Why Does Everybody Hate Modern Drumming?

FIRST THINGS FIRST - download your free transcription.

Rarely have I struggled with a thumbnail the way I struggled this week.

It’s like this: there are images immediately evocative of exactly the type of drumming I’m referring to…

…and if I used them everybody would think I was criticizing those players. Or at least teeing them up for criticism.

So maybe it’s a generic image of a kit immediately evocative of this style of playing, only without a human attached. Surprisingly hard to find. Stock photos aren’t specific enough, any image of a specific device like a stack risks being seen as an attack on that particular maker, and any photo of a whole kit loses the specificity.

Fine. Fred Armisen. Maybe the only image of a human playing a kit that looks “modern” that won’t get me piñata’d for picking on a specific human. (Because he’s satirizing it.) But do gen-z folks even know Fred?

Boo.

Anyway, modern drumming you guys! Why does everybody seemingly hate it? At least if you look at my comments. This spring I’ve made 2 videos on modern playing - one asking why modern drummers sound so different, and another detailing this linear style playing, which I call “clave flow”, that’s suddenly dominating modern drumming.

And the comments were withering. “Not music.” “[synonym for self-pleasure]”. “What happened to letting the music breathe.” And so on.

“I guess everybody just hates modern drumming,” I told myself. But something didn’t fit.

If nobody liked it, who were all these people “liking” it on the socials? Or buying tickets?

And maybe it was like “congress”, where people claim to hate the generic concept, but not their favorite specific players. Nate Smith. Larnell. Etc.

Then there was this video of “groover-hero” Ash Soan…well…chopping out. Sure, it sounded “retro”, but that was just because of tuning and some creative muting. If I played the same thing on a “modern-tuned” kit, it sounds like, well, modern chopping.

So this simple picture became a wee bit complicated.

Anyway, today we’ll talk about it.

Do people really hate modern drumming? Do some people like it? Do the same people who say they hate it like it when it’s Adam Deitch or Karriem Riggins? Do the ones who say they’d hate it even then secretly like it, but only when noone’s watching? Would even those who don’t like it if we pulled a little ruse and convinced them that Matt Garstka was actually Ginger Baker?

And so on.

If you want to take the nerdy, deconstructive ride, I invite you to buckle up.

The Under-Appreciated Thing Killing Your Single Strokes

FIRST THINGS FIRST - download your free transcription.

There’s a solution hidden in plain sight for improving our single strokes. For anyone who’s played the ride cymbal with their strong hand, at least.

If you watch a good jazz player play the ride cymbal, it’s a study in efficiency - the stick “dancing” between hand pressure and rebound, with only minimal control required. It seems to “take off” when the forces equalize.

So why don’t we just do that with our weak hand?

So began several months of trying to “transmit”, from my strong hand to my weak one, all the “intelligence” of the way it played the ride cymbal. And in the process, I discovered two things:

First, the “hidden killer” from the title - something I’m calling “stick stall”…

…but second, and just-as-important, the unique utility of cymbals as surfaces to practice avoiding that stall, for their unique rebound characteristics.

A practice pad or tight drum will return the stick in every case.

A pillow or neoprene pad will hinder its return just as reliably, requiring some “make it happen” mechanics.

But a cymbal will rebound beautifully sometimes, and occasionally just “stall”. What’s going on there?

It turns out there’s kind of a third hidden force at play, beyond speed and power. Efficiency. How much of the rebound are you utilizing, vs how much is bleeding off because you’re “over-controlling” the stick and getting “out of phase”.

Hence stick stall - the hidden thing killing your singles. You can have speed and power, but are you sure you’re not bleeding off efficiency by getting out of phase?

Try the exercises in the lesson on a cymbal or hi hats, and you’ll see.

Anyway, hope you enjoy watching this one as much as I enjoyed making it!

Alex Cohen - You Couldn't Write This Stuff

Alex Cohen is like the Keyser Soze of a certain milieu of drummers. The hub of a dark web that includes players like Andy Prado, Maison Guidry, Steve Lyman, Jerad Lippi, JP Bouvet, and a gaggle of students who themselves are well known. Like the one ring that secretly binds them together, everyone with a secret “Alex” connection, or a shed. (You realize after looking that he’s been on Drumeo and won one of their awards.)

And that’s probably the least interesting thing about Alex.

How about this one: after surviving a brain tumor, he discovered he could play in different time signatures at once. And not like 6 in one hand and 4 in the other, or anything pase like that. I mean he can lay down a hat ostinato in 4 with his left foot, improvise in 5 with his left hand, and improvise in 7 at the same time between his right foot and right hand.

Or that he uses drums to keep him going through sessions of chemo-therapy.

Alex is like the real life David Goggins of drums, if David Goggins were interesting.

Behind the scenes, though, he’s just a kind, enthusiastic drum nerd who can talk drums for hours. And I mean hours. After we stopped recording this interview, we talked for 2 more hours.

I hope that’s within a stone’s throw of an introduction for the man for whom every introduction falls short.

I know you’ll enjoy this one. And hopefully forgive some audio foibles as we learn how to do the “live” podcasts.

My Favorite Thing I've Ever Recorded

First things first - grab your discounted tickets to my New Paltz clinic next Saturday the 3rd at 1:30pm. Save $5 by buying early.

When Meinl reached out to me in late summer of last year, asking if I could record a series of educational videos for them, I had one condition: let me play an unstructured drum solo.

I’d been inspired by “clinic” performances of people like Guiliana and Marcus Gilmore, and had been practicing “free form” solos for about the last year. Here was an opportunity to have such a solo recorded professionally, on an exquisite kit in a beautiful studio. We did it in one take. I felt like I’d reached exactly the right psychological “zone” - not nervous, not thinking, not “showy”; just creative.

I’d recorded it on my iphone, and listening back, I was satisfied.

When Meinl sent me the rough take, I was even more happy, hearing it through the “real” mics for the first time.

Then I made the mistake of reading the comments.

The first dozen-or-so were very kind and supportive. But then began the backlash. “This is what happens when people spend time creating content instead of practicing.”

“I guess they’ll sponsor anybody with a following these days.”

“For sure don’t play a beat or anything, or try to make any music.”

“This guy sounds ‘self taught’.”

I listened again, mystified.

Still thought it was good. Sorry. Then I did something I recommend even less than reading the comments. I followed some back to the source. And many of them were from “pretty good” prog drummers. Guys probably with better singles than mine, and for sure better double kick.

Gradually, with full awareness that this was at best a “break even” - between healthy (i.e. getting inspiration to work harder) and unhealthy (i.e. picking at a wound) - use of my time, I started putting together a picture of what this type was looking for.

1. Do something musically impossible to fake, like playing with an odd meter track. If you’re only soloing against a referent in your head, it’s like abstract art.

2. Play with more volume and/or power. It’s true that I was a bit intensity-limited.

3. Do something technically impossible to fake, like single strokes, or playing 2 meters-at-once.

So began the bootcamp that inspired last month’s “cave” video.

Single strokes on the ride cymbal with both hands. Then neoprene mutes. Then around the kit, like Richie Martinez or John Hoffman.

Trying to translate that back into the improv, and practicing with noise-cancelling cans to try to prime my muscle memory to play harder.

And more practice with ostinatos, to allow a listener to keep a reference of what I was doing, including in odd times (though nothing verging on Cohen or Lyman territory.)

And I was happy to say that, looking at some of the “before” and “after” videos of the progression, I think I did get some decent growth out of it. And it sure inspired a whole bunch of videos.

This past week, I went back to the Meinl video, expecting to see a ton of new areas in which it “fell short”.

To my surprise, I think it held up.

A couple of days later, at total random, I was watching the Drumeo video of a hero - one of my favorite modern solos. I happened to check the comments, and they were brutal.

“Who’s this guy.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a channel for great drummers.”

Wait a minute. You’re never going to please an anonymous youtube commenter in his mom’s basement?

And so continued the not-completely-healthy push-pull of using haters to fuel me with getting pulled off track. And the hopes that with each swing of the pendulum, hopefully I get a little perspective.

But to you, the viewers, go the spoils. The cave video. The “gen-z beats” video. The new upcoming single-stroke bootcamp video”.

And what should you take away from it if you’re reading this, about to go down to the shed. Well, reality is messy. I could say “don’t worry about what anybody else thinks”. But then you’d be missing a key-ingredient to push yourself. It’s not a coincidence that the “average” level of drummers everywhere shot up as soon as Instagram was widely-available.

But neither is “always read the negative comments” great advice.

But that imperfection and those contradictions show up in the art as well. No comedian makes it through years of open-mics without a thick skin about crowds, no attending physician makes it out of residency without some road-wariness, and every musician you see on SNL has thousands of bad performances and thousands of negative comments behind them.

At any rate, here’s hoping some of you are finding the sweet spot on this Sunday in early spring.

Best to you.