Most Drummers Never Learn This Groove Concept

First things first - grab your transcription here.

How to make the case to the “just give me the groove” crowd that metric modulation is worth your trouble. Increasingly, I’m avoiding the temptation to assume everything is inherently interesting.

Why did the feeling of meter shifting beneath my feet first captivate me ages ago when I watched drummers like Ari Hoenig and Dan Weiss? Or listened to Standard Time Volume 1 with Wynton Marsallis and Jeff “Tain” Watts. And how can I encapsulate that feeling for an audience?

For starters, it’s a feeling that there are higher dimensions within time. I know that sounds woo, but for me the sensation was akin to possibilities I hadn’t realized existed unfolding. I then became fascinated with being able to hear this stuff.

Now, of course there are “higher order” metric modulations from the likes of Tigran Hamasyan and Vijey Iyer.

But even the boilerplate 3 to 4, 4 to 6, etc are fun.

And easier than you might think to learn!

And I’m not saying you’ll pull these out on a bar gig. But they’ll expand your sense of possibilities within rhythm. (And probably make your time better.)

Hope you enjoy!

Bruce Becker on Buddy Rich, Hand Physics, and What Makes Great Teachers

Posture and gesture. Direct drive vs high gears. Bone density.

If those sound familiar but slightly bizarro, how about these: microtime. Minimum effective beat. Stick stall.

If you’re picking up that they’re all metaphors to help bridge the fundamental gap in teaching drums - that a student can never directly feel what I feel and vice versa - you’re in the ballpark. The latter set, or course, are some of mine. The former are those of this week’s podcast guest, one Mr. Bruce Becker.

Renowned for teaching the likes of David Garibaldi among others, and for carrying the torch or Freddy Gruber, Becker is among the most respected sages of drum hand technique still with us. When I learned I’d have the opportunity to speak to Bruce, I of course wanted to ask him things like…

• what separates great teachers from great players

• what was it like for him the first time he saw a concept he’d innovated change the playing of a student

• when did drum hand technique reach maturity, and what’s changed since then

• how would you evaluate a new approach - i.e. what’s the “would it work in the ring” for hand technique

But I also wanted to see how he’d evaluate my stuff, so he graciously agreed to review a recent video of mine. (I explained how much Gordy Knudtson had evolved my approach last year.)

It was there that the shop talk and metaphors started. I was delighted that we had some overlap - the concept of “traction” as a metaphor for when your hand and fingers are “in phase” with the energy generated by the bounce of the stick, for instance.

I loved his concept of “direct drive” vs “gears” for the difference between “low and slow” strokes, which are mostly initiated with the wrist and begin and end with the butt of the stick in contact with the heel of the hand, and any regime in which the stick is in “perpetual motion” between the elasticity of the fingers and the energy of the bounce. (My slightly inferior analogy was “on the ground” vs “in flight”.)

To use a jiujitsu analogy, it was like flow-rolling with a master.

You’ll also see in the title that Bruce has a quite a soft-spot for Buddy Rich - as much as admitting he believes Rich to be beginning of the “diminishing returns” era of hand technique, i.e. the last of the Big Innovators - and some pointed thoughts about what separates great teachers from mediocre ones.

If you’ve ever been interested in thy physics of hands, I know you’ll enjoy this episode!

Is Your Drumming Bulls#!t?

First things first - grab your transcription here.

I fear there’s no offramp from aggravating some members of my audience for whom expletives are a deal-breaker. The best I can promise is not to use them superfluously.

With that said, is your drumming bullshit?

Is mine?

A couple of things inspired me to make this video. First was the interesting fact that some drumming of undeniable technical merit can elicit yawns and eye-rolls, whereas other drumming of manifestly lower technical prowess can inspire.

All of which got me thinking about musical…”validity”, for lack of a better word. And the central paradox that art is subjective, and yet we practice to move toward something.

What is that “something”, and is it possible to be better or worse at it?

In other words, in a world where art is subjective and arbitrary, is it nonetheless possible to be full of shit?

Ultimately, I conclude, yes. Though not necessarily for the reason we’d think. For practically every musical performance someone somewhere thinks is transcendent, somebody else somewhere else finds it intolerably boring.

But is there a difference between “in the eye of the beholder”, and “just bullshit”.

i.e. is there a bigger gap between Aretha Franklin and a “bad” American Idol contestant than between a pop star some love and others hate, and an analogous country music star.

If this seems trivial or philosophical, it’s not.

Because if it’s not possible to be bullshit, then every one of us who’s practicing on the daily should immediately stop this affront to our free time and family time, and just “be authentically us” every time we play, even if that means committing some of the “cardinal sins of bullshit”, like not knowing what we’re missing, having a gap between our authentic selves and the performance, and trying to impress.

But if we can situate bullshit on a continuum of artistic validity, there’s something to practice for. And it’s almost circular. Maybe through our practice we instantiate that continuum.

In any case, I leave you to be the judge.

Enjoy!

3 Subdivisions You're Probably Not Using on Drums

First things first - grab your transcription here.

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Ever notice what crazy percentage of the most popular songs across the last 3 decades are either “straight 8th”, or “hip hop/new jack” shuffles?

I’ll actually give you a moment to try to think of any that aren’t. It’s a short list. Fool in The Rain. (Guess that’s older than 30 years.) Rosanna. Everybody Wants to Rule The World. Latch.

(I’m talking about English Language music. There are doubtless other traditions where other subdivisions loom larger.)

Think about what that’s created in terms of our shared rhythmic vocabulary, especially for drummers who haven’t studied jazz: a lot of duple vocabulary.

8ths. 16ths. Some triplets. Some sextuplets.

But as a rule we don’t get much exposure to slow shuffles or “12/8” style grooves in English Language music. Which means that when we do encounter sextuplets, it’s in the conventional “divided by 2” configuration. (I get into this in the video, but picture playing 8th notes with the kick under sextuplets. You’re hitting the kick drum every 3.)

But there’s a whole other dimension of vocabulary we’re missing, and that’s without even getting into 5/7/9 subdivision like friends of the channel Joel Turcotte and Alex Cohen traffic in. And expanding your vocab horizons can make your playing more interesting even if you’re never playing any songs with these subdivisions. (Paradoxical, I know, but picture expanding your vocabulary “range of motion”.)

In this video, I’ll outline 3 “less common” subdivisions:

Conventional Sextuplets - ok, we see these more. But if you haven’t practiced them much, they’re an easy way to give your fills and grooves an extra dimension, even if the song is in straight duple meter.

Doubled Triplets - technically the same rate as sextuplets, it’s my contention that these are different for how we group them - in groups of 2 rather than 3. (Picture soloing at double the rate of Everybody Wants to Rule the World.) But you don’t have to play anything crazy or busy to get the benefits of practicing them. Watch friend-of-the-thumbnail Matt Garstka with Animals As Leaders or Josh DeLa Victoria, and the ideas he draws from thinking in doubled triplets make his conventional sextuplets more interesting.

Tripled Triplets - this will be more familiar to jazz folks, but this is what you’d play if you were soloing in triplets over a fast jazz waltz. And if you slow down a Purdie shuffle, it’s a jazz waltz with a backbeat.

Just because we only get one popular-song-a-decade that’s in these subdivisions doesn’t mean you can’t immediately reap the benefit of familiarity with them in your day-to-day playing.

If you dare - mwahahahaha ;)

Hope you enjoy this one!