5 Skills You NEED To Be An Advanced Drummer in 2024

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

The genesis of this lesson is I’ve been onboarding a bunch of new students lately, and creating programs for them that combine their personal goals and my goals for them, and this put me in the head space of wondering…

…”what is a suite of skills that I’d like all my students to have when they’re done working with me?”

As I practiced that afternoon, more ideas about this subject bubbled up. (The practice room is another big source of video ideas.) I think the skills required to consider ourselves “advanced” at the drums have evolved since I was a student. With the huge/important disclaimer that technical skills should not supplant the value of creativity or music-making, and that there are non-technical ways to be a good drummer, it feels like the bar for “practice room hounds”/”technical aptitude” has been raised.

One example is the near-ubiquity of one-handed 16th notes.

They’re certainly not “new”. Harvey Mason, Mike Clark, Tony Williams, Lenny White, Clyde Stubblefield, etc. all knew their way around some one-handed 16ths. But the way music has evolved made them a mainstay of modern drums, and now practically every “good technical” drummer can do them.

Ditto with things like 8ths with the hats, something Tony Williams made famous, and people like Lenny White, Billy Cobham, Steve Gadd, Weckl, Vinnie, Dennis Chambers, Gary Husband, etc injected into the lexicon.

And ditto with 3 other skills.

In this fairly-exhaustive video, I’ll not only outline the “5 essential skills for a modern advanced drummer”; I’ll also show you how to approach them, and even link to deeper videos where it’s appropriate.

And disclaimer again - don’t fret if (a) this style of playing doesn’t interest you - that’s perfectly valid, or if (b) you’re working your way up to this stuff, but aren’t there yet. These skills take a long time.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this lesson!

George Kollias - The Death Metal "Native" Who Loves Jazz

Practically everybody I feature on the channel has some “twists and turns” to their personality. If had assumed Nile’s George Kollias, one of the innovators of the “speed metal” style of drumming that prizes double kick chops, odd meters, and “blast beats” with a stopwatch, was one-dimensional in either his approach to drums or teaching, I would have been wrong.

George studied jazz in college with the great Yannis Stavropoulos, and says his favorite thing to practice in between learning music for tours with his band is jazz fusion. And he’s good at it too. (Here’s an example.)

George has also said things in interviews that made me think he’d be interesting to talk to - for instance the anecdote that people are always asking him in clinics how to make their left foot as fast as their right when playing double-kick, and that George openly considers this approach asinine, since the left foot will be playing 10 percent of the time, so why not just get good at what you actually need to do. This sent the 8020 “real one” radar to full-tilt.

In this interview, George and I chat about approaches to practice, whether he found the drums easy, how he divides his time between metal and fusion, his “natty” philosophy to playing the drums (a big deal in metal circles), and how he prevents injury when playing so hard for so long.

I have no doubt you’ll enjoy this thoughtful conversation on drums, philosophy, and life, with the drummer from Nile, one of the fastest, loudest, and odd-meterish metal bands of the 2000s, whose new single is called The Underworld Awaits Us All.

5* "Secret" Reasons Larnell Lewis Sounds So Good

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Finding amazing licks, stylistic choices, and approaches to typify Larnell Lewis’ playing is not difficult. It’s finding stuff that hasn’t been done-to-death that’s the challenge.

To add to it, there are certain things you have to include; otherwise the people will be mad.

So I did my best.

Larnell is one of the most lauded drummers - in my corner of the woods at least - of our time. But how well do you really know his drumming?

In this video, as we did so-far with Keith Carlock and Louis Cole, we attempt to uncover what’s right beneath the surface. Did you know, for example, that Larnell makes some pretty unconventional tuning decisions for a drummer of his era?

Do you know why his improvisation sounds “similar but different” to other drummers of this era?

Or maybe you just want a step-by-step assembling some of the “flashiest” things he does in solos. Whatever you’re here for, if you’re a Larnell stan like I am, I’ve got you.

Hope you enjoy this one!

Stan Bicknell on Creating A Life Around The Drums

It’s fitting that two weeks after hearing from Chris Turner, a man with one of the most whimsical, intuitive approaches to drums I’ve ever encountered, we encounter one Stan Bicknell, who’s built a brand around a mindful, deliberate, disciplined approach to the drums, and to architecting a life around it.

Stan wowed audiences with his appearance on Drumeo 5 years ago. Around this time, his touring career was taking off. But after the birth of his child, Stan made the decision to put his life front-and-center, move back to his native New Zealand, and design a role for drums, drum practice, drum teaching, and drum performance, that served his life goals.

Stan’s story resonated with me, because I made a similar decision around a decade ago, when I decided to start the 8020 channel. (I should say, I wasn’t turning down touring opportunities.) Speaking to Stan was a great “meeting of the minds”, because we’ve read many of the same books, and thought along the same lines.

It’s just that he’s doing practically all of it better than I am.

Which inspires an adage - “find the person who’s doing what you want to do better than you are, and draw inspiration from them.”

Stan is like the Qui-Gon Jinn of the drums, with his disciplined practice routines, mindfulness, goal-setting, and integration between drums and life. And it shows in his playing. Stan is almost 100% self-taught, which is to say he emulated his drum heroes like Weckl and Vinnie largely without teachers as intermediaries, and while he wouldn’t recommend that for everybody, all that extra work left him with some revised first-principles.

He also coaches drummers in not-only the instrument, but in life-satisfaction, and, as the episode title says, building a life around the drums.

I hope you’ll find this discussion as fascinating as I did.