A brief history of chops through the lens of this Thomas Pridgen thing...

First things first - download your free transcription here.

There's this "thing" I've noticed I'm doing a lot when I do fills or..."chops"...

It hadn't been conscious. It just came out.

And for some reason, I've been doing it on the hats a lot.

I do it so much, it's kind of become "my thing". So this week, I set out to explain it. And explaining it required some context. And context, as is so often the case, required Thomas Pridgen.

All of which sent me back in time to trace the lineage of my learning to "chop"...

2013/2014, I start listening to Thomas, and Nick Smith, and many of the other "choppers" who were "chopping it up" on these new platforms called YouTube and Instagram.

Flash forward a bit, and I believe I'd successfully deconstructed a couple of component parts (which I show you in the video)...

...and a general approach, from Thomas, which I call "throw it on there."

(I show a shed with Thomas and Tony Royster to illustrate what makes that approach unique.)

Flash forward still more, and I'm "throwing it on there" while attempting to do drum fills. Then something happens.

Everybody starts incorporating the dry hats as a sound.

So what happens if I...

And then the licc evolved.

I'll show you the exact licc, and ways to orchestrate it and put it in different rhythmic contexts.

Watch the video to find out more.

Enjoy!

Could You Sub for Mark Guiliana?

You know him, you love him.

When I first started making videos about Mark Guiliana, he was fast becoming the “drummer’s drummer”, known to practically all “insiders”.

Fast-forward 8 years, and he’s now “drum royalty”. On Bowie’s last album. Doing clinic tours with Weckl and Simon Phillips. And you can definitely use his last initial instead of spelling out his whole last name.

But what if you had to sub for Mark?

What if he took 3 months off his tour circuit to work on a conceptual art installation (something I mention in the video isn’t even that far-fetched), and needed somebody to hop in on his busy tour schedule, and the call came to YOU?

Today, as ever, I play your “proxy” jumping into that hypothetical challenge.

And unlike some of my other “could you do the gig” videos, we’re considering 3 different bands across Mark’s career.

1. Jazz bassist Avishai Cohen, with whom Mark played in the early and mid-2000s

2. Now vs Now, which…cmon, do I need to say more?

3. And Beat Music, Mark’s most prominent non-Bowie/post-Now-vs-Now project

As usual I’ll be learning 3 songs - one from each of the above groups…

…and facing some anticipated challenges, and some unanticipated ones.

Will I be up to the challenge? You’ll have to judge for yourself.

Could YOU sub for Mark?

Leave a comment below.

See you in the next one!

How to Deal with Negativity About Your Drumming

Friends, I want to introduce you to a concept I call The Gaslight Hangover, and tell me if that resonates immediately.

For my purposes, it refers to the mental load involved in separating “what’s you” vs “what’s them” when you get a negative comment. The hard part is that we want to be open minded, and maybe the commenter has a point. But at the same time, something rubs us the wrong way - we feel “wronged”.

Is that just our ego messing with us? Is that just defensiveness, or reluctance to accept reality? Because those things are real.

But you know who’s really good at sublimating their egos and being maximally open to criticism? Cult members.

Because open-mindedness can go too far. You can be so open-minded “your brains fall out” as the cliche goes.

So imagine you’re somewhere along the journey of learning the drums, and you’re “proto” seeing-all-the-territory. There are still big “unknown unknowns” for you.

To use the analogy I use in this week’s video, it’s like you’re partway up a mountain. You can see the summit - that’s like watching instagram videos of our drum heroes. But things like the exact route to the summit, what challenges lie between you and the summit, and even how long the distance…

…are opaque, or shrouded in fog.

You need to be open to feedback about which way to go, because you can’t get to the summit on your own - at least not as fast.

But you also need to be careful not to listen to too much negative feedback (“you’ll never make it”, “other climbers do it better”, etc), because if you let it get to you, you might give up and never reach the summit - which is a problem if you love climbing and really want to climb this mountain.

And it’s into this vulnerable state-of-mind that negative criticism about your drumming falls, causing you to ruminate about “what if they’re right”, which causes…the Gaslight Hangover.

In today’s video, I want to convey a few things.

First, it gets better, and you don’t have to be the world’s greatest drummer to come out of the fog and see the territory well enough that you can at least evaluate whether somebody’s criticism is likely to be true or not.

Second, I’ll give you some coping strategies (not “coping” in the 2023 tiktok sense, but real ways to deal) to use in the mean time.

Finally, I’ll do a reenactment that’s been on my bucket list since around 2015.

Hope you enjoy this one!

Hear from Jonah, a Coaching Intensive Student

The next round of the 80/20 Coaching Intensive opens the week of July 10.

Watch your inboxes if you’re interested!