First things first - grab your transcription here.
Linear chops are all the rage, and for good reason. With just a few source elements, you can make just about any tasty lick you want. I challenge anyone to find a clip of someone executing fills with a few variations of the “classic” combos (Rllk, RLK, etc.) that don’t go hard, as long as they’re executing them with finesse and creativity.
But linear vocabulary is not the ONLY game in town.
Yes, all licks have a “length”, and it’s all ultimately about arrangement, subdivision, and orchestration…
…but that “orchestration” bit leaves a lot of latitude for interpretation.
“Orchestration” means you can play quarters with the kick underneath your phrases. You can play dotted 8ths with the left foot. You can make a “flam” with some of the accents.
And that, plus some creative use of subdivision, is the beginning of the answer to “why do JD Beck and Diego Ramirez sound so different?”
Today I want to present one particular way to innovate with texture and orchestration. It’s something that will sound “familiar” if you’ve heard drummers like JD Beck and Dana Hawkins, but the truth is it has its roots earlier - like the early 2000s.
And if we really trace the roots, the origin point is even earlier than that.
There’s a way of playing - a textural approach - that includes playing a cymbal, a hat, or indeed another tom, along with bass drum notes in otherwise “linear” fills.
When you listen to the “Dallas Guys”, like JD Beck, Sput, Cleon Edwards, and TaRon Lockett do it, it sounds like polyphony between toms and bass drum. Dana Hawkins’ version (probably closest to the system I’m teaching here) sounds like a “separate layer” of cymbal and hat on top of the “tom layer”.
And, if you go back to the [redacted] videos of the early 2000s and 2010s, you hear drummers like Darion Javon and Devon “Sticks” Taylor doing something you might call “fortification” - i.e. “fortifying” certain kick notes with dry hats, to create a sound that “cuts” beautifully, while being dry.
All of these folks are inspiration for what I’m calling “the doubles system”. I’m probably creating a course on it soon, and I’ve been messing with it and giving it to my coaching students for the better part of a year.
And now, I give you Part One.
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