The Trouble with "Faster Hands" in Isolation.

So it's official. The 80/20 Drummer is "selling out". At least a little. I put a contact form on the website asking for feedback, and a comment I get frequently is people want to increase their hand and foot speed. So I'm currently testing a Fast Hands video to see if there's enough interest to go into production. You can be sure that I won't approach it the way others do - I'll try to find a way to make people better players under the auspices of giving them "faster hands" if it kills me.

What's my problem with faster hands?

I found two great video examples.

Here's a guy with faster hands than mine. (Skip to 0:13)

Pretty impressive, right? So, just for fun, I went to his YouTube channel to see how he applies those blazing single strokes to his playing. He should be a beast, right?

Ummmm, not-so-much, it turns out. (Start at 0:37)

So this is my customer base. People who want faster hands because they think it will make them better, when really what they need to improve is their time and feel, then - and only then - the pipeline between their ideas and limbs: the "upload speed" of their vocabulary - the true secret to "faster hands".

I think most people who Think they want faster hands want to be able to play stuff like this.

Skip to to the 1:15 mark if you're short on time.

Trust me, single strokes are the far and away the least important reason Tony Royster sounds the way he does. In fact, someone with far less technique than tony could transcribe this solo and play it to about 85% proficiency.

Don't believe me? Check this out.

Skip to 1:30

This is a transcription of an Eric Harland solo. Though she does an admirable job and will someday be a great player, it's clear she doesn't have the same technical facility as Eric.

But if you think I'm disparaging her, I'm not. In fact, just the opposite. With her amazing achievement, she proves raw hand speed is the least important part of executing a great drum solo. She did what all good players do - focused on the most important tools to learn that solo, and double paradiddles on pillows wasn't one of them.

Like the spike after the touchdown, faster hands will get you the "ooh aah" factor once you've taken care of business, but it's meaningless without the touchdown.

Stay tuned folks. 80/20 will attempt to deconstruct the real way to play impressive solos.

Money Back Guarantee

Hey guys I want to remove all the risk from this purchase.

I know - you've probably watched a video or two on youtube, or followed an ad and watched several of the video trailers, so you have a reasonable idea what's in the videos.

Still, I know my audience - motivated musicians with limited time looking for only the things that work - because I'm a member of my audience. That's why I want you to feel confident I'm going to deliver the value you need.

Hence the guarantee - if this series doesn't improve your playing in three months, I'll refund your money.

And here's why I'm confident offering it - there's nothing like this series anywhere. If you take a lesson with Steve Smith or John Riley, they'll likely touch on some of these concepts. If you shadowed Marcus Gilmore or Tony Royster and observed how they actually practice instead of what they say at clinics (practice your rudiments, practice with the metronome on "one", start every routine with a warmup, etc.), you'd likely observe them using these methods. As I say in the videos, it's not rocket science, and my former teacher John Riley has covered a lot of ground as far as supplying useful content and valuable wisdom with his books and videos, and was part of the inspiration for this series.

But there were no existing videos delving into practice science and psychology in quite the way I do.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But it represents the distillation of twelve-and-counting years of performing and teaching in New York, and I'm very proud of the end result.

So download and rest easy. If you're not completely satisfied with the education in these videos, you have three months to get your money refunded.

Audition Pre-Screen Hacks 1 - Manhattan School of Music

Hey All. You may have seen the video on Youtube, but wanted to give you the in-depth on hacking the pre-screening process for MSM.

First, here's the video, in case you missed it.

Here are the specific audition requirements, direct from the website- 

Required piece (must be first on the recording): the 12-Bar Blues piece, Billie's Bounce in medium tempo. Must include playing time for at least four choruses behind a soloist and at least two choruses of drum solo.

Perform a medium tempo selection or a ballad demonstrating ability to perform with brushes.

Perform two additional selections in different jazz styles, moods, and tempos. Each selection must include at least three choruses of playing time behind a soloist and at least two choruses of trading fours, eights, and/or soloing.

Original compositions should not be included.

 

In the video I discuss what I consider the most optimal way to perform Billie's Bounce (though it's by no means the only way), and suggest using Thad Jones' A Child Is Born as the medium tempo/ballad brush tune, especially if you're auditioning for Juilliard. Finally, Seven Steps, up, with brushes, creates good contrast in your audition repertoire, crosses off one of the "differentiators" (fast tempos with brushes), and fulfills a requirement for the Monk Institute. 

 

Stay tuned, as we cover, Juilliard, NYU, the New School, and the Monk Institute. 

What is 80/20?

I allude to it in the videos, but what was so important about 80/20 that I decided to name my instructional platform after it?

First, let's define 80/20 properly. In the video I say it's a principle by which a small amount of input is responsible for a lot of output, and that's true, but let's add some context.

Think about averages.

In the US, if you were industrious, you could compute the average height. You could compute the average income. But let's look deeper. How close to the average are how many people? In statistics class, we learned the "bell curve", which assumes the closer you get to the average, the higher the numbers. In practice this should mean that if the average height of adults is five feet, and height has a "standard distribution", there will be TONs of people that are 4'11" and 5'1", fewer that are 4'6" and 5'6", and still fewer four and five-footers.

Many systems follow standard distribution, but some do not.

Imagine a different arrangement of height. Imagine, for instance, that the overwhelming majority of people were only three feet tall, and a tiny minority were one hundred feet tall. If the numbers were just right you could still arrive at an average of five feet, but with a very different distribution from the bell curve. This is called Power Law distribution. It's also called 80/20.

Too abstract? It turns out many systems in nature don't follow a standard distribution at all, but instead an 80/20, or even more extreme (95/5) power law distribution. Income, in real life, is distributed as such, with a small minority making the bulk the wealth. Crime often follows 80/20, with a small number of offenders responsible for an outsized proportion of offenses.

And personal productivity, learning, and practice are far more likely to follow 80/20 than standard distribution. Everything you do in your life doesn't have relatively equal effect. A few things you're doing have tremendous effect, while many others have practically none.

Which brings us to musical instruments, and specifically to drumming. While it's true no one can become world class without thousands of hours in the practice room, not all hours are created equal. It turns out that some things you practice have tremendous impact, while others have hardly any at all.

Here are some small things that have outsized impact

 

-learning new skills, one-at-a-time, and at the appropriate pace.

-choosing a challenging but reachable goal, analyzing the differences between where you are and where you'd like to be, and working backward to deconstruct and invent exercises.

-identifying and practicing idioms likely to reoccur frequently in real life and/or single skills that improve multiple modalities at once.

Photo by Flickr User Sidonath

And here are some good ways to eat up time without getting better

-continuing to practice a skill long after it's reasonably comfortable.

-practicing abstractions like rudiments without context and application tools.

-trying to learn something way over your head and giving up before it sounds good (practicing bad habits) or trying to master too many new skills at once and giving up before any sound good.

Any of these sound familiar?