How to Play Like Sput Part 1 - The 80/20 Drummer

I'm working on the solo. I promise I'll get to that. But for now, the groove.

Let's back up: people have been bugging me to do a lesson on Robert "Sput" Searight for at least the last year. So I was looking for a way in:

Maybe the solo from What About Me at NAMM 2015?

Maybe the Vic Firth video?

But nothing really grabbed my fancy. Sure, he could deal chops. Sure, he constructed unconventional, often "open" beats around the kit. But I needed a hook.

Enter the Meinl Can't Get Right video. In order to have the energy and fire to transcribe something when I could be perfecting my own vocab in the Batcave, it has to make me mad. And Can't Get Right made me mad.

"What's he doing, and why can't I do it?"

Like they keep raising the bar even as we all try to get better.

So I've spent most of this week transcribing the solo Sput plays at the 5-minute mark of Can't Get Right. But first, I wanted to tackle the groove.

"What kind of crazy cyclic five shit are they doing?"

And it's not as easy as it sounds, either. It took me 2 hours to feel comfortable. How long will it take you? Check the lesson...

Quick reminder: I'll be in Japan Sep 30-Oct 10, Bangkok the 10-17, and probably Hong Kong for a few days after that. Want to hang? Lesson? Meetup-followed-by-drinks? (Pay for lesson in drinks? I'm flexible). Get at me!

Peace,

Nate

One Simple Trick to Make Your Drum Solos Twice as Cool - The 80/20 Drummer

Alright - that's officially my spammiest lesson title ever. But I think I squeak through on a technicality: this lesson will technically 2x the coolness of your drum solos. Why?

Let's back up. Think about the first drum solo you saw that made you say "dayum".

"I thought I was watching drum solos before this, but this makes all that look like repertory theater."

For me, it was Dennis Chambers. Now, don't get me wrong - this isn't a lesson on Dennis. But when I saw Dennis do the upward crash on the Serious Moves DVD (just as an aside, who gets John Fucking Scofield on his drum DVD? Straight ballin)...

Fast forward 15 years, and now we've got Eric Moore, Aaron Spears, and the generation after. And what do they all have in common? Symmetry.

Nobody wants to watch you right-hand-leading all over the kit. Don't be that guy. Hit the hats with left occasionally. Or go nuts: hit the crash with our left hand.

The true genesis of today's lesson was a simple move I realized my buddy Brandon was deploying in his instagram videos that was making me look like an amateur. The crossover. It seriously only takes 5 minutes to learn, and, technically speaking, your solos will be twice as cool, since you're mirroring everything you were doing with right-hand-lead.

Interest piqued? Let's watch the lesson!

PS I'm not going to stop talking about drum meetups in Asia. Next week I'll be sending out an email to allow people in Japan, Bangkok, and Hong Kong to sign up to hear more about meetups. There. I said it;)

2 Gospel Floor Tom Licks - The 80/20 Drummer

You know that floor tom stuff the cats do? When I was at NAMM, I watched Sean Wright mess around at an exhibitor booth. And I can tell you: 2016 is the year of the floor tom.

Like most stuff that looks impressive sped-up, or in a surprising rhythmico or orchestration context, a lot of the floor tom alchemy boils down to a few simple, intuitive stickings.

A great many are in the later modules of my coaching course.

But I'm continuing to discover/rediscover/mess around with new ones, and in this lesson I share two basic variations, and some variations on those.

Ready for the lesson?

Quick reminder: I'll be in Japan Sep 30-Oct 10, Bangkok the 10-17, and probably Hong Kong for a few days after that. Want to hang? Lesson? Meetup-followed-by-drinks? (Pay for lesson in drinks? I'm flexible). Get at me!

Peace,

Nate

2 Spanky Inspired Licks - The 80/20 Drummer

Poor Spanky has been the subject of more photoshop shenanigans than he deserves. Just for being killing. This week, I bring you two things I invented that Spanky would hopefully smile on.

This past year, I've gravitated toward two "sounds" a lot: first-two-triplets, and kick-drum polyphony. The latter means instead of using the standard palette of kick/cymbal, snare/cymbal, anything goes. Kick/snare. Kick/floor tom. (Sean Wright inspired some of this at NAMM, too.) The only rule is it's clean and intentional.

The first of this week's licks is a first-two triplet thing you can throw in to make a groove funkier.

The second is a five-note fill that sounds fresh, but is still grooving. 

Hope you enjoy!

2 "Nate Wood" Fills - The 80/20 Drummer

A little less than two years ago, Nate Wood agreed to do a shed and an interview with me. I was frankly surprised. His facebook message to me was something like "Love to! When's good?"

As a fellow fan of the short replies (favorite response to "do you want to do a gig xyz details?" is "YES"), I liked him immediately.

Nate then proceeded to make me look like a rank amateur. It wasn't even that he pulled way more chops. It was that he made chops seem like a cheap gimmick.

Well, payback's a bitch.

No, I'm kidding;) Nate's welcome back anytime he wants to give me another lesson in humility. But I did lift 2 licks from him. Or rather I'm pretty sure he played them. The same way Jeff Tain Watts is pretty sure Elvin played most everything that later came out in Jeff's playing, after decades of listening to Elvin. I've listened to a lot of Nate over the years, and I 89% guarantee he's played something pretty-much-like-this;)

Oh - and to make sure I give you one actual, bonafide Nate lick that Nate actually really played, I throw one in at the end.

Ready for the lesson?

PS for everybody participating in the course relaunch, thanks so much for the enthusiastic responses! A lot of people are interested in the free evaluation, so I think I'm going to offer it to the first 10 people to sign up Monday morning. If you're on the launch list I'll be back tomorrow with more details.

Three Brush Hacks for Slow Swing - The 80/20 Drummer

I'll admit it: I didn't touch brushes for three months. Even now it's painful to write this.

I can make excuses: It was tough between two practice spaces. I was working on a lot of gospel stuff, then transcriptions and drum covers.

But mostly it was fear.

So this week I got back on the brush wagon. And luckily, all the work I did on other aspects of my playing seemed to function like "cross training".

And I decided to bring you a sequence I practiced over slow swing. Oh: and it's in 7. Before you throw up your hands, though, don't worry: it's all applicable over multiples of 4 as well.

Slow swing is one of the hardest things in drumming, and slow swing with brushes can be death. If I were Carl Allen, sitting on the Juilliard audition committee, and I wanted give some hot-doggers a wake-up call, I'd ask for slow swing with brushes. Not a ballad, mind you: slow swing. Adult Drums ;)

For the comments, are you happy to have me coming at you twice-a-week, or is it "a little much"?

3 Eric Harland Concepts - The 80/20 Drummer

People have been asking me for literally years to make a lesson about Eric Harland. But I wasn't sure how to approach it. Should I transcribe a solo from Aaron Goldberg's trio? Should I outline a track on Aaron Parks' album? As it turns out, I'll be giving you your first taste of Eric a little more off-the-cuff. From 2007-2010 Eric was practically the only modern jazz drummer I listened to. I was obsessed with capturing what he was doing. Those of you who pay attention will recall I wasn't even any good back in 2010, before I discovered the core concepts I now teach in my courses.

But that Eric vocabulary stuck with me, and now that I have better time and improvisational flow, I can execute it a lot better.

In this week's less, I explore an Eric approach to playing over slow swing, while thinking of it as 12/8, or, in this case, 21/8.

Ready for the lesson?

For the comments/reply: what’s your favorite Eric recording?

How to Play Like Maison Guidry - The 8020 Drummer

I’ve been a fan of my friend Louis Cole’s band Knower since way back. For years I was astonished that there weren’t better drum covers of his music. (Chesley Allen’s was about the only worth mentioning.)

Ready to rise to the challenge, however, is one Mr. Maison Guidry. I’m convinced Maison is to this era of drumming what Chris Dave was to the last: an evolution. People hear Maison and think “when’s he going to play some chops?” (He’s happy to oblige, if you just search his name and “chops”.) But Maison’s more interested in evolving the music. What would happen if an absolute killer checked out all the church drumming, then studied with Ronald Bruner, then checked out Mark Guiliana and Nate Wood? Maison.

So it was with no small bit of aplomb that I discovered Maison had covered not just a Knower tune, but arguably the best knower tune. And, obviously, I had to know what he was doing in the solo.

Ready to check it out? Just click below.

N

PS tour dates: Japan between October 1 and 10, Thailand between the 10th and the who-knows, and possibly Hong Kong at the end of October. OH - and I’ve been asked to do the DBK hang/clinic at NAMM 2017. A murderer’s row, and somehow I got smuggled in. That’ll be circa the third week of January 2017. Get at me!!

How to Cover By Fire by Hiatus Kaiyote - The 80/20 Drummer

Alright. I get it. For about the past year I've seen glimpses of this new band called Hiatus Kaiyote in my social media feeds. "Hmmm - lotta drum covers of these guys..."

But I couldn't be bothered. There gospel...um...idioms to be learned, I was a busy guy. What did I care what the hipsters were up to?

Serendipity found me when I needed some new music to listen to while working at a coffee shop. The bar had been getting pretty low. (The Lido cover, etc.) On a lark, I decided to check out this spacey band from Australia with the weird name and a lead singer with a penchant for welterweight headgear. And I'll be honest: I didn't get it at first. Like most of the deepest stuff, Hiatus didn't hook me from the get-go, then get boring fast. I was intrigued, and each subsequent listening revealed more layers.

So now I'm a fan. There are artists with deep music who are hopelessly pretentious. There are bands with a "devil may care" attitude, then their music sucks. Or they're nihilistic assholes. But I can see why the world's falling in love with Hiatus. They write and play their assess off. Their music is deep but joyful and unpretentious. And you get the sense they'd be cool to hang out with. Like, despite her many intimidating tattoos, Nail Palm (not her real name) would be nice to you if you ran into her at Quizno's.

So this week I bring you a cover of just one of Hiatus' many great songs: By Fire. There's so much depth in their catalogue I hope I eventually get around to covering many more standouts: Shaolin Monk Motherfunk, Breathing Underwater, The World It Softly Lulls, and Molasses just to name a few. (Those should get you started.)

Without further ado, the lesson!

Benny Greb Inspired Warmup - The 80/20 Drummer

Man am I excited to release the next two lessons.

The past few weeks have included a little travel and a lot of drumming. My lesson about Hiatus Kaiyote drops next week.

But today I want to share something a student inspired. One of my coaching students recently (or maybe not so recently by the time this airs) returned from a drum camp with Benny Greb. He (my student) was demonstrating some of Benny's permutation material, and that sent me on a deep dive checking out Benny videos.

As usual, the lesson's not a literal transcription of Benny so much as a concept inspired by the type of stuff he's doing. I'm not usually big on warmups. Anyone who's familiar with the channel knows that. But playing around with permutations and microtime in 6 led me to the discovery of the warmup in this lesson. And now I want to share it with you.

Attention to detail, guys! Make sure those limbs are locking up. Make sure those offbeats aren't rushing!

Enjoy this one. Back next week with the Hiatus cover.

N

Play The Hidden Camera like Richard Spaven - The 80/20 Drummer

Ok, I'm sold on Richard Spaven.

He actually had me at Jose James.

But his new cover of Photek's The Hidden Camera is fire.

One reason I like Richard so much is he applies creative constraints. All his innovation and creativity is focused into the name aperture of feel and phrasing. And it works.

Hope you enjoy! 

N
 

How to Drum Cover Work by Rihanna - The 80/20 Drummer

Certain dream gigs you don’t need to justify. Erykah Badu. Lupe Fiasco. And, I humbly submit, Rhianna. Get beyond the obvious. I’m married. Really - I’m ashamed of you guys.

Rhianna actually has a long string of very drum-able hits. Drummers know what I’m talking about. A certain combination of tempo, texture and syncopation. You hate yourself for tapping along to Shut Up And Drive at the laundramat, or Umbrella at the gym, but you do it all the same. Oh, and Nick Smith and DMile covered Confidence, as if you needed another reason to appreciate Confidence. Out of the gutter, guys. I’m talking about the rhythm;)

Anyway, Work had all the hallmarks of drum-cover-gold: newness, being a killer song, and not having drums! God bless all these new albums with essentially drumless tracks. Drum Cover Christmas. So in this lesson I’ll take you through how to play the groove I played, and a little hot lick if you want to pull out your...chops.

Also, teaser: May is upon us, and that means Austin Clinic. I’ll be emailing shortly with more deets.

N

More Cowbell! - Featuring RDavidR's Cowbell

R David R is a YouTuber, and a drummer. He doesn’t just play the drums, and teach people cool tricks to save them money and headaches, he’s also a killer videographer, and fellow fan of Mayor-of-YouTube Casey Neistat. I’d watched David’s channel for almost 3 months before I made the flattering discovery that he was watching mine as well.

Anyway, David made me a cowbell! Out of the blue, I get a package. (Ok - not totally out of the blue, since I had to give him my address.) Only request - I make a video of his bell and put it on YouTube. Shoot - I was gonna do that anyway.

Actually, you might want to check out the lesson he made about making the bell for me by searching “RDavidR More Cowbell” on YouTube. (He hadn’t provided me the URL as of the writing of this email;)

Anyway, for my lesson this week, I mined the gamut of Famous Cowbell songs, and chose two: one a classic, another a fusion-nerd-classic. I’ll show you what little I know about mambo on the drumkit, then dive into the songs!

For the comments, what’s the coolest thing you’ve ever gotten in the mail?

N

How to Drum Cover Confetti by Tori Kelly - The 80/20 Drummer

I'm not a hipster when it comes to my music tastes. I don't listen to much Mumford. I dig The National, but I'll usually skip over them to listen to Brotherly or Erykah Badu.

We musicians have two big biases: virtuosity and nuance. It's like chefs with sweetbreads. That's my theory at least.

Here's my point: I like Disclosure. I like Seal. And I like Tori Kelly. I guess she was on American Idol or something. I have no idea. But she can sing her ass off, and she plays the f*&% out of the guitar. She's a better drummer on the guitar than 99% of drummers I hear. And also, I first heard of her through the Guitar Center Drum-Off. That's enough to get you thrown off the hipster "force" on its own. ("Sorry, but I'm gonna need your shield and your weapon.")

Anyway, Tony Royster featured Tori at the 2015 Drum-Off finals, and they played the song that I'm going to feature in this lesson: Confetti. It's a great song to cover for a few reasons:

The original is drumless.

It's got a great pocket that's challenging to lock up with.

It's got an odd meter section you can pull out your chops over;)

A lot of people do drum covers, and a lot do lessons, but for this video I wanted to do a hybrid. It's kind of a "cover with commentary".

Anyway, here’s the transcription:

For the comments, are there any drum or music-nerd tracks on your playlist you’re afraid to show your hipster friends? Actually who am I kidding. You guys are probably all hipsters;)

Anyway, what’s on your playlist? What music are you getting inspired by?

N

The Dana Hawkins Lick - The 8020 Drummer

I work best when I absorb new vocabulary in small bits. Think of a house that’s finished, painted, and furnished. You want to build an addition: I prefer a small addition, that I finish before I add anything new on. Reason - you’re using that house for guests constantly, and don’t want six months of “down time” with missing walls and contractors using your bathroom.

It took me about six weeks after NAMM to return to a baseline from which I could improvise again. I’d bitten off a lot of new vocab from folks like Forrest, Chris, and Maison, and was digesting as quickly as I could. Long story (as it usually is) short, I surfaced some time last week, ready to get after it again, and one of the first things that piqued my interest was the floor-tom-hi-hat-lick from Dana Hawkins’ rendition of OC at the Christmas Shed.

He was doing something different. Something I couldn’t recognize right away. In other words, perfect fodder for a Lesson of The Week.

Anyway, here's the transcription:

For the comments, are there any licks stumping you currently? What are they?

N

Drum Q and A 2 - Nate Answers Viewer Questions

I can't take credit for the idea for this week's lesson.

As you may know I've started sponsoring the Drummers Resource Podcast. It's been fun to hear my ads over interviews with people like Mike Johnston, and it's been a nice kick in the pants to make sure my lessons are on point for a bunch of new eyeballs Nick's sending my way.

Anyway, it's not like I've never answered questions on the 8020 channel. I did a Q and A session last summer. But none since. And this week, with at least 3 collaborations looming and most of my energy spent reshooting some intro videos, I was wondering what I'd talk about on the weekly lesson when I happened to tune into Drummers Resource, and Nick was answering listener questions.

So, idea: stolen. Thanks Nick.

This time I took to Instagram, and folks there gave me plenty to talk about.

Wondering what I discussed?

Get the lesson Here.

For the comments, do you have responses to the viewer questions as well? Let's keep the discush going.
 

Three New Gospel...Licks...for Drums - The 80/20 Drummer

Whatever you call them, the things gospel drummers play are here to stay and we love them.

I recorded this week’s lesson the week after returning from NAMM. Let talk a little more about that experience -

The NAMM show itself, as I remarked to my buddy Mark, is like “The Guitar Center From Hell.”

But it was the group of new friends I made, not the event itself, that made an impression that’s still burned into my memory. The feeling of belonging to the Drum Dojo, even as a white belt. And I’ve been torturing drummers much better than I with iphone videos and “virtural sheds” ever since. (And they - to a one, and to their credit - have been humoring me.)

So this lesson is a direct side effect of that spirit. I would be experimenting with something I was pretty sure I heard Sean Wright do (but which was probably not exactly it, but that’s okay too cause invented something new and individual), then pull out the iphone and shoot it over to one of my new drum buddies. The best few made it into this lesson.

Anyway, here's the transcription:

Also, quick news item: I’ll be in Austin on Memorial Day weekend and would love to do a clinic. I’ll keep you posted.

What should the new name for Gospel @#$% be? Leave a comment below!

N

Play Like Nick Smith Featuring Nick Smith - The 80/20 Drummer

Remember that lesson I was super excited to present to you but I couldn’t reveal yet? This is it.

Three years, when I was just starting the channel, I used to drive to Williamsburg every day to practice, and to beat the boredom of sitting in Traffic, I made YouTube playlists. (That’s also when I got heavily into a channel whose name I’m as a rule no longer going to mention;) Of all my favorites, who soon loomed largest on that playlist, inspiring me to Get After It in the shed, even if I wasn’t feeling it that day?

This week’s guest, Nick Smith.

Nick kicked it into high gear when he started doing videos on the Soul Tone channel. I’d never seen anything like it. Super high-level arrangements, that were musical as well as technical, and drumming to match.

Last month in LA, I was at a church in Compton to watch my friend Chris Paprota do a clinic, along with Andre Montgomery and D’Mile. I was out back enjoying a quesadilla with some new friends, and what floated through the door, but the track The Rise, from one of Nick’s Soultone videos. A track I’d transcribed. Sure enough, there was Nick, and just when I thought my night couldn’t get any better, I met him.

So that’s the genesis of this week’s lesson. Nick and I mutually agreed on the track, and Nick, after watching the lesson, elected to bow out of offering any drumming and simply provide commentary and wisdom.

Anyway, for the comments, tell me about a time you met someone you’d admired for a long time. 
Was it everything you hoped? Was it more? 
 
See you next week, and get After It!

N

 

Two Drum Beats Inspired by Bill Burr - The 80/20 Drummer

Which is more difficult: drums or standup comedy? In comedy, there's nothing to hide behind. And people aren't judging your skill on an instrument - they're judging your personality. Of course, you don't have to learn a whole new language.

Bill Burr makes the comparison easy. He's not just one of the best standups of his time. He also plays the drums. Game, set, match.

"Be that as it may, what does a comedian who knows his way around a set of drums have to do with a drum channel dedicated to deconstructing the best drummers on Earth?"

Good question. Hence the technicality. This isn't a lesson about Bill's drumming per se. I'm sure he's excellent. I've never seen him play. Rather, it's a lesson inspired by Bill, and dedicated to two of his favorite drummers: Phil Rudd and John Bonham. Even so, isn't is a departure from my usual fusion-nerdy repertoire? Yes, but in a way that lets me get Back to Basics and talk about the foundational issues to the channel for a change: playing clean, playing in time, etc. And here's an open secret: making Back in Black feel great isn't easy.

Also, growth hacking. I'm hoping Bill will see this. Hey Bill!

In the next couple of weeks, I think you're going to be very satisfied with the offerings of the channel. Sorry to be cryptic.

For the comments, what non-drum or non-music sources do you draw inspiration from?

See you next week, and get After It!

N

Using Rudiments in a Jazz Drum Solo, Featuring Steve Pruitt - The 80/20 Drummer

Let’s talk about the 500-pound gorilla. I missed a week. I’m sorry. But I’m back, with a great one.

Why am I so confident calling my own lesson “great”? Because it’s not entirely my own. My friend Steve Pruitt joins me for this one, and drops enough value bombs for 3 lessons.

Steve Pruitt is a Drum Expat. A North Texas grad, and former Snarky Puppy regular, Steve moved to Korea a few years ago, and never looked back. If you’re wondering why, just check out his instagram feed. (Food, family, teaching gigs, performing gigs...and did I mention Food?)

I’ve been excited to collaborate with Steve ever since I started following his social media videos.

Steve’s posted his various solos over Youngjoo Song’s tune Yellowbrick Road on his Instagram, and they’re modern-jazz-porn at its best. One particular solo stood out for its cleanness. “It’s like he practiced it in advance.” But of course he didn’t. It’s the solo I hope I’d play in a similar situation. So I learned it.

Anyway, here's the transcription:

As you might have noticed, I’m taking a little break from doing videos of every drummer my audience requests, so I can focus on doing videos with drummers I’m a fan of, who I’m lucky enough to be acquainted with. I promise you this: I’ve got some great ones coming up.

For the comments, who wants to shed? I’ve got a new practice spot where I can 2-drum it. Only requisite? I expect to be shown no mercy;)

N