Transcription will live here when it’s available.
Cheeky title, I know.
“2015 Youtube called and wants its title back.”
Level all those critiques at me. I can take it. And I think my thesis holds up. Because it’s what happened to me.
We (mostly) all love to watch great drummers. It’s what maybe got us into drumming in the first place. Watching a true great move around the kit is a reminder of what’s possible. It keeps us inspired and moving forward.
But it can also be deceptive.
Because greats, by definition, do a lot of things well. But what if I told you there’s a specific subset of things they do that’s more likely to get you better faster, and another that, if you do it in the wrong order, can actually interfere.
I’m referring, of course, to timing, touch, and doing everything you do well - something I’m starting to call “fluency” on one side…
…and the whole “blazing hands/a million and one licks” on the other.
Do the fluency thing first, and “perfect” a small pocket of personal vocabulary you can do really well, but still feel free improvising with, and it’s almost like a cheat code.
Chase speed and variety before learning any individual thing really well, and you’ll still be on shaky ground.
Great - so it’s a 50/50 shot which lessons people take from pros, and around 50% take the wrong lesson? Cool.
Except it’s not like that.
It’s more like 90%. It’s more like we’re hardwired to waaaay over-index on the speed and variety, and completely ignore the “doing everything well” thing.
And it turns out there’s even a name for the psychological effect that explains this tendency. “Salience Bias”. Confronted with a mixture of inputs and outputs, we’re wired to attribute causality to the most flashy thing.
Ergo, “Matt Garstka great because Matt Play Many Things Fast.”
Which is why copying great drummers verbatim, for the wrong drummer, at the wrong time, can be worse than neutral. It can actually be counterproductive.
So - what should we do instead?
In the video, I propose a few alternatives, from finding a small subset of greats in whose playing the refinement of a few things is more obvious. (I show the actual video that finally incepted this into me.)
Plus, I show some exercises to get you there.
Hope you enjoy!
P.S. did you know you can sign up to be the first to hear when we open up new slots for Impossible to Fail, my flagship 1:1 coaching program? Just click here to sign up for the waitlist.