Jonathan Barber - Tell a Story

It’s been about 5 weeks since Jonathan Barber joined me live at 8020 HQ.

In re-listening to the interview, one thing popped out:

In a back-and-forth about flow, Barber says (and I’m paraphrasing), “I tell my students to commit to a ‘mistake’. Don’t shy away from it. Embrace that serendipity.”

I’m listening to this just days after hearing, for the umpteenth time, the famous Tony Williams clinic in which he says “I didn’t want to hope; I wanted to know it would work.”

“Oooooh,” I thought. “The plot thickens.”

I love then great players say seemingly-contradictory things, because unraveling how they can both be right reveals a lot about the topography of their field.

How could Tony and Jonathan both be right?

Maybe Tony was talking about technique, whereas Jon was describing ideas.

Maybe one is appropriate advice for beginners (i.e. “to you it looks like chaos, but I’ve worked hard to be able to harness that chaos” - Tony, paraphrased), and the other is for more advanced players (i.e. “once you have basic control over your ideas, you can miss opportunities by being too perfectionistic”).

It caused me to remember some of my own experience teaching, and giving different advice for different situations. To one student with decent control, who voiced a fear of “messing up”, I recommended he “try to mess up”. The idea, I suppose, being that if we pre-defang that fear, you neutralize it, and then we can focus on more fine-grained things.

To others, I’ll come from more of the Tony angle - guard rails are important, because you want to build outward from a lexicon of ideas that, to apr Tony, you’re pretty sure will work.

Regardless, I found Jonathan a fun thought-partner in describing many aspects of his approach to the drums, and the right person to answer a bunch of questions I’d been wrestling with.

He helped me have more confidence in following my own ideas, instead of feeling like I need to learn every chop I see.

His was a welcome voice in saying he aims to impress his bandmates, not other drummers.

At any rate, intros last: Jonathan popped on my radar a couple of years ago in a video from a live performance, in which he struck me as one of the more original-sounding young jazz drummers. To learn that his mentor, Eric McPherson, was another fearless innovator and progenitor of his own unique lane, was no surprise.

It’s this approach that Jonathan describes bringing to his own teaching, and it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to pick his brain.

Hope you enjoy!

6 Underrated Drummers Who Should Be Household Names in 2026

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

This is a video I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but couldn’t find a good way to tell the story.

The subject of “underrated” players is familiar to any music aficionado: “no, but you really have to hear so-and-so, sooo underrated” is practically a cliche at music school dorm-room parties.

But in my searches, I haven’t been able to find much on it for modern drummers. And that’s a shame.

Larnell Lewis tells the story of his rise to drum-stardom as one of a chance meeting. Michael League happened to catch his performance in a Toronto club and like it, then Larnell sat in with Snarky Puppy a few times, and it just so happened that, the following month, League had the We Like it Here session booked, and needed a drummer to fill-in at the last minute. The rest is obviously history.

Carter Beauford was a “drummer’s drummer” in a fusion band before Dave Matthews plucked him from obscurity. Nate Smith was well-known in circles who also knew Chris Potter and Dave Holland, but nothing like the international brand ambassador he is today.

Which invites the obvious question, “what about everybody with tons of talent musical genius who DON’T get a lucky break?”

Or haven’t yet.

The six drummers I’m going to chronicle today are not “obscure”. They’re working players, with gigs. Some have substantial social media followings.

But, when you ask a New School student, in line for Nublu, or when I interview new students for my coaching program, there are the drummers who tend to come up - “legacy” folks like Nate, Thomas Pridgen, Nate Wood, JD Beck, Larnell, etc, “up-and-comers” like Jharis Yokley, Noah Fuerbringer, Roni Kaspi - and those conversations hardly ever include any of these six.

But, if there were any justice in the universe, they should.

To check my picks for 6 most underrated drummers of 2026, just watch the video.

Hope you enjoy!

The Real Reason You Can't Flow Around The Toms Like The Pros

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

The idea for this week’s video dawned on me when my (practice) roommate was out of town, and (as you do) I added an extra tom to the house kit to make a 5-piece.

I don’t think my hands are spectacular, but I like to think they’re pretty decent. And I’ve got a lot of experience flowing around the kit when it’s a 4-piece.

But all of a sudden, with that extra drum, it was like my hands regressed 5 years. I was getting tense, missing drums, hitting rims…

What gives?

This was my first clue that something more than simple hand speed is in effect when we see great “flow” drummers like Vinnie Colauita and Dennis Chambers - or modern greats like Gergo Borlai and Xavier Ware - fly around the toms as if the laws of physics didn’t exist.

If it’s only hand speed, try the experiment in the video - play a simple sticking pattern (as I outline) on the snare, and see what the speed limit is. Then, try to orchestrate it around the toms, with the same clarity, without missing or mis-hitting. If that’s hard, you might benefit from today’s lesson.

Proprioception. The awareness of where your body is in space. It’s what allows you to close your eyes and still touch your nose with your index fingers.

But I would argue there’s “drum proprioception” too. Memorizing deeply where all your drums are in space.

We may think we know - obviously we have eyes - but if we can’t play around the toms as fast as we can play on the snare, and/or if our speed and precision decreases when we add an extra drum, it’s not just hand speed.

No worries - the simple exercises in today’s video will get you started.

Hope you enjoy!

4 Modern Drum Ideas Most Drummers Miss

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Did you know that there are unique musical ideas modern drummers are “cooking up”, which could help add variety and flavor to your ideas today…

…that most drummers probably don’t know about?

I’m not talking about faster chops.

Nor am I talking about “Dilla everything”, or stacks, though both have their place.

I’m talking about some really unique approaches to the drums that aren’t hard to do - they’re just stuff you wouldn’t necessarily think of if you weren’t looking.

And they can be very musical - when used wisely.

For this video, we’ll draw from drummers from Xavier Ware (of thumbnail fame) to Adam Deitch, to Cleon Edwards and Dana Hawkins.

We’ll talk about what makes these 4 approaches unique - i.e. why it isn’t just the same old thing you’ve already seen - we’ll show you some basic examples, then we’ll show them in context and demonstrate some of the musical things you can do with them.

If you’ve seen some of the “non-chop”/”non-dilla” flavors of modern playing and wondered how to get some of that, or reached a “plateau” with your existing ideas, and need an injection of inspo, maybe one of these approaches is for you.

Hope you enjoy!