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Advanced Triplet Fills
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I HATED Odd Meters - Until I Discovered This
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Stop Trying So Hard to Groove - Try This Instead
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What The Haters Taught Me About Playing Faster
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My 3 Best New Flow Exercises
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How Eric Moore Plays Fast
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The (Second) Coolest Groove on YouTube
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Tony, Connie, and Mel All Did This - Here's How
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The Top 5 Stewart Copeland Beats of All Time
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Josh Crawford Transcriptions
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Avoid This "Catch 22" at Your Next Jazz Jam Session
Four Exercises to Improve Your Time on The Drums
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Two Straight 8th Jazz Brush Patterns
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Why not play brushes on everything?
That’s the question John Riley asked me, many years ago, for which I didn’t have a great answer.
Through the years, I’ve tried to wage a “booster” campaign for the humble brush - to coax others out of the resistance that kept me from getting great at the brushes for so many years.
Eventually, it was my love of the great jazz drummers, from Ed Thigpen, Vernel Fournier, and Roy Haynes to Blade, Bill Stewart, and Hutch.
But I’m painfully aware that my channel attracts both jazz enthusiasts and…not-jazz-enthusiasts alike, and…well…the brushes have an image problem the sticks don’t share.
Sticks, you see, are equally appropriate in any musical genre.
Only play country two-steps? Great. Sticks.
Like zydeco? Fantastic. I’ve got an idea: drumsticks.
You get the idea.
Brushes, however, and with few exceptions, are only associated with jazz.
Which left me in the difficult position of making the case that we should “liberate” the brush from simply a jazz implement…
…without seeming to disparage the great drummers who developed the idiom.
Let me put it this way:
Papa Jo, Connie Kay, Ed, Vernel, Roy, Philly Joe, Art Taylor, Paul Motian, and everybody else took the brush tradition so deep that, for aficionados, their music needs no qualification.
But, for people not familiar with these greats, are we going to say brushes are “off limits” for them?
Nope.
Play brushes along with Jack White.
Play brushes with Cardi B. With Rihanna. With Hova. With Soundgarden.
They’re just another texture - and a great one.
Play Brushes On Everything.
And this lesson humbly submits two way you might start.
First, though, grab your transcription here.
What Makes These Tunes So Hard to Play?
So there's something that happens when I see a difficult tune I can't play.
It's akin to Biff Tannen calling Marty McFly "chicken".
I'm all set for the day in the shed...
I've got my life in a good balance...
I don't want for anything.
All I have to do is walk away.
Then, I hear the tune calling "what are you...CHICKEN?"
"NOONE CALLS ME CHICKEN"
So it was was the tune that inspired this week's lesson. And, like many of the tunes that "call me chicken" recently, it's by Tigran Hamasyan.
But let's get deeper.
I realized there's something specific that make a lot of Tigran's tunes particularly difficult.
It's not just the shifting meters you have to remember - though some tunes certainly have those.
It's the way you often have to keep two rhythms - of two different phrase lengths - in your head at once. And, I realized, it's not unique to Tigran.
In today's lesson, I'll examine 3 tunes by 3 different composers, all-of-which place a similar demand on our cognition.
Oh - and don’t forget Le Transcripcion:
Traditional or Matched Grip for Jazz Drums?
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I thought it was time to wade into the “traditional vs matched” debate.
For how little “dog” I have “in this fight”, it’s astonishing how much the two sides get "dug in”.
I had teachers actively discourage me from learning traditional grip (the same as some now discourage learning leglock entries from reverse delariva guard;).
So what are the sides?
In my experience, it breaks down like this:
On one side, the “traditionalists”. You don’t hear them talking about it much, but they all play it.
(Many in the New York jam session scene are so “traditional-dominant”, their left hand is weak when they try to switch over to matched.)
Spend enough time around Smalls, The Needle, Lincoln Center, etc, and you’ll start to feel some “peer pressure”.
On the other, the much-more-vocal “evolutionists”. These are the folks who will tell you trad grip is a “waste of time”, or it’s “obsolete”.
Well, what do we find when we look at actual jazz drummers? Evidence of both approaches being successful:
Ari Hoenig, Eric Harland, and Bill Stewart on the “mostly matched” side…
…Brian Blade, Hutch, Kendrick Scott, Jochen Rueckert, Tane, and plenty others on the “mostly traditional” side.
But, as I’ll argue in the lesson, at the highest levels, you don’t find many trad players who can’t also play matched. (Think from among the above group.)
What’s more, the newest generation of players like Marcus Gilmore, Justin Brown, Justin Faulkner, etc seem to play both with about equal competence.
So - which way to go?
Check out the lesson.
And don’t forget to grab your transcription/exercise book here.
Dotted Eighth Lesson
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It's been challenging getting fired up to write about some of the topics I've covered in recent weeks...
Sure - I like playing like Tony Williams...
...but others have written so-damn-much, what am I going to add to the conversation.
The last lesson I was this excited to write about was the "live rounds" episode. Even now I'm perking up;)
So - today's lesson is something you might hate me for...
...but which I love. It's that dotted-8th sh$#.
And we go deeeeep. As in, I was listening to the edit, going, "are they gonna turn on me with pitchforks?"
As in, I'm picturing my viewership dropping off at minute 2 of this video.
But think Kevin Smith's Fat Man on Batman. Think Labor of Love from somebody who (have I mentioned this yet?) deeply loves this subject.
Today's lesson is not going to make your fills faster (though it will spark some new ideas).
Today's lesson is not going to make you better looking (though it will put a smile on your face, which, scientists agree, improves attractiveness).
And it won't give you a big, hulking, NFL/PED Muscle Meat frame to showcase on the beach (though it will improve your coordination, and myelinate neural pathways, the same process that allows people to add plates to their deadlift).
So I give you: the Humble Dotted Eighth. If you're one of the few, the proud, the Drum Nerds, this one's for you.
And don’t forget to grab your transcription here.
Tony Williams Ride Cymbal Revisited
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Of all the lessons I’ve published in the past few years, none has attracted more eyeballs, nor generated more controversy, than my first Tony Williams lesson from 2016.
On its face, it’s not the subject I would’ve predicted would generate so much buzz.
My Chris Dave lessons, or any of the “gospel”-related lessons would’ve been more likely culprits, in my estimation.
But I was wrong.
Thousands of people take to YouTube every month and search stuff about playing the ride cymbal like Tony Williams.
The reason the first Tony lesson generated controversy was that I probably gave short-shrift to a particular aspect of Tony’s technique.
The method I was showing had come from John Riley, who has a different approach to Tony’s famous five-not groups.
All-the-same, I felt it was time to double-back, and both clarify, and give you guys some more resources to play-like-Tony. (Especially since I myself have been revisiting the Lord of Ride.)
Please enjoy this week’s lesson, and make sure you pick up your transcription here.
Tony Williams and Eric Harland Both Do This
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This week’s lesson manages to run afoul of two things-at-once:
It’s something I’m practicing already, rather than a slick transcription of someone else’s playing.
Buuuut I still managed to pirate somebody else’s tune, and get a copyright strike on YouTube.
(If anyone’s interested, I’ll be selling bootlegged copies of Invisible Cinema out of the back of a pickup later. KIDDING.)
All the same, I think you should check it out, and here’s why:
It extends on a concept I debuted last month with the “bet you can’t play this” beat: straight 8ths on the hats, with an implied 16th-note phrase shift.
The point is not, I promise you, to teach you to get fired from gigs. (Though that will be the subject of an upcoming lesson.)
The point is that once you have the skillset in that lesson, things like the exercises in this week’s lesson will be child’s play.
Ok, so why should you care?
If Eric’s beat isn’t enough for you, I humbly submit:
Dana Hawkins
Justin Tyson
Mark
Need I go on?
Get your straight-8th hat stuff going.
Get your life.
And don’t forget to grab your transcription here.
Two Sextuplet Licks - Nate Transcribes Himself
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Most weeks, I bring you either licks I lift from other drummers, or concepts I’m messing with.
Every once-in-a-while, though, I’ll catch myself playing something repetitively.
If it sucks, I try to “unlearn” it, or choose other ideas.
If it doesn’t - if I’m like “whoa, did I come up with that?”, I share it with you guys.
This one was a bit of a challenge.
I knew what I was playing, but I decided to go “before” and “after” the licks.
In the “before”, I try to show you what I might have been messing with to come up with the lick.
In the “after”, I take it, and apply it to a different rhythmic context.
Hence, two “sextuplet” licks that work both as (1) proper sextuplets, and (2) subdivided triplets, which subdivide the measure differently, but occur at equivalent rate to that of sextuplets.
So it turned my head around a bit. What I’m trying to say is…I’m sacrificing for you guys;)
Anyway, enjoy the lesson, and don’t forget to grab the transcription, and your 3 free videos, here.