9-Lick Lesson - Subscriber-Only

First things first - grab your transcription here.

9 Beat

In creating lessons like this week's lesson…

...I've lately been "digging deep" into my own playing.

Yea, it's fun to do Spanky, or Chris Dave, or Marcus...

...but I try to keep a balance.

For one, for every "tribute" video I do, I'll get comments like "why don't you stop featuring others and teach us something original?

For two, I've been going "introspective" for the last few months anyway.

I "came up for air" to check out Andy Prado's playing, and record half of a lesson that I hope will someday see the light-of-day...

...and to check in briefly with Ofri, and see if my left foot had improved relative to last time (it hadn't by much, which cued the self-immolation many of you witnessed on Instgram)...

Besides that, though, it's mostly been getting-out-by-going-through.

So, the reality of this week's lesson:

It's a 9-beat pattern I realized I was playing.

I thought it was cool enough to canonize in lesson form.

It has many applications, in my opinion.

But I took to the internets, to see what the kids were searching for.

After all, if the lesson doesn't get see, what's the point.

It turns out the kids, in large measure, are searching for "easy drum fill that sounds hard."

Press Pause: what does that say about our culture? Could you think of five words that more succinctly sum up the American ethos, in the Kanye era?

Be-that-as-it-may, today's like is easy...

...and it does sound hard.

So if you want to use it to fool people into thinking you've put far more years in on the trap kit than you actually have, at least until you play a beat...

...I suppose it would work.

Either way, it sounds good in both sixteenths and sextuplets, and the body choreography opened up my playing quite a bit.

And, if you haven’t yet grabbed your transcription, get it below:

9 Beat

Marcus Gilmore Lesson - Subscribers Only

So a couple of weeks ago, I took to the Instagram.

I had two “collaborations” in the hopper:

One with Joel Turcotte on quintuplets and the relationship between four and five...

...and one with Andy Prado on...whatever you call what Andy does;)

Anyway, I learned two things on the internets that day.

The first was you all want some more Marcus Gilmore love.

Done. Next.

The second is the next person who approaches me about a "collaboration" needs to make his/her half of the video first;)

In All Seriousness...

It's been a couple of years since we've dealt with Marcus, and in that time a bunch of new YouTube porn has come out.

(My favorite stuff is the Chick Corea trading.)

But the fundamentals haven't changed.

And, given that I've done 2-3 videos on the various licks or kernels of Marcus' playing...

...I thought that this time around I'd make an attempt at a structure through which to approach getting a little more "Marcus" with your vocabulary.

Many of the videos in the hopper, instead of directly transcribing another drummer, or dealing with a lick, are distilled versions of stuff I realized is coming out in my playing a lot as I play various exercises.

(One such exercise was inspired by "rolls" in BJJ, and has given rise to a bunch of new ideas. I might add it to my course as a bonus module.)

Anyway, the Marcus Framework is no different. 

As I say in the video, I can trace the roots of a big chunk of what I do that's different from other players, directly back to Marcus.

And this lesson is an attempt to give you a "foot in the door" so you can practice some of the same stuff.

Without further ado, here it is.

Backwards Beat - Subscriber Only

First things first: grab your transcription here.

Backwards Beat

The lesson I'm publishing this week is one I recorded just a week after I published the "are rudiments still relevant" lesson.

Since then, YouTube's kind of turned into a "show me your singles" contest.

Let me explain:

Two years ago, I did a lesson called "what I really think about hand technique". I spoke about things like back fulcrum, and the "overlap method" for making anything with doubles clean, slow-fast-slow.

I thought that lesson would start some controversy, but it was pretty well received.

Last month, I decided to circle around again to the issue of rudiments, since some of my YouTube brethren were weighing-in on it.

Now, I've always insisted that much of the way drums are currently taught is wasted time:

Practice pads...

Warm-ups...

Hours spent practicing the same abstract exercises...

But, in the latest rudiments lesson, I took a softer tone. Rudiments are important, I argued, for a number of reasons.

It's just that they've turned into a religion, or an orthodoxy.

Maybe, I hinted, if we spent 10% of the time we spent practicing rudiments on something else, it would be a better use of our time.

I called out my familiar culprits: lack of a clean sound, lack of hands/feet playing together when they're supposed to, and crappy time. And I showcased a couple of exercises to work on that stuff.

Most people were kind.

Some straight insisted on the rudiment orthodoxy without really engaging with the material in the lesson.

But a couple called out my rudiments. Haha.

At the beginning of the lesson, I played through a few standard rudiments, just to put some "skin in the game". If I'm taking a stand on rudies, I should put some of mine up there to judge.

I didn't think they were great - maybe B+.

I've stood alongside Maison Guidry when he plays singles. I've stood behind Greg Hutchinson as he played a solo on the snare drum. I've watched great classical percussionists play Delecluse. I have a pretty good idea what rudiments should sound like. (Haha look at me getting all defensive;)

Of course I was self-conscious, though. So I'll make another lesson soon devoted to everything that's awesome about rudiments, and will likely shed some material so that my rudiments are at least middle-of-the-road A.

But back to this week's lesson:

This week's beat is a good-natured "challenge" to everybody who thinks their singles are perfect.

First, I want to say, "congrats!" It's not easy, and you should be proud of your accomplishment.

Next, I want to offer this week's beat up, as the next thing to practice.

And let's keep it positive.

All things being equal, someone who practices a lot of rudiments is going to sound better than someone who doesn't.

Also, someone who sheds stuff like this week's lesson, and who can play it cleanly, will sound better than someone who doesn't.

It's not one-or-the-other. It's both.

Alright killers, that's where I'll leave it.

If you haven't picked up your transcription, do that below:

Backwards Beat

Q&A - Subscriber Only

It's been years since I've done a Q&A, so I wanted to bring you one this week. (I play too, though;)

I'm ambivalent about hierarchies.

At Berklee, I'm told, they have ratings for everything from improvisation to sight-reading.

At Interlochen, they had the Challenge System.

Everything was about "what chair are you". Even in otherwise-egalitarian sections, there was a rank-order.

Time that could have been spent practicing repertoire of fundamentals was spent practicing the "challenge music."

Those who won probably had an inflated sense of their abilities, and those who lost too-little hope.

Sounds like a clear-cut case for no-hierarchies-in-music, right?

Except I've seen hierarchies work immensely positively. Not in music, but in martial arts.

And I've seen their lack cause frustration and disappointment in music.

Done right, here's what the "belt system" allows you to do:

See progress

Feel good about your level relative to your experience

In music, we've got the "American Idol"/"Whiplash" effect. To illustrate, an anecdote from MSM:

When I sat in Gary Dial's class with other musicians with as much as 15-years-of-experience on me, I'd nontheless get frustrated that I didn't sound the way I wanted, and that I was inconsistent.

You could tell me that to think I'd be able to hang with such musicians was unrealistic, but I wouldn't have bought it. Everybody thought they were either born-with-it or not. Everybody wanted to be Harry Potter, or Neo.

By contrast, on the mats at Renzo's, I don't have to feel bad getting smashed by a brown belt. And you can "feel" the learning curve. Roll with a four-stripe white belt, and he'll usually feel looser, and a-beat-behind, even if he's got a strength or explosiveness advantage.

You'll be getting stuff on him, and won't know exactly why. Your OODA loop is shorter.

You really think that isn't also the case in music? It's not like we trade out our brains. The human-brain-is-the-human brain.

Belts in music would let a 5-year musician feel good about the solo he took, without lamenting that a 25-year musician ate his lunch.

If you saw a black-belt on that 19-year-old Monk Institute phenom, and looked down and saw only blue around your waist, you'd see visually that even though the other guy was younger, he'd put in a lot more time than you.

Belts work in jiujitsu because they're exposed to adversity every day. And, at least in the academies I've been exposed to, there are no "challenges" or "tests". The instructors watch your progress, relative to others and yourself, and make a decision. It's stochastic, bottom-up, and imperfect. And that's why it works.

Music could use more hierarchy. And more "sheds" - the musical equivalent to "rolls" in jiujitsu.

But art is still different than martial arts.

It's true that there's far too much relativism in music these days. (A fan of the channel once told me "there's no better-or-worse in music, it's just styles." Try telling that to James Brown when one horn player keeps tripping over the part.)

But it's also true that music, unlike a fight, is not "zero sum".

In jiujitsu, certain styles might be aesthetically beautiful, but they might get dismantled, by, say, Gordon Ryan.

In music, something that's unique and beautiful is allowed to just be unique and beautiful.

And I think arts hierarchies get malevolent when the go the direction of the Interlochen challenge system.

For one, you'd want the students challenging the instructors to get a truer idea of where they really stack up. (Being first chair in the high school jazz band is like being the hottest cowboy in the pickup truck.)

...and you'd want some accounting of the experience differences.

Folks, this is a thought experiment :P

Anyway, after writing reams, I give you The Lesson.

Hope you enjoy.