The ultimate left foot survival guide for drummers

Left Foot Exercises

The left foot is like the red-headed step-child of drumming.

Unless you've studied jazz, the hi hat remains a mysterious and intimidating creature. It's always over there, and you know how to play on top of it, but whenever you're doing something else with the lead hand, you kind of ignore it.

Completely ignoring the hats is probably better than what some others do - play it out of time, and/or completely unmusically.

As my friend Jordan once told me "you never *have* to play anything with the left foot".

But that creates an "uncanny valley" between nothing and something good.

So my aim in this video is to shepherd you through that valley as quickly as possible, so you can some out on the other end sounding more like a "pro".

But how are we supposed to get there?

Watch great drummers like Guiliana or Larnell, and their hat placements are esoteric.

What if you had a source code for getting inside these guys' heads?

I can't fully tell you what Mark, or Larnell, or up-and-comer Rhagav Mehrotra are thinking or feeling, but I can get you to something close to what they *play*.

Take my hand, and leap with me off the ledge.

Because on the other side is hi hat bliss.

Here's the video. Hope you enjoy.

Back next Monday with something I know you'll love.

Yes, I'm really going to tell you about Insta Chops

Insta Chops Transcription

Since when did we have to stick up for Instachops? When did flashing a little chop swag on the 'gram become a crime?

Love-them-or-hate-them, Instachops are here to stay.

And haters miss the point.

For decades, the most exposure to great drummers people in far-flung corners of the world, like my home town, could get was a VHS tape of the Buddy Rich tribute concert, a Steve Houghton seminar, or the occasional live concert.

As such, drums moved at the speed of snail mail. People in Wisconsin were just learning about Bill Stewart the first time I traveled to New York in 2000. Nobody had heard of Ari Hoenig.

In my 20s, living in Astoria, I remember wanting to put some video of myself playing on the internet. Just what we'd now call a drum cover!

My best option to book a studio, and spend several grand. In 2006, I got a canon power-shot, and a zoom mic, and started using iMovie to splice them together. It took a week to produce a single clip.

Then, almost overnight, smart-phones arrived, and Instagram start allowing video. First 15-second clips (the #VF15 era), then, one-minute.

Take an entire world of drummers studying their Dennis Chambers DVDs and recording with their camcorders, and tell them they can now record something higher resolution with their phone, and put it up for tens of thousands of people to see ...

...and you don't think they're gonna chop?

So of course the arms-race started. And good Goddamn thing, because it gave us Andy Prado, Maison Guidry, Joel Turcotte, and plenty of others. I've written and video'd elsewhere that if you're looking for somebody to cry for the end-run of the "gatekeepers", don't look at me.

How much of Insta-chopper hate is because they didn't have to "pay traditional dues" (i.e. deal with a system intent on taking their money for the promise of gigs it can't deliver), and how much is because they're just...better than us?

Regardless, I'll plant a flag that Instachoppers are awesome.

And, in this week's video, I've decoded some hotlicks from three of my favorites.

Don't let being stuck at home go to waste

Beginner Exercises

We're stuck indoors for at least a few weeks.

If we're healthy enough to be bored, we've got an opportunity: get a head start on the drums.

This week's video is "how to stop sounding like a beginner", but that's a misnomer.

At every point up to the present, I could use the material in this video. After graduating from music school, when I was playing professionally, throughout my teaching arc. The basics never get less important.

But what are the basics?

Maybe it's stick control and coordination exercises. And if you've got years to inch your way up the skill ladder, those resources are great.

But what if we used the quarantine as a "forcing function"? What if we "parkinsoned" ourselves?

(Parkinson's law states that a task will swell in size and complexity to fill the time you allot to it.)

Short deadlines focus the mind. If you've got only 90 days to set fire to your "beginner" ships, and chart a new course, you now no longer have the luxury of focusing on the trivial many things. You have to choose the highest-leverage few.

I've been like a broken record about this, but I believe those few are playing clean (or kit control), feel (which includes time), and improvisation.

Those are the "necessary and sufficient" skills of "high level drummers".

They're necessary, because you don't find any greats without them.

They're sufficient because they're the only skills greats have in common.

(Try telling me Will Champion and Tony Royster play the same type of solo. Or that either of them isn't great.)

Great - so we focus on those 3 things. But how?

Well...video.

Please enjoy:)

3 Levels of Drummer Play One Song - Can You Tell The Difference?

It doesn't take much comparison to know Nate Smith is good.

Whether with Dave Holland, his own groups, or Chris Potter's Underground, Nate's playing sizzles from the first beat.

But what if you had to explain why?

Let's come at this another way. When I was in high school, I assumed that what made great players great was immediately obvious, and obvious to all.

If I and my cohorts could do the surface level of that whey did, we'd have it. So we spent a lot of time learning their licks and their tunes.

We'd play a pretty faithful cover, just like the "beginners" in this video, who cover Rumples, a tune Nate's played on for years, practically to-the-note.

Then we listened to a recording of ourselves next to the original.

The differences we subtle. But countless minute differences added up to a Whole that seemed a universe away from the original.

It was then that I realized music making was subtle.

As I'm constantly striving to give viewers of this channel a way into the same insight I had, it occurred to me that side-by-side comparison might do the trick. Look at a Chrysler Town and Country, then describe to me how it's different from a Honda Odyssey.

Pretty hard, right?

What happens when they're parked side-by-side. It's much easier.

I was lucky enough to stumble over not just many covers of Rumples, but many *levels* of cover.

By juxtaposing the "beginner", and "advanced" covers with the original, I attempt to unpack the subtle things that make the original so amazing.

Check out the video here.

Hope you enjoy.