Merry Christmas!

This year's been another busy one. Come February it'll be 3 years since I joined Wishbone Ash. I can't believe how quickly that time has passed. We started the year in Europe - mainly Germany - with a 5 week tour. It was cold but it was good to be working at what always used to be a really quiet time. We took 10 days off to go skiing/snowboarding which was great fun but I had to be very careful not to break anything. In the weeks leading up to the ski break I'd been figuring out how I'd get through a set without the use of one of my limbs. I figured I could just about pull it off but didn't really fancy having to put it into practise.

In March I took 10 days out and visited New York to take a few lessons with some of my favourite drummers. I was grilled by Billy Ward, Jon Riley helped me with my jazz chops, Robby Ameen gave me some afro-cuban tips and Mike Clark demonstrated how to play like a genuine funk legend! It was hugely inspiring and I came home with lots of new ideas to work on. If you ever find yourself in New York I highly recommend hooking up with one of these guys. I was really impressed with their massive enthusiasm for the instrument and was struck by how each one had their own completely distinct style.

A UK tour followed shortly after my trip. Andy Powell has kept Wishbone Ash going for 40 years - a pretty impressive feat! In celebration of this fact we did a 40th Anniversary gig at Shepherd's Bush Empire which was filmed for a DVD (check it out at the Wishbone Ash store)

Summer was a bit quieter but I got the opportunity to work on new material for the MasterClasses. The response to these lessons has been great and I hope to get some new ones up there in the not too distant future.

We played a few European festivals in August. One of them was with Slade. I obviously know Slade music but they were really before my time and I only recognised Dave Hill because I'd seen Bob Mortimer's impression of him on Reeves and Mortimer. It was spot on!

We toured the UK for a second time in October then spent 10 days in November working on a song for a new single. Current plans are to release it next year. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I've got a month off over Christmas and have been doing some Custom Drum Track sessions and getting in some much needed practise. Next year looks like it'll be more of the same. We head out to Germany in January. I'm intending to visit the Sonor factory to see how my drums were made - I'll post some photos from the trip. Later in the year we have some gigs in South Africa with Deep Purple and Uriah Heep which I'm very excited about.

That's all for now. Have a wonderful Christmas and here's to 2010!

Joe

New Lessons...

I recently added a lesson explaining the whacky fill in the Nik Kershaw song 'Don't Ask Me'. A 10 minute version is available on the lessons page, the full 20 minute explanation with transcription and extra technical exercises is available as a MasterClass lesson.

I also made the youtube lessons downloadable in the MasterClass area in case you want to reference them when you have no internet connection.

It's Twitter Time

It seems Twitter has really taken off lately. If you want to follow me I'm @joecrabtree

Tweets will be updates to this page, occasional drum related thoughts AND if you have a MasterClass account I'll send out vouchers with lesson discounts every now and again so keep your eyes peeled.

Joe

Play like John Bonham!

Out of the thousands of drummers that have graced the earth there are only a few with a sound so distinctive that you can recognise them instantly. Out of those few you can probably count on one hand the ones that non-drummers will have heard of. We're pretty much talking Ringo, Keith Moon, Phil Collins, Stewart Copland and John Bonham.

All the rest of them are drummer's drummers. I love Vinnie Coliuta, Dave Weckl, Omar Hakim, etc. etc. but they're pretty much outside the radar of non-drummers. Plus, how often do you get asked to "play it like Vinnie would"?

On the last UK tour with Wishbone Ash I went to the trouble of recording every gig and listening back to it. I started to become much more aware of how the sound of my drums and cymbals fit with the rest of the music. To be honest I hadn't really thought that much about it before. I was more focused on getting a drum sound I liked than a drum sound that worked for the style of music. A kit that sounds good on its own in your bedroom may not sound good on stage with a band. Or it may sound good with a jazz band but not with a rock band or a funk band.

I began to wonder what sound I wanted to hear. I decided to go and listen to some Led Zepelin as a few of the songs we'd added to the set really had that Bonahm vibe to them.

As I was checking out the sound I was also paying attention to what exactly John was playing. A typical question from drum students is "What should I play for a fill?" - I found myself asking the same question.

I knew that Bonham's fills weren't very 'notey' but I also knew they had character. To my surprise I found that all his fills were all fairly similar and pretty simple. He wasn't trying to do anything clever to impress drummers in the audience, he was just playing what worked with conviction.

And what are these fills??? More often than not they're just a sting of straight 16th notes or 16th note triplets, BUT, he plays them with a twist... he starts them a note early, i.e. on the 'a' of the previous beat.

Example 1 is a basic rock groove with straight 16th and triplet fills like any beginner drummer might play.



Example 2 is the same idea but I start all the fills one note earlier - i.e. on the 'a' of 4 of the previous bar.


It's very simple, but it works.

Enjoy,

Joe

P.S. Did you know that John Bonham is the drummer on Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man? If you know the song try singing it in your head. I bet you don't hear it with Bonham fills. Go and check it out, they're all there - starting one note early. (www.spotify.com is great for checking out music)


P.P.S. I recorded the drums with a cheap USB snowball mic running straight into Garage band. It doesn't sound great but it's certainly good enough to check out how you're sounding. I highly recommend recording your practice sessions - you'll get more out of that than pretty much anything else.

Looking for something to read?

I've added some recommended reading to the right hand side of this page.

I'm an avid reader of fiction and non-fiction and I've included the books that I've enjoyed the most over the last few years. If you mouse over a book you'll see my brief comment about it. Some of them are novels, others are inspirational/motivational/practical non-fiction, and I've included a few staple drum books for good measure.

If you're looking for something to read each one of these comes with a 5 star rating from me. I'm sure you won't be disappointed by any of them.

Happy reading,

Joe

Welcome to the new Joecrabtree.com

Hi, thanks for visiting!

I thought it was about time for a change so I've spent a few days coding instead of drumming.

New to the site is the Forum - a place to discuss all things drum related. You can sign up here, then in future you can simply log in on the right hand side of this page.

Please note: If you signed up for a MasterClass account prior to 27th May 09 you'll need to sign up for a Forum account in order to log in to the MasterClass. Please make sure you use the same username and email address that you used for your MasterClass account.

Signing up for the Forum automatically registers you for a MasterClass account where you can get access to 12+ hours of in depth drum lessons. At the moment the Forum is geared up to discuss those lessons, ask questions about them and leave feedback about what you'd like to see in future lessons. It's brand new though so come and let me know what else you'd like to see in there and we can build it together!

Also new is this - the blog. I've moved it from the depths of the website to the home page. The idea is to encourage me to update more frequently. It'll probably be to do with what I'm working on at the moment so come back often for practice tips!

That's all for now.

Hope to see you in the Forum soon...

Joe

Practice thoughts

My approach to practising the drums has always been to try and find something I can't do, break it down to its simplest form and work on that. I figure that as long as you're working on things you can't do then you're getting better.

In my early twenties the "things I can't do" would consist of playing 19 over 7, or strange bass drum ostinatos. Later I began to realise that, not only are these things not particularly useful in music but there were countless things that were pretty basic that I couldn't do.

So, my focus moved to finding the simplest things that I struggled with. I'd find something, work on it for a while, create exercises to work on it and write them down. The problem was that I'd move on before I really nailed it, assuming that I'd come back to it later because I'd written it down. All that happened was that it got added to a pile of books and other exercises that I never got round to working with.

Starting today I've decided to keep a practise book and my aim is to find a new thing each practise session and work with it until I've nailed it. The session can include various methods of breaking it down to help me work on it, but whatever it is will be my focus until I'm happy that I have it under my belt. Hopefully this will accelerate my learning. We'll see....