groove is not “magic” - it’s a set of skills you can build - but nobody’s given it to you yet

we’ve heard for decades that groove is the most important thing on the drums. so how come so few drummers do it well?

If I played you a “bad” groove, and asked you to tell me exactly what to change to make it funky and danceable, could you?

We can all tell when something is grooving. It makes us want to dance, to bob our heads. It's like magic.

We can even capture lightening in a bottle sometimes when we sit down to play. But it feels like luck.

Change the drum kit, or the room acoustics, the style of music, of the tuning of the snare...

...let alone invite people into the room and play in public, or on camera...

...or try to play with musicians who aren't 100% solid.

You know where I'm going. That magical groove you "tuned into" can go away, and you can't find it again.

All of a sudden it feels like there are a million details you have to keep your attention on...and any one of them could be the solution. But you don't know the precise things to change to make your beat groove. Like trying to find a weak TV signal with rabbit ears for my gen-xers, or stumbling around in the dark for anybody younger.

And this can lead to a sense of trepidation when we play.

We kind of cross our fingers and hope the "groove muse" will be there, and if it is, we're really reluctant to change anything, like moving to the cymbal or playing a fill. What if we fall off the groove and can't get it back?

At around the time Instagram was starting to get big, everybody realized something at once:

You look at great players like Nate Smith, Steve Jordan, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, or Corey Fonville and it seems so easy for them. They can sit down totally cold, and immediately tune into the groove. Why can't we do it?

And you might be wondering why this is such an issue for so many drummers.

After all, aren't there a literal Library of Congress worth of drum instructional materials out there by now?

Entire bookcases of drum books...

...lifetimes worth of youtube, instagram, and tiktok videos.

So why aren't the cures to shaky, inconsistent groove widely known?

Well, one is. The cult of Just Feel It.

“just feel it” - the biggest myth in drums

Who's heard this before? "You just need to move your body. You just need to feel it more deeply."

This is a perennial classic in my youtube comments.

But you already know the problem. If the key was feeling it, why are so many drummers still having trouble playing solid, consistent, danceable grooves?

The problem is "feel", which is a proxy for trusting your intuition, is only a good tool if your intuition is well-calibrated.

Here are some fun examples - I love these:

• After 7 years of practicing jiujitsu, I can finally start to feel when I'm in danger and when I'm safe. When my opponent is leaving me a hole, and when I need to be patient.
  
  Imagine telling a white belt just walking on the mats to "feel it".

• A skilled pilot has instincts that tell her in advance if something's not right. "I don't like the color of this cloud on the weather screen." "I don't like the look of this approach. Something feels off." "I feel like we should take extra fuel to this destination."
  
  Imagine telling a flight student on day 1 to trust their instincts and "just feel it".

Or a day-1 medical student.

I could go on. And of course, some instincts are going to be correct. Don't get hit in martial arts. Don't go down too fast in that cesna. If somebody feels sick that's probably bad. But just as many novice intuitions will lead you astray. That's why you build expertise. So you can trust 95% of your instincts.

Which leads us to the central insight this course is built around:

Groove is not magic. It's a suite of skills. Skills which, like martial arts, piloting, or medicine, can be taught.

a very little bit of my story

I'd been trying to "feel it" for a couple of decades when I discovered something latin musicians call masacote. The matrix of subdivisions a band creates with their parts. Which is either grooving or not.

That led me to listen to my playing in a new way. All of a sudden I could hear in higher resolution. And I started closing the gaps using metronome exercises.

I'd been trying to "feel it" for decades when I finally saw enough great players up close that I realized a studio mix is not going to make you clean. You have to be clean within the kit. Rimshots, touch, not flamming, etc

Once I had that in my mind, I could close the gap.

These couple of insights, and the work I did, closed the gap more in a few years than I'd managed to close it in decades of "feeling it".

And that's what we're going to do in the groove course.

Here's how.

introducing The groove course

The first and only step-by-step course that hands you the tools to make your grooves more solid, consistent, and danceable - instead of “just feeling it” - so you can feel confident every time you sit down to play.

The Groove Course takes all the lessons I learned iterating toward playing better grooves and better pocket on my own, plus coaching students for years, plus the very recent lessons from trying a bunch of exercises from the pilot group, and seeing what worked and what didn't...

…and approaches is from first principles.

the principles of groove

Step one: hearing.

In order to play better, and become better, we have to hear better.

So we work simply to hear time more accurately. First, away from the kit, then at the kit.

Step 2: playing what we hear.

Even if we're theoretically hearing things in the right place, we need the muscle memory to make the kit make the right sounds.

So we work to take what's in your head and make it sound clean and clear on the kit. And we go WAAAAAY back to basics. Because a lot of people think they're playing cleanly, and they're really not.

We also introduce you to grooves and styles inspired by the greats, so you're getting some vocabulary.

Then...

Step 3: improvising with our ideas.

It's all well and good to memorize some exercises.

But in the real world we have to play beats off the top of our heads, and even vary them for different parts of the song. Not to mention taking the occasional fill without it throwing everything off.

So a big part of the course throughout, but especially in the later modules, is being creative, and having space to innovate and improvise within the grooves.

my promise with the groove course

ALL of this is in the service of one thing: giving you that suite of skills like the martial artist, like the pilot, like the med student...

...so that you can start to trust your instincts. And when you"feel it", your feeling will actually help guide you toward better grooves.

And that's my promise with this course. If you complete the course material, you will be WAY better able to take that not-so-good groove, and make it sound good, by knowing - nay FEELING - what to tweak.

And you won't feel so much like you're trying to tune in the muse when you sit down to play.

You'll have confidence that the groove will come out of you consistently.

Will this course teach you every groove under the sun or make you into Harvey Mason overnight? Of course not. You'll have to take the skills you learn here and keep getting reps and building on them.

But it will give you a couple of necessary breakthroughs to change the trajectory of your playing.

Let's look at how we'll do that.

inside the groove course

The groove course has over 80 separate videos, organized into 5 modules that grab you by the hand and take you step-by-step through the key insights and exercises to fine-tune your groove instincts.

It sequences the learning so that you're only working on what you can handle at the time, then builds little-by-little on the skills you acquire throughout.

how the course is organized

• Detailed Explanations - For every skill or concept we introduce, there's a video talking you through it...
  ...then exercise pages with videos of me demonstrating the exercises, and transcriptions you can either view on the page - which I recommend - or download to your device or to print.

• Chapter Reviews - At the end of every module is a practice summary, which displays all the exercises and transcriptions in one place, and even offers suggestions for places you might want to record yourself to check your progress.

• Learn on-Demand - And this course is self-paced, and on-demand, which means you can choose your own pace through the material.

Check out a sample video from the course

This video is from module 4, and introduces a concept I call “proto-funky-drummer”

table of contents - here’s everything the course covers

Module 1 - Fundamentals

• The Principles of Groove - Watch this before doing any exercises

• Intro to Clean Hands and Feet - the secret to getting way more out of what you’re already doing

• Clean Hands Exercises - Basic - with video demonstrations and downloadable transcriptions

• Intro to Time Keeping - A new approach to an 80/20 classic

• Intro to Foot Coordination - The “hidden” groove hack - getting your feet together

• Foot Coordination Exercises - with video demonstrations and downloadable transcriptions

• Hand/Foot Coordination Exercises - with video demonstrations and downloadable transcriptions

• Kick Grid - Basic - with video demonstrations and downloadable transcriptions

• Intro to Beat Improv - We start improvising with the concepts in the very first module

• Beat Improv Exercises

• Module 1 Practice Summary - This covers all the exercises and transcriptions in one convenient place

Module 2 - Becoming a Time and Coordination Powerhouse

• Intro to Module 2 - A concise summary of the how and why of everything to come

• Intro to Gap Click Strategies - Continuing our “easy way”/”stair step” into offbeat metronome exercises

• Module 2 Gap Click Exercises

• Clean Hands Exercises - Metronome - Combining our timekeeping with the basic coordination exercises from Module 1

• Intro to Skipped Notes - The first “stair step” toward playing “funky drummer” style beats

• Module 2 Skipped Note Exercises

• Ghost Note Exercise - Beginner - The first step toward playing funky drags like Nate Smith or Harvey Mason

• Intro to Module 2 Beat Improv

• Module 2 Beat Improv Exercises

• Module 2 Practice Summary - This covers all the exercises and transcriptions in one convenient place

Module 3 - Finding Your Inner “Funky Drummer”

• Intro to Module 3

• Intro to 16th Offbeats - A continuation of the metronome progression

• 16th Offbeat Intro Lessons

• Kick Grid - Metronome Offbeats

• Skipped Note Exercise With Metronome

• Proto Funky Drummer Intro - We take our first step into “funky drummer” grooves

• Proto Funky Drummer Exercises - Basic

• Proto Funky Drummer Exercises - Adv Metronome

• Ghost Note Exercise 2 - Intermediate

• Module 3 Beat Improv Exercises

• Module 3 Practice Summary

Module 4 - Putting it All Together

• Intro to Module 4

• Intro to Time Tendencies - A look at the common places we rush and drag

• Time Tendencies Exercises

• Intro to Funky Drummer Exercises - The next stage in the progression

• Funky Drummer Beats - Basic

• Funky Drummer Beats - Adv Metronome

• Ghost Note Exercise 3 - Advanced

• Module 4 Beat Improv

• Module 4 Practice Summary

Module 5 - Extending the Language - Linear and Half Note Applications

• Intro to Module 5

• Intro to Linear Beats

• Linear Exercises - Basic

• Linear Exercises - Metronome Offbeats

• Linear Switching Exercises

• Intro to Hat Coordination (From the Group Coaching Intensive)

• Hat Coordination Exercises (From the Group Coaching Intensive)

• Intro to Half Note Beats

• Half Note Beat Exercises

• Half Note Switching

• Module 5 Beat Pure Improv

• Module 5 Practice Summary

What’s the investment?

Since last year, 3 enrollments worth of drummers have invested over $2000 to join programs like my group coaching, which is structured to be 12 weeks long, and includes personal coaching from me. And that’s a great choice for a drummer who wants personalized attention. But I wanted to build something accessible to way more drummers.

I wanted the Groove Course to be so affordable it’s a no-brainer.

That’s why I made a self-directed course you can do at your own pace, so I’m able to offer it for a very low price:

The Groove Course is just $197 for lifetime access.

But this is not just your average “here are a bunch of exercises; good luck” course, where I leave you to your own devices.

Instead, I wanted the course to feel like a “virtual concierge” - like I’m taking you by the hand and walking you through the material.

That’s why the Groove Course has a whole extra layer of intros and explainers.

For every single concept, I made a video telling why it’s important, how to practice it, and how it fits in the overall framework of the course.

So you can enroll with confidence that I’ve made it super easy to follow, and very hard to get lost. In fact, I’ll guarantee it.

my guarantee

I’m pretty sure this is the best course I’ve ever done.

That’s why I’m happy to guarantee it for 90 days.

Which means you can try the groove course risk free.

If it’s not the best self-directed resource for improving your pocket you’ve ever tried, just write us an email at nate@8020drummer.com, and we’ll refund you, no-questions asked.

ready to see what the groove course can do for you?

This course is for you if…

You’re tired of “hoping” the beats will groove every time you sit down, but you’re not completely sure.

You’re afraid to try new things, play fills or “mix it up”, because what if you lose the groove.

You’ve tried some/all of the conventional stuff over the years, like “just feeling it”, or “playing for the song”, or “keeping it simple”, and not only hasn’t it worked, you’ve always had a vague sense “there has to be a better way.”

imagine yourself in this course

Over 80 separate videos, organized into 5 modules that grab you by the hand and take you step-by-step through the key insights and exercises to fine-tune your groove instincts.

Sequenced learning, so that you're only working on what you can handle at the time, then builds little-by-little on the skills you acquire throughout.

Detailed Explanations - For every skill or concept we introduce, there's a video talking you through it...
...then exercise pages with videos of me demonstrating the exercises, and transcriptions you can either view on the page - which I recommend - or download to your device or to print.

Chapter Reviews - At the end of every module is a practice summary, which displays all the exercises and transcriptions in one place, and even offers suggestions for places you might want to record yourself to check your progress.

Learn on-Demand - And this course is self-paced, and on-demand, which means you can choose your own pace through the material.

If you’re ready to arm yourself with new tools, and start feeling confident every time you sit down to play, I invite you to join now, risk-free.