John Riley Said I Was WRONG About Hand Technique

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

A few weeks ago I published a video on my newfound love of playing the ride cymbal with both hands, with specific regard to a pattern Tony Williams made famous. In that video, I mentioned the technique of one Sanford A Moeller.

If that’s not ringing bells, picture Joe Morello in the Take Five solo, or modern players like Vinnie or Matt Garstka. The technique named for Moeller is, among other things, an efficient way to transition between accents and unaccented strokes - i.e. to play things with some topography.

In the video, I mentioned that I like to use Moeller’s technique to help students approach “push pull”, and that Moeller is a rough way to feel the feeling of multiple sounds from a single arm movement, and that push-pull can be seen as a refinement of Moeller. I don’t think it was this comment that caught John Riley’s attention, so much as the way I teach it, ripped off with pleasure from the great hardcore drummer and podcaster Craig Reynolds, who continues to have a standing invitation to join me on the 8020 Podcast.

Craig sees Moeller as a series of transitions between strokes. You have loud-to-loud, otherwise known as a “full stroke” - a stroke that starts high and ends high. You have soft-to-soft, which starts soft and likewise remains soft. But the interesting bits are the stroke combinations that change volume. Loud-soft, which requires attenuating the rebound of the loud stroke before making the soft, and soft-loud, which encourages the serpentine wrist and arm motion we commonly think of when we think of Moeller Technique.

I believe John thought I was missing some nuance, so he texted me that he’d learned Moeller from Joe Morello, and he had a different perspective.

When John texts, I pay attention, and all the more so when the subject is the great Joe Morello. Sensing an opportunity both to expand my own knowledge and to “farm” content, I asked if John would be willing to do a “taped” interview on the subject, and he agreed.

What followed was a fascinating story about a lesson John took with Joe many years ago, a “heuristic” movement of the elbow and arm, and some context about where Moeller is useful and where it isn’t.

I was delighted by the edit my editor put together, and super happy John gave his permission to share this convo with you.

Hope you enjoy!

Henry Cole - I Made My Own Path

Henry Cole and I were almost classmates in music school. I missed him by one year.

What I did not realize at the time was that at the time I saw him performing in the concert hall with the Afro Cuban Big Band, Henry was in the middle of “some sh#t.” He had just gone home to San Juan, after quitting Berklee, before meeting John Riley, and becoming convinced that New York would be a better environment.

Acquainted with Miguel Zenon, Henry became the go-to sub when previous guest Antonio Sanchez was on tour with Pat Metheny, and eventually the drummer in the band. Cole admits he didn’t consider himself as good as Sanchez at the time, but says he made up for it in hard work - memorizing all of Zenon’s songs.

“This guy is not really great, but he knows the music already, sooo…” says Henry of Miguel’s apparent state-of-mind.

Before we go forward, I wanted to circle back to Berklee. Because - he quit Berklee? The Berklee of JP and Matt Garstka, and Zyck The Freak? Of (next week’s guest) Diego Ramirez, and (last week’s guest) Roni? The same Berklee with the “Snarky Puppy Ensemble” or the “Indian Ensemble”?

Berklee in the late ‘90s was, by Henry’s description, a very different place. In one anecdote, Cole recounts being shown a “clave” beat by a teacher with no background in Afro-Latin music, and preferring to do it the “authentic way” - the way he grew up doing it - and as a result receiving a number grade that barred him from playing with any of the “higher level” musicians. So yea, I can see why he’d want to save his money.

Fast forward to the 20-teens, and Henry is living in New York, “rage caving”. Aware of the chasm of ability he needed to make up, he describes an ascetic practice routine, starting in the early morning, breaking only for lunch, and going till early evening.

At that time, he was touring steadily with Miguel, and starting to play with friend of the channel Ben Wendel, as well as our mutual classmates Fabian Alazan and Linda Oh.

Then, in 2019, everything changed. A fire destroyed his New York apartment. Having lost everything, Henry returned to San Juan once again to pick up the pieces. It’s there that he currently resides. But he seized the opportunity to make his mark on the local scene and started his own bands, and recorded his own albums.

Henry also isn’t a stranger to New York these days. The week I’m writing this, he was at the Vanguard again.

Hope you enjoy this fascinating life story.

Is This The Easiest Dennis Chambers Lick?

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

This week, “meat and potatoes” video. We’ve been veering into psychology a lot, so, for a palette cleanser, some old-school Dennis Chambers.

I remember first hearing material from Scofield’s Blue Matter record as part of the DVD Serious Moves, which I watched with my classmates in a dark conference room at the library of our college. Subsequently, I’d downloaded Blue Matter, and the accompanying live album Pick Hits Live, and listened to them until I “wore them out” - digitally speaking.

Of course the Scofield canon is full of Chambers pyrotechnics, from single stroke madness, to ostinato solos, to upward crashes, to all manner of crazy headwear. But one of the Dennis-isms that stuck with me was something altogether less flashy. It was a simple ride-cymbal groove from the song Make Me - practically a throwaway at the end of Serious Moves.

But the elegance of what Dennis is doing on the chorus stuck with me, and I appreciated it all-the-more after years of thinking about interesting ways to play the ride cymbal. And the crux of what makes this pattern “more than the sum of its parts” is nothing more fancy than a humble double stroke.

RRLL.

But deployed in such a fashion as to elevate the whole thing. That’s why I believe - I’d put my money on - this being Dennis’ simplest/easiest lick. But I’ll let you decide.

Either way, using this RRLL can enhance other grooves as well. And it’s aged like wine.

Hope you enjoy!

Want to Be Great at Drums? You HAVE to Go Through This

First things first - if you want to grab your trial to JP Bouvet Method, use my affiliate link, and use the following coupon codes until tomorrow, 9/11, at midnight.

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You’ve heard this already. I’m playing this note a lot this year. First it was with the “caves” video. Then, last week, with the “attitudes”.

It’s probably high time for a “what makes JD Beck Great” lesson, or “The ONE Secret to Exploding Your Single Strokes in One Hour”. Those would almost certainly get more views. But if I didn’t make this video this week, it wouldn’t still be fresh in my mind. As I write this I’m a week and a few days out from a discovery.

Last week’s video detailed how I think we need to be open to self-critique in order to improve. To open the door to entertain what we might wish…were better about our playing.

And just days after publishing that video, I made a fresh discovery.

Even now, it’s faded from memory a bit. And if you watch the video of the practice session in question, it’s increasingly hard to feel the same way I did about it then. (Which might itself be an argument for “taking a beat”.)

But in the moment, I knew: My ghost notes were wack.

I was confronted by the naked horror that something right under my nose wasn’t up to par. And I reacted in all the wrong ways. Instead of taking a day, formulating a good exercise, and attacking it with fresh eyes, I “looped” and spun my wheels for another 90 minutes, just making myself feel worse.

And given that using my own experiences reaching for “greatness” - or whatever - is the DNA of this channel, I kinda couldn’t not make this video. Because if I’d waited a week I wouldn’t have the visceral memory of the feeling.

Ok - so maybe this is the sequel to the “How to Be More Open to Critique” video. We can call it “What to Do When You Spot Something”.

And if the “caves” video dealt with it in the abstract, this one is concrete, recent, and personal.

And I can use that as a “teaching moment”. Here’s what I did wrong, here’s why it happened, and here’s what I’ve learned over the years is the better way to handle it, which I didn’t do until 2 days later.

But as a kind of postscript, watching the video…my sextuplets weren’t even that bad.

So what was all of this really about? Maybe “don’t always believe negative emotions in the moment, but check your recordings after the fact”.

But the “rage cave” this experience inspired fueled two of the most productive weeks of practice in recent memory, so there’s that.

Anyway, this video is for anyone who’s ever thought “I suck”. To show it happens to all of us, what to do about it, and that it’s not always “real”.

Hope you enjoy!