Self Taught Drummer? You Should Watch This

Today's video starts with a counterintuitive truth - not every drummer needs drum lessons.

And not every drummer who might benefit from lessons needs them at every point in their development.

This may surprise you coming from a "drum coach", but the truth is I see two periods when some drummers can really benefit from having an expert check out their playing and save them "trial-and-error" steps...

...and in many other periods, they might be better off saving their money, or joining a membership site for courses, but working them on their own.

The specific periods in which I would recommend lessons to most drummers are...

...close to the beginning, when an expert can help show you the shortest path to basic proficiency and save you ending up in "local optimums" - I.e. with habits you have to unlearn in able to progress...

...and in the upper-intermediate stage, when most of the "easy wins" are out of the way so you need more specific mentorship, but you're not so advanced you can see clearly where to go and most of the time playing feels easy to you.

But what about drummers who are good candidates for being "career-long"'self-taught?

For that, if you're tremendously disciplined and organized, but also gentle with yourself and able to detach emotionally from the hard parts and see them just as "part of the process", you might be a good candidate.

We hear from some past podcast guests who embodied some of the qualities I'd consider important.

And finally, I end the lesson with some advice to drummers who choose to "go it alone".

Who should try to succeed as a self-taught drummer? And when? And if you are, what's the best way to do it?

We'll discuss all of that in today's video. Hope you enjoy!

Can You Still Enjoy Drums If You’re Not Going Pro?

A lot of drum stuff these days is like "secrets of the pros", "how to sound more like the pros", "how to go from intermediate to pro"...

And that leaves a BIG segment of drummers out.

The biggest, actually! What if you don't want to go pro?

What if you're not trying to play in stadiums, or go on tour, or “break out”?

A couple of weeks ago I did a video called "What if you've ever thought 'I suck at drums'". In it, I was tackling stuff we all face like imposter syndrome and being overly self-critical, and how to break out of that.

One comment I got on that video hit me between the eyes. I’ll paraphrase: “For those of us who don’t want to go pro, can we still enjoy drums?”

There’s way more context and emotional content in the full quote, which I share in the video, but wow! I hate to see people suffering because they’re comparing themselves to the best-drummers-of-all-time, genuinely not knowing if their lot in life is to feel crappy every time they sit down to play.

So I recorded this video more or less off the cuff as a response.

Of course you can. But the interesting part is why.

First off, comparing ourselves to social media is bad - but not for the reason (in my opinion) you might suspect. It’s not only that we see “better” drummers and find our playing wanting by comparison. It’s that social media skews our very definition of “good”.

Next, I hadn’t quite realized how big a tribe of “high-level amateurs” exists in drumming, and how good these folks can become, and how much they can enjoy drumming.

Then it hit me: high-level amateurs exist in practically any activity.

Not all good skateboarders are Tony Hawk. Not all good skiers are Bode Miller. Not all good golfers are Tiger, not all good cyclists are Tadej Pogecar, etc. But the difference is that drums are much more solitary. Sure, we play in bands from time to time, but we don’t play drums in groups with other drummers the same way we do golf, tennis, racquetball, jiujitsu, etc.

So we don’t see this “hidden tribe” of drummers.

Finally, I play an old classic - the “threshold effect”. Yes, you’ll always be “reaching” for the next level, or chasing challenges you find interesting. But you do reach a level above which drumming feels good for the majority of the time.

So I send this out to all the drummers who want to feel good playing, but have no interest in being the next Larnell or Weckl, and are wondering if there’s a brighter day available to them.

It gets better.

Hope you enjoy!

The Cheat Code for Faster Drum Fills (Really)

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

What are you supposed to say when every title you try sounds like 2015-era clickbait, but in your mind you actually, really solved, or partially solved this problem.

Where I come from, if they’re gonna call you clickbait either way, might as well get the viewz.

It’s in that spirit that I present today’s lesson - The Cheat Code for Faster Drum Fills. And it’s based on a pretty simple idea.

There’s the “old fashioned” way to increase your speed. Have your lexicon of improv vocabulary you’re practicing, and simply “bump up” the metronome a little every day. Then, something something, you’ll be able to play faster fills.

This isn’t even complete on its face.

“Why would we assume tempo is the only parameter we can play with,” an astute student in a drum lesson in that smoke-stained back room at Anthony’s Guitar Shop on East Main might ask…

…prompting his teacher to respond “SHUT UP, BILLY”.

But of course Billy is right. In software - I’ve heard on podcasts - there's the saying “you can have it cheap, you can have it bug-free, and you can have it soon. Choose two.”

It’s a pithy way to express a system with at least 3 inputs. And I’m sure we can come up with more inputs than just tempo for drum fills.

How about something like kinesthetic familiarity?

Or, the “kicker” in this case, number of things you try to play?

Take your normal 16th note improv speed. If I asked you to “double time” everything, you’d probably find it hard, right?

But what if I gave you only one lick, and asked you to double-time that?

To restate the software development adage - “you can play it fast, you can play it clean, or you can play all your vocabulary - choose two.”

By compromising on the “things to remember”, could we unlock some tempo gains?

Well, it turns out, from my experimentation at least, that we can.

That’s unsurprising. But what might blow your mind is that once we’ve added one lick to the double time regime, we can add more…

…and the time it takes to master them will, by my contention, still be less than if you’d just practiced everything linearly.

Hence “the wormhole method.”

Phew. Anyway, far from “clickbait”, I’m doing my best here to posit a genuine alternative for the accepted way to get faster.

Hope you enjoy!

Diego Joaquin Ramirez - I Only Practice When I Want To

There are a few drummers who, when they drop new clips, I’m like stop everything.

One is Noah Fuerbringer. Another is this week’s guest for the third-ever in person podcast, Diego Ramirez.

Hailing from Ireland, and veteran of Berklee and Jazz Ahead, Diego is one of the most creative drummers I’m listening to. He’s played with Cartoons, Jonathan Scales, Marc Cary, and Jeremy Pelt. His own group, which recently released an album, is called Estratos.

It’s hard to describe his drumming exactly. It sounds “of the moment”, but also deeply individual - as if he’s pulling from a wider palette of musical choices than many of us.

Because Diego lives here in New York, I had the opportunity to host him in person, in the studio. Which went off almost without a hitch, except that our mics did not like the fan, so the audio, while clear, sounds a little like we’re speaking in the wind. Seated behind the drums, Diego was invited to play if he felt like it, or just chat, and decided he preferred to chat.

Almost from the word “go”, Diego fascinated me with his ethos. “I only practice when I want to practice” he says. I told him later of my “cave” construct, and that he reminded me of guests like Chris Turner - people who seem to fall in love anew with the drums every day.

But Diego’s background is important. Born in Ireland to a family of musicians, Diego was surrounded by music from early childhood. (His dad, he says, was in a semi-famous band in Guatemala in the ‘70s.) Which might explain why his relationship with music in later life - which is to say his teens and 20s - was astonishingly uncomplicated.

Practice, rather than the process of unearthing and machining weaknesses it is for many of us, was like an enchanting journey of discovery for Diego. He describes hearing Tony Williams on Nefertiti, and becoming obsessed with duplicating his sound.

Sound is a filter through which Diego views a lot of drumming, including improvisation. He doesn’t think in shapes or idioms, he says. Only in terms of creating the sound he hears in his head.

The results of that approach are evident. He has a style unencumbered by comparison to other drummers, that shows influence, but is almost impervious to trends.

I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and I hope you’ll check out his band, Estratos, when you’re done.