Benny Greb Inspired Warmup - The 80/20 Drummer

Man am I excited to release the next two lessons.

The past few weeks have included a little travel and a lot of drumming. My lesson about Hiatus Kaiyote drops next week.

But today I want to share something a student inspired. One of my coaching students recently (or maybe not so recently by the time this airs) returned from a drum camp with Benny Greb. He (my student) was demonstrating some of Benny's permutation material, and that sent me on a deep dive checking out Benny videos.

As usual, the lesson's not a literal transcription of Benny so much as a concept inspired by the type of stuff he's doing. I'm not usually big on warmups. Anyone who's familiar with the channel knows that. But playing around with permutations and microtime in 6 led me to the discovery of the warmup in this lesson. And now I want to share it with you.

Attention to detail, guys! Make sure those limbs are locking up. Make sure those offbeats aren't rushing!

Enjoy this one. Back next week with the Hiatus cover.

N

Play The Hidden Camera like Richard Spaven - The 80/20 Drummer

Ok, I'm sold on Richard Spaven.

He actually had me at Jose James.

But his new cover of Photek's The Hidden Camera is fire.

One reason I like Richard so much is he applies creative constraints. All his innovation and creativity is focused into the name aperture of feel and phrasing. And it works.

For this lesson, I didn't transcribe Richard. I didn't even try to play exactly what he plays. Rather, I tried to capture how he feels.
 

Hope you enjoy!

N
 

How to Drum Cover Work by Rihanna - The 80/20 Drummer

Certain dream gigs you don’t need to justify. Erykah Badu. Lupe Fiasco. And, I humbly submit, Rhianna. Get beyond the obvious. I’m married. Really - I’m ashamed of you guys.

Rhianna actually has a long string of very drum-able hits. Drummers know what I’m talking about. A certain combination of tempo, texture and syncopation. You hate yourself for tapping along to Shut Up And Drive at the laundramat, or Umbrella at the gym, but you do it all the same. Oh, and Nick Smith and DMile covered Confidence, as if you needed another reason to appreciate Confidence. Out of the gutter, guys. I’m talking about the rhythm;)

Anyway, Work had all the hallmarks of drum-cover-gold: newness, being a killer song, and not having drums! God bless all these new albums with essentially drumless tracks. Drum Cover Christmas. So in this lesson I’ll take you through how to play the groove I played, and a little hot lick if you want to pull out your...chops.

Also, teaser: May is upon us, and that means Austin Clinic. I’ll be emailing shortly with more deets.

N

More Cowbell! - Featuring RDavidR's Cowbell!

R David R is a YouTuber, and a drummer. He doesn’t just play the drums, and teach people cool tricks to save them money and headaches, he’s also a killer videographer, and fellow fan of Mayor-of-YouTube Casey Neistat. I’d watched David’s channel for almost 3 months before I made the flattering discovery that he was watching mine as well.

Anyway, David made me a cowbell! Out of the blue, I get a package. (Ok - not totally out of the blue, since I had to give him my address.) Only request - I make a video of his bell and put it on YouTube. Shoot - I was gonna do that anyway.

Actually, you might want to check out the lesson he made about making the bell for me by searching “RDavidR More Cowbell” on youtube. (He hadn’t provided me the URL as of the writing of this email;)

Anyway, for my lesson this week, I mined the gamut of Famous Cowbell songs, and chose two: one a classic, another a fusion-nerd-classic. I’ll show you what little I know about mambo on the drumkit, then dive into the songs!

For the comments, what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever gotten in the mail?

N