Gianlucca Pellerito - Drums Are Meant to Be Shared

If there’s a drummer I tried to have in mind over the past few months as I’ve been retrofitting my hand technique, it’s Gianlucca Pellerito.

And the Italian instagram sensation has a message - drums are meant to be played in real life. One can make a career out of “content”, he says, but it’s important to play with humans. (If you follow the channel, you know this is something I’ve been getting back into myself.)

In addition to recounting stories from his mentors, like Tony Royster, Dennis Chambers, and Ron Bruner, Gianlucca joins me in a semi-deep-dive on hand technique. As a leftie, Gianlucca built his unconventional style based on what “felt best”, and though he credits his teachers with some great lessons, it’s clear he’s done a lot of “problem solving” on his own.

Finally, we speak about different approaches to improvisation, what we might call “in the grid” vs “ambient”, and Gianlucca’s love for the freedom of his jazz fusion heroes like Ron Bruner and Andy Prado.

Overall, it was just fun to spend an hour with Gianlucca, because his vibe is relentlessly positive, and obsessed with the drums.

Know you’ll enjoy this one!

The "Secret" Move to Make Your Drum Beats Funkier

First things first - download your free transcription.

A couple of weeks ago, checking out the instagram videos of the excellent Daniel Pinhiero, I noticed him doing something many modern drummers do, but which not everybody knows about. When you’re as content-brained as I am, you immediately think “video idea”.

I thought back to the moment, in the early 2010s, learning a Darion Javon transcription, when I realized this move was a thing.

I call it the “cross under”. Once you see it, you’ll realize how absurdly simple it is. But it may be one of the few things that actually qualify as “secret moves that can immediately improve your playing”. (Very few things can, of course.)

But if you think about how playing on the hi hats evolved, we started “crossing over” our body - already not super optimal for a lot of reasons. Then, sometimes we’d want to play with both hands on the hats. This left us with a conundrum. A seemingly-awkward “arm swivel” at the elbow that took a lot of space, and risked compromising the sound because the elbow would be in a weird position for…time.

That “uncanny valley” ruled out a lot of "dabbling” in hand-to-hand stuff. You’d either have to commit to lead-hand lead, or two hands on the hats.

Until the crossunder.

Hope you enjoy.

Ben Wendel on Composing for Drums, "Keeping Up" With Nate Wood, And More

Today I bring you the full-length “talk and play” interview I did with Kneebody’s Ben Wendel.

Ben’s the first non-drummer to appear on the 8020 podcast, but if ever we were going to broaden from drummers, he gives us a good excuse: he’s been writing his own drum parts since way back.

In fact, many of the famous drum beats from Kneebody songs, and Ben’s own bands, no matter the drummer, were Ben’s creation.

Before the interview, we chose 3 “Ben-composed” drum parts from 3 famous songs: 2 from his groundbreaking 2012 album Frame, and 1 from Kneebody. Nate Wood made all 3 famous, but they were all Ben’s creation.

Then, we played through the songs, and I interviewed Ben about them. And in the course of our conversation we touched on the evolution of his influences, what it’s like to play with Nate, what he likes in a drummer, and more.

Know you’ll enjoy this one!

The "Ultimate Guide" to Odd Meters on Drums

First things first - download your free transcription.

3 weeks ago, I finally fell into the Jesus Molina vortex. I’d managed to resist the gravitational pull of Night in Tunisia in 11 for the better part of a year, but this past month, it got me. It’s not the “drum part” - most anybody with decent coordination and time could learn that in a few minutes, even if they’d have to play it slowly.

It’s Roni Kaspi. (To whom, in case you’re wondering, I’ve made invitations to come on the podcast, and I’m hoping we make it happen.)

Like Marcus Gilmore, Steve Lyman, Yogev, Nate Wood, Guiliana, Ofri Nehemaya, Arthur Hnatek and many good drummers of this generation, Roni plays over the 11 with total freedom. Unmoored by barlines. (Yogev, in his recent podcast interview, characterizes it perfectly as being like driving down an avenue where all the traffic lights are green, and registering going through the intersections but not needing to stop.)

Then I tried it, and I could not do it, without “boxed-in”, restrictive phrases that would keep coming back to the 1. And cue rage montage. Cue “whiplash”/hands bleeding practice montage. Gawd it pissed me off. And as many of you well know, “f@#$ it makes me mad that I can’t do that” ego rage is the font of many a day of motivated practice, and many a video.

So I decided to “donate my body to science” - to use my process learning Night in 11 as a generator for insights about anything that could short-cut learning odd meters. And, miracle-of-miracles, some non-obvious insights did drop out.

Four of them, to be exact.

And these insights don’t just apply to 11. You can use them to shorten the learning curve for any odd meter. In this video, we get into them, with a little context, and (hopefully) some fun.

Hope you enjoy.