Pro Drummers Do One Big Thing Differently, But You Can Do it Too

First things first - two transcriptions. First, for the “beat algorithm”. Next, for the “switching exercise”.

To the degree anything is a “magnum opus”, that’s today’s video. My “grand unified theory” on improvisation, which is to say “all drumming”.

This has been in the works over 15 years of me “retrofitting” my own playing, and 4 years of coaching students.

A culmination of all the “what’s water” moments (David Foster Wallace anecdote about two fish, one of whom remarks “the water’s lovely today” and the other who replies “what’s water?”), which is to say discovery of things I was taking for-granted that aren’t a given for those just learning to drum.

The sum of my micro-insights from “both sides of the divide” (knowing what it feels like when I feel good playing, knowing what I worked on to get there, and also seeing things through the eyes of students based on their questions, descriptions, and progress) cash out to two big things:

First, mature drummers (“pros” for the algorithm) have a kind of “bubble” around their playing, that insulates them from “mistakes” the way we typically think of them. (“Glitching”, big unintended sounds, feeling “behind your hands”, etc.)

The best analogy I could think of was the “flight envelope protection” modern fly-by-wire airplanes have. (Very short version - they won’t let you crash them.)

Second, you and I can learn to do it too.

There are many things that make great drummers great, and having a unique artistic voice is among them. But we don’t need to be artistic geniuses to teach ourselves to have that protective capsule around our playing, so we can “lean on things”, and our ideas feel insulated from “mistakes”.

**Quick disclaimer - many great drummers will say, in interviews, things like “I make mistakes all the time”, or “you should embrace mistakes”. That’s a bit misleading, imho, since any of these drummers could play a 90-minute set without once “glitching” or doing anything we’d detect as a mistake.

So, how do we do it?

By inverting the conventional understanding of improvisation. In my experience, improvisation is often seen (passive voice) as a place where you lower the guardrails, “embrace the muse”, and hope for the best.

In my opinion, that’s only useful later on. But at the beginning, I like to think “inside out”. Literally build that protective idea-capsule bit-by-bit, and rarely-if-ever play something outside of it.

This has the obvious advantage that we can practice improvising with ideas - rather than repping the same verbatim stuff over and over - while controlling the scope, so we’re always sure we’ve had a lot of reps on anything that might come up.

Finally, I reprise parts of a couple of recent lessons with examples of this type of exercises. Examples you can apply today.

Hope you enjoy!

The Simple Concept That Fixes Boring Drumming

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

Today’s video is over something deceptively-simple, but which, once you make it work for you, is a huge unlock.

Over the years I’ve talked a fair bit “hemiola”, or making 4-beat phrases into 6-beat phrases, and repeating them to make a more interesting, syncopated shape. It’s a handy way to get more mileage out of an idea.

But what if we went “back to zero” and pretended 3 and 6 beat phrases hadn’t been discovered.

Imagine if, suddenly, by decree, every drummer in the universe had to play “symmetrical” phrases. (Phrases based on 4 or 8 beats that resolve inevitably and predictably to the downbeat.) Gartstka, Larnell, Nate, Keith - everybody could do all their fancy stuff, but they could only play symmetrical phrases.

This would be a drab universe.

For drummers familiar with asymmetric phrasing, it would be an exercise in frustration listening to our heroes “boxed in”, and none of their fast chops able to save them.

“Freeeee Carloooock,” we’d yell at the YouTube. “Let the big dog EAT!”

And for those unfamiliar with the underlying theory, our drum heroes would just lose about half their “magic”. Inexplicably, they’d just sound more boring and predictable.

Turn this around, and, by adding one simple tool, we’d restore color to the “black and white” world of boring drums.

An if this tool is powerful enough to make-or-break a Benny Greb solo or beat, imagine what it could do for you.

This is the first in a series of videos exploring elements other than fast chops that create greatness in drumming: asymmetric phrases.

But I’m not even talking about 5s or 7s.

The simple, humble 6s and 3s have been around since Haydn in European music, and probably longer in other traditions. But we started to see them in American music in ragtime and New Orleans marches.

The create a flavor or repetitive syncopation that’s more interesting and danceable, but likely won’t get anyone fired from a gig.

And today, using simple examples, we’ll explore some ways to add them to your drumming immediately.

Hope you enjoy!

The Surprising Reason "Nate Smith Beats" Are So Hard

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

We see a lesson on Nate Smith style funk beats (truly James Gadson, Clyde Stubblefield, Mike Clark, Lenny White, etc. beats), and we assume “one-handed 16ths”.

And if you’re like anything like I was, you find this style of “continuous 16th funk” challenging.

But I submit to you that it’s not because of the hand technique.

If I gifted you Isac Jamba’s right hand, would you suddenly sound like Nate? No, right? So why?

To illustrate the real reason, I went digging in my analogy bag, and pulled out a doozie: the bowling alley.

In a bowling alley, of course, you have a long strip of hardwood, and gutters on either side. If you roll the ball straight down the center, you’ll miss the gutters. But you’ll also miss the opportunity to shape your shots, or catch challenging spares. The more you explore, the more you risk gutter balls.

When I watch some drummers try to emulate the beats of Nate/Corey Fonville/Yussef Dayes, their playing sounds like a bowling alley. They’ve got a narrow lane where their stuff sounds pretty “pro”, but as soon as they deviate from it, they lose control. A kick drum is early or late. They flam hands or feet. Something feels “off”.

The thing that makes Nate-style beats challenging is they’re improvisational. If you listen to Mike Clark with Herbie, practically every bar is different. So you can’t “play like Nate” simply playing “boom chick”. You need to be able to improvise within the groove.

But that’s where the trouble starts.

Because improvisation is chaos. Infinity possibilities. And you can only do a few of the confidently. Jump into that abyss, and you’re not going to get enough reps with any one thing to “widen your lane”, unless you do it for years. There are simply too many possibilities to get the “spaced repetition” necessary to improve.

But stick to “written down” exercises, and you fail to simulate real life. Then you get that familiar “stuff I practice isn’t coming out in my playing” conundrum.

The solution? Algorithms.

A system that gives you discreet things to practice, but which mirrors the “possibility-tree” of real-life playing. And to which you can add more and more conditions until, for all intents and purposes, it becomes indistinguishable from real life.

This is building a lexicon from the “inside out”.

Phew, is anybody still reading? Anyway, today we tackle algorithms through the prism of Nate Smith beats.

Hope you enjoy!

Jonathan Barber - Tell a Story

It’s been about 5 weeks since Jonathan Barber joined me live at 8020 HQ.

In re-listening to the interview, one thing popped out:

In a back-and-forth about flow, Barber says (and I’m paraphrasing), “I tell my students to commit to a ‘mistake’. Don’t shy away from it. Embrace that serendipity.”

I’m listening to this just days after hearing, for the umpteenth time, the famous Tony Williams clinic in which he says “I didn’t want to hope; I wanted to know it would work.”

“Oooooh,” I thought. “The plot thickens.”

I love then great players say seemingly-contradictory things, because unraveling how they can both be right reveals a lot about the topography of their field.

How could Tony and Jonathan both be right?

Maybe Tony was talking about technique, whereas Jon was describing ideas.

Maybe one is appropriate advice for beginners (i.e. “to you it looks like chaos, but I’ve worked hard to be able to harness that chaos” - Tony, paraphrased), and the other is for more advanced players (i.e. “once you have basic control over your ideas, you can miss opportunities by being too perfectionistic”).

It caused me to remember some of my own experience teaching, and giving different advice for different situations. To one student with decent control, who voiced a fear of “messing up”, I recommended he “try to mess up”. The idea, I suppose, being that if we pre-defang that fear, you neutralize it, and then we can focus on more fine-grained things.

To others, I’ll come from more of the Tony angle - guard rails are important, because you want to build outward from a lexicon of ideas that, to apr Tony, you’re pretty sure will work.

Regardless, I found Jonathan a fun thought-partner in describing many aspects of his approach to the drums, and the right person to answer a bunch of questions I’d been wrestling with.

He helped me have more confidence in following my own ideas, instead of feeling like I need to learn every chop I see.

His was a welcome voice in saying he aims to impress his bandmates, not other drummers.

At any rate, intros last: Jonathan popped on my radar a couple of years ago in a video from a live performance, in which he struck me as one of the more original-sounding young jazz drummers. To learn that his mentor, Eric McPherson, was another fearless innovator and progenitor of his own unique lane, was no surprise.

It’s this approach that Jonathan describes bringing to his own teaching, and it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to pick his brain.

Hope you enjoy!