First things first - grab your free transcription here.
In my efforts to dissect modern drum soloing, I was going to make another video about stickings, or orchestration, or metric modulation.
Then it occurred to me: maybe the more “interesting” angle in this subject is…what actually happened to ye olde drum solo?
As in, if you were Jack Black, showing a drum solo video to a brand new music student in School of Rock, what would you likely choose?
Bonham, obviously.
Keith Moon, maybe.
Bill Ward. Mitch Mitchell.
Then imagine that kid opens instagram. (Probably easier to imagine than them studying music.) What do you think they see? Does it sound anything like Bonham, Keith, Bill, or Mitch?
On the surface, not really.
Say this student happened first to doom-scroll some prog or speed metal. They’d see players like Eloy Casagrande and Navene Koperweis. Maybe Joey Jordison. Speed. Precision. Blast Beats.
Or say they happened upon one of the bevy of soul or fusion drummers, in any of the mixed and interlocking lineages that include gospel, Chris Dave, Humans Playing Electronica, and regional hotbeds like Houston, Dallas or New York, plus a generation of Europeans watching all those people…
…and ended up seeing Sput Searight, Noah Fuerbringer, Carlin Muccular, and Jharis Yokley.
Or one of the chameleons who traverse fusion and prog with equal adeptness, like Mr. Garstka.
It’s Really Different.
But why?
It’s easy to dismiss as either more speed or more technique. But once you check out examples of historic drummers with chops - Sonny Payne, Joe Morello, even arguably Ginger Baker - the differences are less straightforward.
And that’s my bread-and-butter.
If we control for raw speed, what are the reasons for the way drum solos sound now, how did they end up that way, and how can we learn from it?
In this video, I’ll show you 4 counterintuitive differences.
Just for instance, did you know there’s one jazz drummer who was actually more “modern” in his vocabulary than the legions of rock drummers who emulated him?
Or that - and this is a bit of a hot take - the origins of one the biggest differences between the styles of someone like Keith Moon and someone like Thomas Pridgen lie all the way back in the invention of bebop?
Very interested to hear what you think.
Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Hope you enjoy!