Diego Joaquin Ramirez - I Only Practice When I Want To

There are a few drummers who, when they drop new clips, I’m like stop everything.

One is Noah Fuerbringer. Another is this week’s guest for the third-ever in person podcast, Diego Ramirez.

Hailing from Ireland, and veteran of Berklee and Jazz Ahead, Diego is one of the most creative drummers I’m listening to. He’s played with Cartoons, Jonathan Scales, Marc Cary, and Jeremy Pelt. His own group, which recently released an album, is called Estratos.

It’s hard to describe his drumming exactly. It sounds “of the moment”, but also deeply individual - as if he’s pulling from a wider palette of musical choices than many of us.

Because Diego lives here in New York, I had the opportunity to host him in person, in the studio. Which went off almost without a hitch, except that our mics did not like the fan, so the audio, while clear, sounds a little like we’re speaking in the wind. Seated behind the drums, Diego was invited to play if he felt like it, or just chat, and decided he preferred to chat.

Almost from the word “go”, Diego fascinated me with his ethos. “I only practice when I want to practice” he says. I told him later of my “cave” construct, and that he reminded me of guests like Chris Turner - people who seem to fall in love anew with the drums every day.

But Diego’s background is important. Born in Ireland to a family of musicians, Diego was surrounded by music from early childhood. (His dad, he says, was in a semi-famous band in Guatemala in the ‘70s.) Which might explain why his relationship with music in later life - which is to say his teens and 20s - was astonishingly uncomplicated.

Practice, rather than the process of unearthing and machining weaknesses it is for many of us, was like an enchanting journey of discovery for Diego. He describes hearing Tony Williams on Nefertiti, and becoming obsessed with duplicating his sound.

Sound is a filter through which Diego views a lot of drumming, including improvisation. He doesn’t think in shapes or idioms, he says. Only in terms of creating the sound he hears in his head.

The results of that approach are evident. He has a style unencumbered by comparison to other drummers, that shows influence, but is almost impervious to trends.

I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and I hope you’ll check out his band, Estratos, when you’re done.

The Drum Sound Fix Nobody Talks About

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Gear video! It’s been a hot minute.

And in this video, I was min-maxing for an occasion to announce my formal partnership with Aquarian Drumheads and a video that Johnny Public would nonetheless enjoy sitting through. Such is the sausage-making process.

So I decided to tackle the question - “how much do good/new drum heads matter”, (answer: a ton), and its corollary - “if drum heads are such a no-brainer to improve drum sound astronomically overnight, how come nobody’s talking about them?”

Because if I want to go from a “found object” studio kit to a Star Bubinga in a single day, yes, that’s going to improve the sound quite a bit. It’s also going to set me back a cool $4.5 grand. But you can make the equivalent improvement by spending $90-120 on new heads. And they last a long time, too!

The folks at Aquarian reached out last year, via their emissary, Eric Moore, to offer me a bevy of new heads, with literally zero strings attached. In the ensuing year, I tried heads of all the major makers before deciding that, indeed, Aquarians were my favorite. So I have a brand new shipment of my ride-or-die Modern Vintage heads, which gives us a super-useful side-by-side comparison.

Old heads.

Year old modern vintages. (From the Eric video.)

Brand new modern vintages.

And indeed, the year-old ones still sound great. (And it’s not like we haven’t put them through the ringer. I may be a jazz drummer but my roommate plays in multiple metal bands and hits hard.

I also review a model that might be my fave going forward, but which I wouldn’t necessary put on a shared kit because they’re a little more delicate: the StudioXs.

So we explore how much new/good heads can improve your drum sound, and how durable the Aquarians are, but also…

…a little on how I like to tune…

…and, finally, the “hot licks” I was using to take them around the block, the bulk of which are transcribed for you above.

Hope you enjoy!

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.