The Drum Technique Divide Hidden in Plain Sight

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Those of us who follow nutrition stuff may remember the paleo/keto thing from a few years back, and the fact that you’d often hear experts espousing the “calorie balance” approach on podcasts with those from the “good calories/bad calories” camp on podcasts, but rarely-if-ever did anyone ask the question “what does the world look like if both are true”? (Until years later, and he ended up in the Epstein files. If you know you know.)

But have you noticed a similar divide in drum technique?

Look at Zack Grooves’ hands. Or Keith Carlock’s. Or Mike Mangini’s. Compared to Larnell Lewis, Matt Gatstka, Thomas Pridgen, Dennis Chambers, Vinnie, and plenty of other modern players, they seem “choked up” on the stick.

And it’s not hard to find instruction pointing to why. The “balance point”. Just search it and you’ll get hundreds of results. And we’ve all likely heard the rationale: there’s a theoretically-optimal point just behind the stick’s center of mass, where you get the most bounces “for free”. Farther forward, and the tip is “weightless” and doesn’t bounce at all. Farther back, and the stick becomes “top heavy”, and the bounce decays too quickly. This, of course, varies by the stick’s weight-distribution.

What these instructionals don’t explain is why anyone - indeed the majority of modern drummers (from my admittedly-anecdotal survey) - does it differently.

I wanted to find just one video that tried to situate both approaches in the same universe, explaining the tradeoffs.

Finding none, I decided to make that video.

The search for the truth sent me down a historical drum instruction rabbit hole - as you do…

And just when I thought I understood everything, an offhanded comment a student made on a coaching call blew the whole thing wide-open again, and also resolved the contradiction I couldn’t figure out: why some modern players who play with a lot of power still choose the “balance point” technique.

That’s all in the video. And we also had fun creating a “find your hold point” PDF to accompany it, which links out to…basically one video, but different time indices in that video.

Hope you enjoy!

[Podcast] Gavin Harrison - I'm an Ideas Guy

When I first started the podcast, back in 2023, I had a shortlist of drummers I wanted to interview. Richard Spaven Thomas Pridgen, Nate Wood, a few others, and today’s guest.

I was a late-convert to Gavin, but I understood immediately what my students saw.

And ironically, if he’d followed the lowest-risk path by continuing to do studio work, he may never have made the career-change that’s the primary reason most of us have heard of him: joining Porcupine Tree.

I didn’t even have to ask Gavin about that, because he volunteered it during one of our exchanges: studio work, for Gavin, was a steady paycheck. It was good, predictable conditions. It was mostly setting his own schedule. Band life, at the scale Porcupine Tree was at in those days, meant van life. Schlepping from one club to another. Late nights. Less money. No guarantee anything would work out.

And yet…it was never even a question the first time Gavin heard them and jammed with them. And of course the rest is history. Between Porcupine Tree and his more recent music with Pinapple Thief, Gavin not only cemented his own reputation, but participated directly in the creation and performance of records worth of music people are going to remember for generations to come.

Ever the practice nerd, I also wanted to hear how Gavin approaches creative work on the drums, in those weeks between tours and learning/writing music for bands. That question sparked an interesting (to me) exchange about utilizing our subconscious to retrieve ideas, then (as he does, and you should 100% listen to him) recording/writing them down, as an alternative to “top down” planned practice routines.

This, in turn, sparked a meta-convo about the journey within oneself to find creative direction, and a wry observation that if Gavin’s “cave” period (when he used to do mammoth overnight practice sessions) had occurred after the invention of smart-phones, he possibly wouldn’t have become the player he is today.

And of course we speak about his observation about my video on his lick, which also sparks a fun side-journey.

I hope you enjoy this exchange with the great Gavin as much as I did.

Gavin Harrison Said I Was Wrong About His Famous Fill

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

After 3 years of running the podcast, I finally got the opportunity to talk to one of my drum heroes, Gavin Harrison.

That complete podcast will publish soon, but after dropping knowledge bombs for the better part of 55 minutes, Gavin surprised me with something I did not expect. (I guess that’s kind of the definition of “surprise”.)

He said he had a question for me.

Turns out, he’d seen the video I did 3 years ago on his fill on the live version of Bonnie The Cat. Ok - very flattering.

And he thought I’d missed a trick. Doh.

Naturally, I asked him to tell me more. And his answer uncovered something fascinating - to me at least - about what he’s consciously focussed on when playing, and what’s buried at the subconscious layer.

It’s not that he never thinks while he’s filling, but that he thinks of the overview - the big picture. So in this video we’ll get into what that big picture is, because it’s an organizing principle behind a lot of how he thinks of drum improvisation.

Just just as fascinating is what’s happening underneath.

Because I could think “big gesture culminating with a snare note” and just let my hands and feet go, and it would not sound like Gavin Harrison. In that respect, it’s not that the underlying mechanics - the stuff you practice to be able to think gesturally and have it sound clean and “good” - aren’t important. It’s more that in my original lesson I was too focussed on the mechanical layer, to the exclusion of the inspiration and musical context.

Phew!

Because you’re on the list, you’re also getting the “director’s cut” of this video, with a full extra 5-minutes explaining how I’d apply my “clave flow” system to creating the underlying muscle memory to “let go” and still hit figures clearly and cleanly - not necessarily like Gavin, but like yourself.

Hope you enjoy!

This Pro Drummer TOLD Us The Secret and Noone Listened

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

It took me till almost a decade out of music school before I finally understood the significance of the words Nas drummer Haze Amaze tossed out a few weeks ago like it was an aside.

Two things exist at once: we hear our favorite drummers doing this right, and sometimes they even talk about it. But we still don’t do anything about it.

Why?

I’m talking about the quotation right in the thubnail: “without them flamming”.

I think Haze Amaze dropped that like it was so obvious it didn’t require further commentary. Like it wasn’t probably the single most fundamental issue affecting drummers trying to become great.

And to say it is simple: when two limbs are playing together, make sure they’re really together.

Then we’ll go and practice, and work on pretty advanced stuff, and we won’t take Haze’s advice.

Why?

The answer hints at the limitations of verbal communication, and adaptation-over-time to suboptimal stuff. We hear “don’t flam”, and somehow we encode it as “sure, don’t flam, but as a third-order priority/cherry-on-top once I’ve mastered all this other stuff.”

We also get “used to” the feeling, so we don’t necessarily clock it unless we record ourselves.

And I think there’s a third reason. A word that’s ubiquitous in drum education. Say it with me: “independence”. A word that subtlely reinforces a mental image of limbs in parallel tunnels, arriving at the destination at more-or-less the same time, instead of understanding that “independence” is a mirage. A gestalt of a series of micro-instances in which limbs are either occurring together or not.

As another great drummer, Matt Wilson (#iykyk) said…well, he said exactly that!

“Your limbs are either playing together or they’re not.”

We think of a samba as a bass drum “part”, and a hand “part”, almost as if they’re floating free of one-another, when in reality, a conventional samba has 8 kick notes and 7 snare ones, 3 times they’re supposed to sound exactly together, and 4 times they’re not.

Through that lens, we view a samba as a literal coordination problem, and we’d likely zero in on those 3 “instances” with a spotlight, making sure they’re “perfectly” together.

But great drummers rarely mention this. The same way David Foster Wallace’ fish wondered what water was. From Louis Cole to Ringo, they’ve all just played without flamming for so long it no longer occurs to them it might be hard for some players.

But Haze called it out. So we should listen.