The Hardest Thing About Playing Drums With A Band

First things first - grab your free show notes.

Today’s video was simmering on the back burner for quite a while.

It concerns my attempt to answer possibly the most frequent question I get from students about playing with a band: “what happens if I’m in a tug-or-war over the tempo?”

BTW, hopefully the video thumbnail captures this adequately. Thanks, Midjourney, and goodbye, 3 hours this morning.

But we’ve all probably been there.

You practice your time and tempo in the shed with a metronome, and you’re pretty confident you’re solid. Then you get in a rehearsal or gig situation with a…maybe slightly novice…musician or two in your band, and it feels like the tempo is going to come apart at the seams.

Maybe you’ve got one member who is pulling on the tempo in a certain direction. Or maybe you’ve got multiple factions, all threatening the “global order”.

These situations can be frustrating precisely because there’s no easy answer: on the surface, it seems like you’re caught between two bad options - go with the offending member, and let the tempo get out of control, or resist militantly, often causing the band to pull apart, and incurring the bad vibes that enesue.

That’s why I call this the “hardest thing about playing with a band”.

But what if I told you there’s a “third way”.

Just like jiujitsu, and annoyingly, it’s all in the subtleties. In this video, I’ll attempt to frame some of the more “201” strategies for keeping a song on the rails even when factions are trying to pull it off - all without pissing anybody off. Hopefully.

Hope you enjoy.

Is This The HARDEST Thing to Master on Drums?

First things first - here’s your free transcription.

When we think about what the “hardest” thing to play on drums is, we probably have some of the same ideas.

Certainly some of the impressive double-kick/blast beat/gravity drop technical prog rock of the type Navene Koperweis or Estepario Siberiano do seems pretty hard.

Ditto anything with shifting, angular polyrhythms of the type we see Arthur Hnatek or either Matt (Halpern or Garstka) playing. Not to mention adding lightening double-kick to that, as Chris Turner is wont to do.

But I’m going to propose something else entirely as a contender for hardest thing to do on the drums: improvising with doubled triplets.

Whereas some of the other disciplines are hard primarily for their speed, doubled-triplet improv is difficult even if it’s slow.

Whereas some of the other things are hard because you’re learning composed polyrhythms that cross the barline in weird ways, doubled-triplets - if you want to play them at a high level - are hard because you have to improvise things that cross the barline in weird ways.

So, what are doubled triplets? Imagine a slow half-time shuffle, and imagine improvising over it, at twice the rate of the triplet. They’re the same rate as sextuplets, but they “lie differently”.

And what makes them so hard?

My theory is that it’s because they only emerge in a certain band of tempos, and they’re tempos we don’t see very much in popular music. And that it’s all down to reps. We get tons of reps with 16ths, sextuplets, and 32nds, but many fewer with doubled triplets.

But I’d argue we should be making time for this solo structure, because it sounds really cool. (In the video I’ll show you several examples.)

Which leaves us with how do we do it. And you know me - I’ve got you.

The answers to get you started, as usual, are in the video.

Hope you enjoy.

Brandon Olander - Technique Notes With The Drum Corps GOAT

If you're like me, you probably remember those drum corps videos from 2017 and 2018, when a certain media network started sharing a ton of them on YouTube.

One of the most captivating to watch were the blue devils. I actually used excerpts from some of their lot drum line performances to illustrate what I meant by "playing clean": if you treat your drum kit like 4 players playing together, your "personal drum troupe" should sound, well, Together, rather than all over the place. And it was the devils' footage I used.

The center snare player for that group, during several of its best years, was Brandon Olander, who, I'm excited to say, is today's podcast guest.

Brandon and I had been meaning to have a conversation for a while, and decided "why not record it". I was excited to pick the arch corpsman's brain on a number of things.

Topics we touch on in this interview include:

-The differences between marching snare and drum kit technique

-Brandon's philosophy and approach to teaching

-What it's like to be an apex marching percussionist learning drum kit

If you've ever wondered why the hands of corps folks and drum kit players look so different, or whether the crazy rhythmic vocabulary of drum corps gives you a "leg up" learning to improvise, I know you'll dig this interview.

Does Anybody Know What This Drum Beat is Called?

First things first - grab your free transcription here.

I actually genuinely hope someone in my audience can supply some more info on this.

It started like this: I’m listening along to my instagram, then I see this “Bill Withers with 32nd notes” thing from Jharis Yokley, and I think “wow, that reminds me of this Chris Dave beat with Meshell Ndegeocello.”

I also thought of the beat I played over one of the tracks I recorded the last time I was at Meinl - this stuff is clearly in my head too.

There was just one problem: I had no idea what to call it.

It’s not exactly breakbeat, the way Jojo Mayer or JD Beck play it.

It’s also not really jungle or Drum and Bass.

But it does seem to share their DNA.

After texting umpteen drummers and asking “what is this thing”, I got fed up, and decided to hatch my own tinfoil hat theory.

In today’s video, I’ll tell you what that theory is, and also show you how to play the beat. Complete with transcriptions.

Hope you enjoy!