I Changed One Thing And My Weak Hand Got Faster

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

I’m actually pretty excited to present today’s video. It represents the culmination of at least a few months’ experimentation, not-to-mention working around an injury. It took a bit of time until I felt I had things comfortable enough to show to the public in a video.

But here goes - I made one change in my left hand that, I believe, brought it much more in line with what I’ve been doing naturally with my right. It’s probably fine to have slightly different techniques between the two hands up to a point - i.e. if you’re not trying to chop, but unfortunately I was, and that exposed a limitation.

I realized I’ve been doing something very “against the conventional wisdom” with my right hand for at least the last year: moving almost totally away from the “pinch and fold” fulcrum everybody shows to beginners, and approaching something much more dynamic, with the hand kind of dyamically resisting the rebound force from the drum or cymbal, with a bunch of input from the middle finger.

“Against conventional wisdom”, unless you listen to teachers like Gordy Knudtson or Murray Spivack, or watch the hands of - to name just a few - Thomas Pridgen, Giancarlo Pellerito, JP Bouvet, or Chad Wackerman. Two key details differ from “basic technique”: first, the stick is linear with the forearm, instead of “out in the fingers”. Next, you’re utilizing that entire range-of-motion with the fingers.

Great! So now all that was necessary was applying it to the left hand. Which, as you’ll see, is a work in progress. Anyway, I hope this will be helpful for anybody trying to break the “speed limit” with their weak hand.

Hope you enjoy!

Chris Coleman - It Was Never About Competition

For practically every podcast guest, there’s a question I’m “winding up” to ask.

For Chris Coleman, it was “what’s the space for competition in music?”

Just like everybody else, I’d tuned into Chris’ viral clinic clip, discussing the origin of - shall we say - “church improvisation”, and found his description of the “pop-up”, late-night shed sessions in the church, captivating. But how does Chris reconcile this friendly competition with…well, the “subjectivity of art”?

In Chris’ opinion, the “competition” was always a misnomer.

Added for “click bait”, after people started publicizing the sheds. And as the 2001 winner of the Drum-Off, Chris doesn’t begrudge people monetizing the shed-life. After all, as he puts it, many these drummers were killer players who, were it not for Youtube, would have struggled to find mainstream audiences. But the imperative to get clicks, views, and money changes things.

Which is all only to say that, by Chris’ recollection, it was never about competition. And if somebody brought that vibe into the room, it was clear they were an outsider.

In this brief-but-action-packed interview, Chris and I also chat about how he balances tours and life, and his methodology for teaching up-and-coming players.

Know you’ll enjoy this one!

Playing Eric Moore's "Signature" Lick On Drum Heads He Sent Me

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

I will admit this week’s video is a bit “gimmicky”, in a way I don’t usually make videos.

It was hard to resist this opportunity, though.

Seemingly out of the blue, Eric Moore messaged me asking if I wanted new drum heads. I guess he, or the folks at Aquarian, had suffered through enough instagram footage of the heads on the shared kit in my practice space, and decided to take pity.

It’s true that, now that I have a nifty overpriced-curtain-rod upon which to mount an overhead camera without relying on iota on duct tape or a staple gun, the heads on these drums have been “front and center” in more videos. And, as I describe in the video, a fair bit of “decision paralysis” had set in, preventing me from taking any action to replace them.

So it transpired that on one afternoon in early October, I noticed a large, flat cardboard box in the mail room of my apartment building.

Rushing it to the studio and tearing open the box, I saw Aquarian and Eric had sent me not one, but three sets of heads. (It probably helped that I only use a four-piece in my studio.)

So I thought - “gear review” - let’s play these new heads for the people.

Then I thought - do I transcribe an Eric lick even though it’s going to be a lot of work? Unfortunately, yes. (And youtube allows you to 0.75x the speed, so it wasn’t that hard.)

And that, friends, is how I ended up playing one of Eric’s “signature” licks on the very heads he plays in the video.

This has everything? Don’t care about heads but want to learn the lick? Watch the video! Don’t care about the lick but just want to see how much better new heads can make Nate’s kit sound? Watch the video!

Hope you enjoy!

Nobody's Talking About This Influential Drum Funk Beat

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Ever wonder what’s going on when Chris Dave plays with The Drumhedz on Tiny Desk, or Snarky Puppy play songs like Thing of Gold? Or Adam Deitch plays…many things that Adam Deitch plays?

I wondered too, and it reminded me of my interview with Stanton Moore last year, and our discussion about the low-key influences of Afro-Caribbean rhythms on New Orleans music. Stanton wholeheartedly endorsed the idea that “clave”, as we know it from music like Son and Salsa, exists in New Orleans music too, and brought up Ziggy Modeliste and The Meters as an example of that throughline.

Here’s my conspiracy theory - if the DNA of clave influenced the meters, it’s not crazy to think a lot of the funk and soul beats downstream of them also carry that lineage.

All of this is a bit tangential to a concept I probably didn’t invent, but that occurred to me listening to these more modern artists like Chris and Adam. Funk Claves. Instead of playing straight 8ths or 16ths, you essentially play a “clave” with the lead hand. It can be a literal clave, or it can be looser. (The clave you’ll hear Chris playing sounds like a 2-3 oriented “son” clave.)

Whether “clave” is just a descriptive word that helps us orient these funk beats, or hints at a more fundamental lineage, these beats are fun to practice on the drums, and they’re a very useful tool for many musical situations. Which is why it’s mysterious to me that we’re not hearing more about them. (Is somebody somewhere teaching a “Meters Beat”?)

Anyway, in today’s video, we delve into all of that, and show you how to play them.

Hope you enjoy!