. Here, Joe takes solo in the Brubeck classic “Take Five.” The original recording is fantastic; one might even say monumental. Like Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” Brubeck’s “Time Out” album is a Jazz album for people who aren’t into Jazz. You don’t have to be to dig this album. Anyway, here Joe offers a different solo than the original recording. Dig the one handed roll at about one minute in. Joe is a big proponent of what’s called the “Moeller Technique,” a way of snapping the drumstick and using the stick’s natural rebound to turn your arm into an engine, cranking out hit after hit after hit. Here Joe shows his tremendous finger technique, coupled with Moeller, to give us those super tasty one handed yummies. For non-drummers, it probably doesn’t look like much. No flash flailing, no rolling around tons of toms for days and days. But for those of us who know what he’s doing, well, we can tell you that little one handed drum roll is crazy hard to pull of.
Hi, no disrespect but I took lessons from Joe and he often criticized the Moeller technique. He would demonstrate to me “see this whipping motion ? It’s great for accenting every 3rd stroke in hand-to-hand triplets. But what if you want two accents in a row ?? You can’t because your hands are doing this [makes mock wave motion]”
So far as I know, Joe vehemently disliked the Moeller stroke.
I once asked Joe to show me that one-handed thing he did with his left hand. He said “what, this ? All I’m doing is catching the bounce…”
I was about 6 inches from his hand watching intently. He would start it up like a motor… DA-dada-Da-dada-DA-dada rapid fire triplets. Unbelievable. He would get them connected so seamlessly that it looked like a single stroke roll. As fast with one hand as I could play them with two.