First things first - grab your free transcription here.
Whooooa Nelly I’m tempting the clickbait accusations with this one.
Sometimes I’ll come up with a learning technique with my students that works so well I’m in the unenviable position that everything I say to describe it sounds like utter horse$#!#.
So, caveats out front:
The method I’m about to describe assumes you’ve done a lot of prerequisite work. That means learned to play cleanly and in time, and developed your idea flow. I’ve often said that the key to playing fast solos is playing slow solos. The reason what I’m about to describe works is that you’ve already learned to play slow solos. If you take a sloppy solo and add speed, it’s just going to sound sloppy fast.
With that out of the way, how long should it take to play faster, once you can already play slowly?
The answer could be a couple of years, if you just inch the metronome up. (And I recommend you do that either way.)
But, it turns out, there’s another, faster - sneakier - way.
In this complex soup of drum improvisation, speed is one ingredient. Another is number of licks you maintain in active memory. And you can play with both.
In fact, one of the most famous “choppers” of his generation is talking about it, in public, in plain English. If you know where to look.
I promise I’ll explain more in the video.
Hope you enjoy!