I Can't Get This Justin Brown Groove Out of My Head

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

I don’t want to say Justin Brown is “underrated”, exactly. There are New York Times articles about him, and he plays with Thundercat.

Still, his influence probably outpaces the number of times he’s on people’s lips when they say stuff like “great modern drummers like Larnell, Thomas P, Marcus Gilmore, etc”. Justin should warrant frequent mention in this pantheon. His playing with Gerald Clayton, for instance, is an encyclopedia in how to make every moment of a song feel good.

I’m not exactly sure why I had Justin on the brain this past month, but something reminded me of the first time I heard him, in the 2000-oughts, and my subsequent search for any recordings or gig videos. It was at the end of such a search that I unearthed the song Subversive, by jazz saxophonist Yosvany Terry, and a live performance from LA, with Justin Brown on drums.

I found the groove fascinating and hypnotic at the time, and listened to it on repeat. (The drum solo at the end of the song is a lot of fun.)

At any rate, after around a 10 year break from the song, I revisited Subversive, and Justin’s drum groove, this past month. And decided it might make a cool video. So here you have it.

I’ll break down my process for understanding what’s going on, then we’ll talk about some key aspects of the groove. Then I’ll show you some of my favorite “JB” embellishments. And if you dig this one, maybe I’ll do a Gerald Clayton or Ambrose song at some point.

Hope you enjoy!

Anika Nilles - "I Was A Late-Bloomer"

How is Anika Nilles so good? What’s her secret? What can we learn from her “success” that can help us in our drumming.

It turns out: quite a bit.

By her own description, Anika differs from many other guests of the podcast in that she wasn’t “a prodigy” Sure - when she was young, she found drums fun and easy. But it wasn’t until college, in her mid-20s, that Anika feels she really “put it together”. (I have a sneaking suspicion that if I “crossed checked” this claim with some archival video she’d have sounded better than the lets on.)

Making jumps as a young adult has many advantages, among them that you can remember what you did, because your brain was already mostly-fully-developed. As such I was fascinated for Anika to expand on her college years.

Was there something that “clicked”?

What and how was she practicing before she “saw the path laid out before her”? How did her practice change afterward?

What followed was a decently-deep dig into psychology, motivation, practice methods, improvisation, and even stage-fright that I hope you’ll find as fascinating as I did.

Finally, Anika dishes about bandleading, and what she’s learned from Jeff Beck’s drum chair.

I believe you’ll enjoy this one.

5 Skills You NEED To Be An Advanced Drummer in 2024

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

The genesis of this lesson is I’ve been onboarding a bunch of new students lately, and creating programs for them that combine their personal goals and my goals for them, and this put me in the head space of wondering…

…”what is a suite of skills that I’d like all my students to have when they’re done working with me?”

As I practiced that afternoon, more ideas about this subject bubbled up. (The practice room is another big source of video ideas.) I think the skills required to consider ourselves “advanced” at the drums have evolved since I was a student. With the huge/important disclaimer that technical skills should not supplant the value of creativity or music-making, and that there are non-technical ways to be a good drummer, it feels like the bar for “practice room hounds”/”technical aptitude” has been raised.

One example is the near-ubiquity of one-handed 16th notes.

They’re certainly not “new”. Harvey Mason, Mike Clark, Tony Williams, Lenny White, Clyde Stubblefield, etc. all knew their way around some one-handed 16ths. But the way music has evolved made them a mainstay of modern drums, and now practically every “good technical” drummer can do them.

Ditto with things like 8ths with the hats, something Tony Williams made famous, and people like Lenny White, Billy Cobham, Steve Gadd, Weckl, Vinnie, Dennis Chambers, Gary Husband, etc injected into the lexicon.

And ditto with 3 other skills.

In this fairly-exhaustive video, I’ll not only outline the “5 essential skills for a modern advanced drummer”; I’ll also show you how to approach them, and even link to deeper videos where it’s appropriate.

And disclaimer again - don’t fret if (a) this style of playing doesn’t interest you - that’s perfectly valid, or if (b) you’re working your way up to this stuff, but aren’t there yet. These skills take a long time.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this lesson!

George Kollias - The Death Metal "Native" Who Loves Jazz

Practically everybody I feature on the channel has some “twists and turns” to their personality. If had assumed Nile’s George Kollias, one of the innovators of the “speed metal” style of drumming that prizes double kick chops, odd meters, and “blast beats” with a stopwatch, was one-dimensional in either his approach to drums or teaching, I would have been wrong.

George studied jazz in college with the great Yannis Stavropoulos, and says his favorite thing to practice in between learning music for tours with his band is jazz fusion. And he’s good at it too. (Here’s an example.)

George has also said things in interviews that made me think he’d be interesting to talk to - for instance the anecdote that people are always asking him in clinics how to make their left foot as fast as their right when playing double-kick, and that George openly considers this approach asinine, since the left foot will be playing 10 percent of the time, so why not just get good at what you actually need to do. This sent the 8020 “real one” radar to full-tilt.

In this interview, George and I chat about approaches to practice, whether he found the drums easy, how he divides his time between metal and fusion, his “natty” philosophy to playing the drums (a big deal in metal circles), and how he prevents injury when playing so hard for so long.

I have no doubt you’ll enjoy this thoughtful conversation on drums, philosophy, and life, with the drummer from Nile, one of the fastest, loudest, and odd-meterish metal bands of the 2000s, whose new single is called The Underworld Awaits Us All.