Camellia "Cami" Kies - Your "Limitations" Are Fake

I’ve never before struggled so much to come up with an episode title.

But today’s guest, Camellia Kies, aka Cami Loops if you follow the socials, has a quality that’s immediately obvious upon speaking to her and hearing her story, that’s simultaneously really hard to put into a short-catchy slogan.

Here’s what I mean - she was the child of a military family, who herself played drums and percussion in the military, after feeling frustrated that doors were somewhat “closed” to her playing drums in her church. Through a combination of innate tenacity and discipline she learned through the military and the military music schools, she built a practice regimen that’s an impressive combination of “hard”, “smart”, and “patient”, whereupon she aimed right at the most daunting seeming challenges - whether that was learning jazz more-or-less from scratch when she already had a touring gig in just weeks, or mastering left foot independence ala Antonio Sanchez or Horacio Hernandez - broke that down into exquisite detail, took it piece-by-piece, mastered it, then used the meta-lessons to surmount the subsequent challenge in less time.

But that doesn’t fit in a YouTube title. So I had to resort so something that sounds like a slogan you’d see on the wall outside HR.

Cami first caught my attention with her youtube tutorials at the pad or snare drum. She explains that after leaving the service, while living in Texas, she didn’t have regular access to a kit. But it was these ebullient mini-lessons that fueled her eventual stardom on social media - doubtless because she’s a fun and energetic presenter, but also possibly because they were so different from anything else out there.

In addition to her social media, Cami is active in creating music from her many influences, from afrobeat, to jazz and latin jazz, to (recently) gospel.

In this interview we chat a lot about the nitty-gritty of practice, and this “extra gear” she seems to have to conquer challenges, but also about her life arc and influences.

Know you’ll enjoy this one!

Can You Be A Late Bloomer On Drums?

First things first - download your free study guide here.

This week’s video began with a shower thought. A slightly external-validation-focussed one, if we’re being honest. More on that later.

The thought was - “if I could transmute my current ability into my 18-year-old self, how would things have been different?”

In today’s world, probably not much. I’d have been one of an army of instagrammers, many-of-them with more skills than I had.

But in this world in which, for better or worse, ability to play is just one part of your “package” - which also includes high-minded things like your personal musical voice and low-minded things like your personality on camera, we can afford to take a break from practical or career considerations and ask the question purely as a thought experiment.

If you’re a decade-or-two on from your undergrad college years or high school graduation, and have worked steadily on your drumming since then, try asking yourself the same thing: “If my 18-year old self could have played like I play now, what would have been different?”

And it’s in the answer to that question that I think we find interesting things.

Things like “why is it less valuable to be a good player in your ‘40s or ‘50s than at age 18?”

And even a moment’s thought leads to the inevitable “it’s not”, which then leads to the “then why do I compare myself to 18 year olds with ‘crazy’ abilities for their age?”

And it’s possible I’m doing a LOT of projection.

But that was the jumping off point for this video that explores late-bloomers. I’m pretty proud of this one, which includes excerpts from Anika, and pieces of brand new interviews with Steve Lyman and Yogev Gabay.

Are late bloomers a thing? Obviously. But knowing that intellectually and believing it are two different things. Hopefully this video goes some distance to help you believe it.

Hope you enjoy.

Yogev Gabay - Be Brave Enough to Play What You Love

Today’s guest first came to my attention for his sizzling covers of Tigran Hamasyan songs in the 20-teens. Ever the master of precision, Yogev Gabay made a name for himself as one of the “go-tos” for music in the borderlands between prog and jazz that drummers like Arthur Hnatek made famous.

Asked what he’d tell his teenage self about career expectations, Yogev muses that he needed to be brave enough to “disappoint” his younger self (because the studio work he’d pictured ceased to exist as a career path), but adds that playing gigs for money can be a sort of prison, and that he’s glad he made the choice to pursue the music he dreamed of playing, consequences-be-damned. (I suspect Young Yogev would be impressed.)

I was also very curious to learn Yogev’s approach to learning to improvise, and how it tracks with my own experience. And we did a decent deep-dive on that topic.

But we also talked hand technique, metronome practice, and memorizing angular odd-meter rhythms so well you forget them.

I feel we illuminated some new ground extrapolating from the process of learning to improvise over an odd-meter prog-jazz vamp to how it feels to learn to improvise writ large, i.e. learning “benchmarks” for when something is “medium rare” vs “well done”. (In drums, you want well-done ;)

Above all, Yogev’s enthusiasm for learning is inspiring and disarming. I suspect many of us will practice more this week after listening to this interview.

Hope you enjoy!

The Hardest Thing About Playing Drums With A Band

First things first - grab your free show notes.

Today’s video was simmering on the back burner for quite a while.

It concerns my attempt to answer possibly the most frequent question I get from students about playing with a band: “what happens if I’m in a tug-or-war over the tempo?”

BTW, hopefully the video thumbnail captures this adequately. Thanks, Midjourney, and goodbye, 3 hours this morning.

But we’ve all probably been there.

You practice your time and tempo in the shed with a metronome, and you’re pretty confident you’re solid. Then you get in a rehearsal or gig situation with a…maybe slightly novice…musician or two in your band, and it feels like the tempo is going to come apart at the seams.

Maybe you’ve got one member who is pulling on the tempo in a certain direction. Or maybe you’ve got multiple factions, all threatening the “global order”.

These situations can be frustrating precisely because there’s no easy answer: on the surface, it seems like you’re caught between two bad options - go with the offending member, and let the tempo get out of control, or resist militantly, often causing the band to pull apart, and incurring the bad vibes that enesue.

That’s why I call this the “hardest thing about playing with a band”.

But what if I told you there’s a “third way”.

Just like jiujitsu, and annoyingly, it’s all in the subtleties. In this video, I’ll attempt to frame some of the more “201” strategies for keeping a song on the rails even when factions are trying to pull it off - all without pissing anybody off. Hopefully.

Hope you enjoy.