5 Things "Pro" Drummers Know That Many Beginners Don't

First things first - grab your free study guide.

Every-so-often I find it fun to take a “clickbait” premise, and try to wring some actually useful insights out of it. “What would this video look like if I delivered on the clickbait title.”

And this week’s video didn’t come out of the blue. In these slow days of August, I’ve been reflecting on almost a decade of running the channel, and all the people I’ve seen play - online and in my various practice spaces - and questions I’ve received over those years. If you heard the Rob Brown interview, you might have heard be allude to this, but there are certain things you realize you take for-granted that other people don’t necessarily assume.

That’s often a great font for “stuff pros know” insights.

But additionally, there were things I needed to learn between 2014 and today, and those are in this video too.

Anyway, if you’re expecting this to be a list of stuff like “the 25 essential rudiments”, and “how to show up on-time for a gig”, it’s not that. It’s simple stuff like “rimshots are a thing”, and “there’s a whole spectrum when it comes to beat placement, from inconsistent-and-not-great to consistent-and-great”, and “you can influence a band live in room with things in your playing and even eye contact, and you’re wasting an opportunity if you’re just staring down at your kit.

So I hope you’ll join me as we explore these and some other insights that I believe “veteran” drummers take for-granted, that beginners don’t necessarily know.

Know you’ll enjoy!

Chris Turner on Falling in Love With The Drums Every Day

Chris Turner is kind of the undisputed modern “double kick king”. Which, if that was all he was, might be of less interest to my audience. Luckily he’s also one of the most musical and creative drummers, and one of the most interesting and inspiring humans I’ve met recently.

One of the underrated benefits of getting to speak to great drummers is seeing the variety of different ways they’ve achieved, well, greatness. And you learn there are really very different archetypes, from the “acerbic everyman”, to the “systems and discipline person”, to the “rocket-fueled motivation machine”. (The last might describe Isac Jamba and Richie Martinez, among others.)

Chris Turner has the seemingly-bottomless-pit-of-motivation that some of the other guests have, but it’s combined with an easy-going, “come-what-may” kind of whimsy. He literally says he structures his life to avoid doing anything he doesn’t want to do in a given day. If you’re wondering about the obvious paradox between that approach and the discipline and longevity required to reach his level on drums, I was wondering the same thing, and his answer mildly floored me.

Chris says for his entire life, he’s strung together a series of independent days of falling deeply in love with the drums. When I asked him if he’s seen 50 First Dates, the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore rom com, he agreed “it’s like that.”

I was rather pleased that in this hour-long conversation with the world’s foremost double-kick player, we only broached double kick twice: once as an aside as Chris described his relationship with teaching, and a second time when I say I’m “not going to ask him about that.”

Instead we talk about motivation, psychology, finding a relationship with what you love, and his newest object-of-focus, YouTube.

Chris has an energy I think you’ll find infectious, and I know you’ll enjoy this convo regardless of the genre you’re interested in.

The Simple Skills Most Drummers Are NOT Using to Sound Better With A Band

First things first - grab your free transcription.

This week’s video occurred to me at total random while I was playing along with some music at the end of a practice session. I realized that the type of drum parts I’d play when I was accompanying a programmed beat were way different than those if I was accompanying a pre-recorded acoustic drummer.

And way more interesting.

Things like - I could decide to move the backbeat to the cymbals, or leave the lead hand out altogether instead of doing the usual thing and playing the hats.

Then I realized “good drummers of the past already did this”. One example that came to mind was Ringo, who was endlessly creative in creating drum parts, partly because The Beatles did so much writing and creation in the studio, and maybe because the drums weren’t as “calcified” in terms of “beat best-practices”.

Ringo can routinely be heard leaving out a lead hand and playing only kick and snare. Or using a recurring tom fill as part of the drum groove, as in Come Together.

(All that’s old is new again.)

Then I thought about modern drummers like Perrin Moss, and even “mainstream” rock icons like Dave Grohl with the Foo Fighters, and Matt Cameron with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, and how much the use texture, dynamics, dramatic changes, half time/double time, and generally creative and unconventional drum parts to emphasize and underscore arrangements. (My memory returned to an r/drums post about early drummers for Foo Fighters, and my feeling that Bill Goldsmith was actually a perfectly solid drummer with great timing and beats, who’s somewhat unfairly maligned, but that perhaps Taylor Hawkins had a creativity in creating drum parts that ultimately. appealed to Grohl, beyond any interpersonal stuff that may have been at play.)

And so began the first of probably many “medium dives” into the complex and fraught subject of “drumming for the band”, which also includes things like “conducting”, and knowing what energy the song needs at what times.

So please enjoy this stab at it. It was a fun excuse to play along with a lot of tracks, and get a nice little copyright strike. (My apologies to the people of Russia, that they won’t hear audio from the Foo Fighters excerpt.)

Know you’ll enjoy!

Rob Brown on The Importance of Gigs, Whether Feel Can Be Taught, and The Future of YouTube Drumming

Throughout the years, I’ve had a running mental catalogue on the go-to videos for certain subjects. Jazz swing, building a solo on the drums, tuning, timing, etc. And when I look back, in a surprising number of categories, the “best resource” comes from Rob “Beatdown” Brown.

Rob was among the “OGs” on Drumeo, with a great video about Stewart Copeland, and consistently drops authentic takes on his channel. That’s why I’ve been meaning to have a conversation with Rob for some time.

I finally caught up with him in early August, and opened the conversation with a question that’s been on my mind a bunch: What does he make of this situation where everybody practices chops, but nobody’s “allowed” to use them? And has that created a situation in which they’re not taught very well. Rob didn’t hold back on that subject, and was equally candid in speaking about the importance of real-world playing experience for the “internet generation”.

We veered a bit into the nature/nurture debate as well, speaking about whether “feel” can be taught - my hobby horse is the crowd that seems to think that, even for people with the capacity for good feel, there’s no recourse except to “feel it”. Rob was a bit more open minded to the idea that some people have a better innate capacity.

Finally, we spoke about YouTube as a mature medium, and the future of careers in drumming.

If you want some unfiltered wisdom from one of the OGs, I know you’ll enjoy this interview!