It's Raining Drummers!

A friend of mine is organising a drummer-skydiving combo on August
13th this year. The aim is to get 50 drummers to do a sky dive to
raise money for Banardo's.

Check out the website here - www.DrummerPlunge.com

I've done a couple of sky dives in the past and it's a lot of fun. I
wish them all the best...

Joe

Batá Drumming

Last September I visited my brother in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and met
up with a friend of his who plays Batá drums with a couple of friends.
I was extremely impressed at how complex the music sounded and how
many interesting rhythmic ideas it contained. I was also quite
surprised to learn just how structured it all is, as I'd always
thought that kind of music was a little more improvised.

I'm out in Halifax again at the moment and one of the trio has gone
off to study drumming in Cuba, so today I sat in with them and started
to get my head around the music. It's amazing fun and is introducing
me to some really interesting rhythms.

A lot of it is written in 6/8 but some parts will be playing a
straight 4 over the 6, or variations on that kind of concept. The
interplay of the drums is hypnotizing. Each drum has 2 sides - the
larger one giving more of a tone and the smaller one giving a slap
sound. When you're sitting in the middle of 3 people playing you hear
melodies split between the drums. It can be really hard to identify
what each drum is doing individually, but the overall sound is
fantastic.

I'm heading over there again in a couple of days so I'll try and get
some video footage to put up on the blog. In the meantime, if you're
interested in investigating further, check out this page:
http://www.latinpulsemusic.com/albums/show/18

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Thanks for your support,
Joe

750 Words - Day 15 : On complaining and performing

What is my job? I play drums for 2 hours every night. Well, every
night that I have a gig. Sometimes I enjoy it, other times I really
don't. What makes the difference between a good and a bad gig? I
suppose it's whether I feel like I'm making good music.

Other things come into consideration too. Playing to 20,000 people in
a stadium is quite different to playing to 30 people in a bar. I've
done both. Is one better than the other? It depends how you look at
it.

Personally there are things that can spoil a gig for me. One of them
is lighting. Occasionally there'll be a really bright spot pointed
straight in my eyes. It means I can't see the audience, and it's like
staring at the sun for 2 hours. It gives you a headache and kind of
tires you out. I suppose I shouldn't complain - I should just try and
make sure it doesn't happen.

Last year we did a gig with Toto. I was using a hired drum set which
needed a lot of work to get it to sound even half decent. Behind me
was Simon Phillips's monster kit - every drum in the perfect place. I
spoke to him about setting up drums and said that sometimes I just
gave up and made do. He said you should never do that. If you're not
comfortable on stage and happy that you're making a good sound then
you're not in a position to do your job properly, and you'll probably
have a bad gig. One could say that's fine coming from Simon Phillips.
He can request exact drums and hardware and have his tech set
everything up the way he likes it. Even so, he always comes and makes
the small adjustments required to make sure he's comfortable.

A couple of years ago I read a great book called 'A Complaint Free
World' (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385524587/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=drums...)
Even if you're skeptical it's well worth a read. I was well aware
that complaining is unnecessary. Most people complain to their wife
about their boss, and to their boss about their wife. It doesn't
serve any purpose apart from sustaining your annoyance and boring
whoever is the recipient of the rant. I didn't feel like I was much
of a complainer, but after reading the book I became more aware of the
times that I did complain and resolved to try and eliminate them.

If you feel annoyed at someone or something then you should figure out
why, and do something about it. I spend a lot of time writing
software to automate menial tasks, and I spend a lot of time finding
problems with my playing and working to overcome those. These are
active ways to overcome annoyances. Complaining that I have a bad gig
because there was a spot light in my eyes seems really petty when I
think about it.

So, I plan to start a check list of things that can make a gig bad,
and make sure I systematically eliminate them from the equation. It
doesn't take much to ask someone to turn on the stage lights in sound
check and request that they change the angle of a spot or don't use it
as full brightness. If there is no soundcheck or they can't change
anything, then I suppose I could wear shades.

Another thing that can spoil a gig for me is having a bad monitor mix.
Last night was the final night of a 19 date US tour. We had an 11
hour drive to get to the gig and there wasn't time to set up the
in-ear monitoring or do a proper soundcheck. The result was that I
could barely hear myself during the gig. I felt like the sound out
front also had no drums and assumed everything I was playing sounded
terrible to the audience. I played the whole gig, especially the drum
solo (which I wanted to cut from the set), feeling slightly
embarrassed about the performance and the sound.

At the end of the gig many people came up and congratulated us on a
great set and commented that the sound was fantastic and the drums
were really powerful. This has happened on more than one occasion,
and I really should have learned by now. One of the hardest things to
do is look like you're enjoying something when you're not, but that's
what I'm paid to do. I've found that if you make the effort and
decide to let go of the things you can't change and trust that
everyone else is doing the best job they can do then things usually
turn out for the best.

I know of no better example of this kind of professionalism than the
following clip. The backing track is played back at the wrong sample
rate and is out of tune by a random amount. Eddie does his best to
bend notes to make them sound less awful, but it's pretty horrendous
by any standard. I have no idea how he felt on stage, but it couldn't
have been good. Despite all this he still 'jumps' every time the word
comes up. Now that's a professional performer!

As for the gig when only 30 people show up to a bar in the middle of
nowhere... They've all paid for a ticket and deserve to see the same
show that the 20,000 arena goers paid to see. In some ways it'll be
even more special for them. If Eddie found himself in that situation
I think he'd still jump.

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Thanks for your support,
Joe

YES!!

I love this album. Interesting pop, but with incredible drumming.
It's Vinnie (of course)

Manu Katche Fill

I was just watching this Manu Katche video on youtube

I particularly liked his fill at 1:44. I transcribed it, then came
back and watched the rest of the video (seems to be some instructional
thing). He goes on to play the song again in a more 'expansive' way.
It's interesting to note that the same fill crops up in that take too.
It just shows you that it's one that he likes and wasn't a random
thing that he came up with on the spot.

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Thanks for your support,
Joe

Hard work

A poem by Demitri Martin. Seems a bit random, but it's thoroughly impressive. I'll tell you why afterwards....

----

"Dammit I'm Mad"

Dammit I’m mad.

Evil is a deed as I live.

God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.

To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.

Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?

Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.

I am not a devil. I level “Mad Dog”.

Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,

In my halo of a mired rum tin.

I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.

Is evil in a clam? In a trap?

No. It is open. On it I was stuck.

Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.

Be still if I fill its ebb.

Ew, a spider… eh?

We sleep. Oh no!

Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.

Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.

Both, one… my names are in it.

Murder? I’m a fool.

A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,

A Goddam level I lived at.

On mail let it in. I’m it.

Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!

A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.

Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:

“Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog”

Evil is a deed as I live.

Dammit I’m mad.

- Demitri Martin

-------

Think about how much work went into writing that. How many hours do you think it took?  1? 2? A day? 

Now, start at the bottom and read upwards. Not word by word, but letter by letter. It's a palindrome. Rearrange the punctuation and it reads the same forwards as backwards. I think that's pretty damn impressive!

Lick a Day - Flammy Fill

Play this at a slower tempo. You have to play a quiet left hand note
immediately after the accented flam. You could make the rest of the
beat into double strokes and switch the sticking for beats 2 and 4
(eg. L rL l r r l l R lR r l l r r etc.)

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Joe

Lick A Day - 1 bar snare drum fill

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Joe

Maybe one of the best things ever...

This is one of my favourite drum solos of all time...

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Thanks for your support,
Joe

Drummer's Tool Kit

This is an essential item! Ever tried doing a 2 hour set with a massive paper cut on your thumb? Not fun. This stuff is amazing. Spray it on and you're good as new.

750 Words - Day 14 : Accumulation

I'm a fan of accumulation. I just looked at my youtube channel and I
have 63 videos up there. Each one took at least a day to film and
edit. It's nice to look back and see all of this stuff I've produced.

Whenever I begin a new project it can seem really daunting. I didn't
set out to make 63 videos. If that had been my initial goal I
probably wouldn't even have bothered starting. It's all too easy to
think about the end result and be put off by the sheer amount of work
ahead.

When I first started transcribing things I bought a ring binder to
keep them in. The first addition to that ring binder looked very
lonely. A single piece of A4 paper just flapping about on its own.
Over time I added a second, and a third. By the time I had five
sheets in there it began to feel like a collection. Once I got to
that stage it seemed much less stressful to do 'just one more' and add
it to my file. Now the binder is full and I can look back over all
the stuff I've worked on over the years. Whenever I feel like I'm not
getting anywhere I can look back through this folder and see for
myself all the work I've put in and the progress I've made.
Everything in that folder was once something that I wanted to be able
to do, but didn't understand. The process of working it out allowed
me to comprehend it and eventually absorb it into my own playing.
Seeing the evidence of this inspires me to continue.

Think about how many words you know in your native tongue. You
started out, before you can remember, with just one word. Gradually
you added more, and more. At school they were drilled into you. All
of those words required an explanation and regular use in your
sentences in order for them to become familiar. Even with a large
vocabulary, learning a new word is not easy. You have to work with it
for it to become as effortless as those you've carried with you for
many years. If you wanted to learn English, you wouldn't pick up a
dictionary and start at "aardvark". A dictionary is completely
self-referential. Every word in it is explained with other words in
it. The only way you can actually learn the language is to absorb a
few words from the people and world around you, then begin to work
your way out.

When you learn a new word from a dictionary you learn it in terms of
other words. Let's take the word 'indigo' as an example. In
reference to the colour, a dictionary definition is:
3. The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between blue
and violet, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with
wavelengths of approximately 420 to 450 nanometers; a dark blue to
grayish purple blue.

If you'd never heard the word before this definition lets you know
that it's a colour somewhere between dark blue and greyish purple
blue. That's how you'll think of it until somebody points to a shop
window and tells you they love that 'indigo' Tshirt. You might
previously have thought of it as purple, but now you have a new word
to apply to this specific shade of purple. Suddenly your appreciation
of the colour spectrum has broadened slightly. Now, if you see a
definition of another colour that's somewhere between indigo and
violet, then you might have an appreciation of what they're talking
about. Indigo means something in the world, and not just in theory.

It's the same with drum fills, grooves, and techniques. You want to
learn some authentic latin drumming? It requires the same effort to
work these new ideas into your playing. They need to become second
nature. If you buy a book full of authentic rhythms you might wonder
how on earth you're ever going to remember them all. You should
appreciate that remembering them all isn't the point. Just as there's
little point remembering all the words in the dictionary without
understanding them, there's little point in remembering all these
rhythms without knowing how to apply them. You need to accumulate
them over time and understand how they fit with the musical styles
they're derived from.

Instead of being put off, just take the first example in the book and
work with it. Apply it in all the different ways you can think of.
Pull it to pieces and put it back together. Internalize it. Make it
your own. Listen to music in the style of you're learning and try to
identify when you hear your rhythm. Eventually you'll just 'know' it
like you know what indigo is. The name will conjure up the rhythm and
you won't have to think of it as groups of 8th notes and 16th notes.
When you get to that stage you can move onto the next one. Just
remember that the next one will require a similar amount of work to
absorb. Of course, the more you listen to a style of music and the
more you learn about it, the more you see how these rhythms relate to
each other and where they come from, so it gets a little easier. Keep
working in this way, and a few months down the line turn around and
see how far you've come.

The most recent example of accumulation for me is this blog. Having a
website with a menu item named 'blog' is like having a nagging english
teacher asking you to write essays. The only way I've managed to fill
it with content is by forcing myself to sit down every day and write
750 words. That only worked because I turned it into a game and
started a collection. The first few were hard to do, but once I had 3
or 4 articles written it seemed to get easier. I chose the rules to
make the game easy to win. All I had to do was write 750 words. They
didn't necessarily have to be good. I didn't have to edit them if I
didn't want. I just had to get the words out of my head and onto my
screen. Once the raw material is out, it's then a different game to
shape it into something for the blog.

The "Lick A Day" thing that I posted last night was an attempt to
start another collection. I spend a lot of time analysing other
people's drumming and breaking down things that exist already. But I
don't spend much time creating new ideas. I think that's something I
ought to be doing, but again, the thought of coming up with a whole
bunch of new ideas is overwhelming. My approach? Try and do one a
day. That seems achievable. Even if I just do it for a week, at the
end of that time I'll be able to look at 7 new ideas that I came up
with. That's the beauty of accumulation. You inch forward and if you
wait long enough before looking behind you it's a nice surprise to see
what you've achieved.

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Thanks for your support,
Joe

Groove with floor tom

A Lick A Day...

Ok, I've no idea whether I'll be able to keep this up, but it's quite easy for me to post photos to this blog.  In an attempt to be more creative I'm going to try and invent a new fill or groove or idea every day and post it here.  I'll draw it on whatever is handy, take a photo with my iPhone, and upload it.

It'll require me to have an internet connection, so they may not be here every day, but I'll do my best to get things up when I can.

If you like these blog posts, please spread the word.  The easiest way to keep up to date is probably to 'like' my Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joe-Crabtree/154808904561193
Or you can 'like' it from my website http://www.joecrabtree.com (bottom left)
Or you can subscribe to the blog RSS feed

Thanks,
Joe

750 Words - Day 13 : Natural Talent

"You're an amazing drummer.  I wish I had your talent and natural ability."  I've heard these words many times and I disagree with them in more ways than one.

There are two statements being made.  The first one is in reference to being "amazing" and the second in reference to the "talent" and "natural ability" which produced the "amazing"-ness.  Reading between the lines of this statement you get the true message which is "I'm not going to even bother trying to learn the drums.  I've had a few tries and I'm rubbish.  I just don't have that natural feel for the instrument."  It's basically an excuse, but one that's believed by the person uttering the words.

Usually, the statement comes from a non-drummer.  That's the first part of the problem.  What does it mean to be "a drummer"?  Well, it basically means that you've played the drums regularly over a period of time.  Anybody who's done that would realise that you can become relatively impressive to a non-drummer with just a few weeks of practice.  It basically comes down to being able to do something that someone else can't - and that just takes a bit of dedicated practice and persistence.

How good you become in a set amount of time is a function of how many hours you put in, and how you spend those hours.  Let's say it takes approximately 100 hours of practice to go from non-drummer to being able to play something that sounds really impressive.  If you practice for 10 hours a day, then you'll get there in 10 days.  If you practice only 30 minutes a day it'll take you 200 days.  If you practice an hour a week it'll take you nearly 2 years.  I believe practice time is what people mistake for talent.  The thing is, you can't know how good you could be without putting in the time, and you have to put in a certain minimum amount of time before you can even begin to get an idea of how good you could become.  The reason people generally give up is that they don't feel rewarded for the effort they put in.  That's simply a case of either not having a plan, or of setting their goals too high.

Of course I'm simplifying things here.  However, I'd be willing to bet my life savings with anyone who tells me I'm amazing and they have no hope of ever being able to drum, that if they 'tried' playing the drums 10 hours a day, for 10 days, then at the end of that period they'd be a significantly better drummer than they ever imagined was within their capability.  In fact, that's probably all it would take for them to be able to play in your average pub band and have people come up to them and tell them that they're amazing!

In his book 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell refers to a study which suggests that becoming an expert at something requires about 10,000 hours of practice.  That's 1 hour a day for 27 years!  That's a long time, and I can see how that figure could be off putting, but that's 10,000 hours to become an expert.  To be perceived as an expert by a layperson takes significantly less than that.  Besides, if you put in 3 hours a day it would only take you 9 years, and if you were dedicated enough to put in 8 hours a day then you could get there in less than 4!  That's the reason you can find a 10 year old drummer who can do what most 50 year old drummers can't do -

Putting in that much practice time requires a lot of dedication, and most people just don't want to do this.  I certainly am not dedicated enough to practice that much.  That's the second reason I disagree with the opening statement.  I'm far from amazing.  If playing the drums is like climbing Everest I'm barely even at base camp.  

Two main reasons for giving up are that you're not feeling rewarded for the effort you put in, or that you can't even seem to get started.  To a non-drummer who's never even thought about drums, sitting behind a kit for the first time can seem kind of daunting.  They don't know what anything is, or what it's supposed to do.  They don't even know what kind of sound they're supposed to be trying to make.  They'll probably hit a few drums and cymbals a few times, then decide that they don't have the talent for it.  If you show them a basic rock beat and explain that they just have to play 1,2,3,4 with the right hand, 1 and 3 with the right foot and 2 and 4 with the left hand, then they might think that looks quite simple.  But, when they try to play it like you just showed them, they may find the coordination to be a challenge.  Again, they might decide they're not cut out for it and give up.  The trick is to know that it's difficult to begin with, but also to realise that it can be made simpler.  

It's important to remember that drumming is not a function of intelligence.  If you think that you 'should' be able to do something with your body because your brain knows what has to be done, then you're setting yourself up for failure.  Just remember that there is no natural ability.  Keep breaking down the puzzle until you find the simplest thing that you can't do, then work on that.  The basic ways to simplify something are to reduce the number of limbs involved (just focus on the hands for example), and to slow things down so you have more time to think about what you have to do.  That's it.  The trouble is that it looks so simple that most people don't want to slow it down enough to be able to conquer it.  Secretly, they base their self worth on being able to pick it up quickly at a decent tempo.  Nobody wants to feel inadequate.  If they can't do it after a few tries then, to save their self worth and avoid classing themselves as incompetent, they put it down to genetics and say they're just not cut out to be a drummer.  

The same things can apply even once you're advanced on your instrument.  At that point you might feel that you should be good enough to learn a new thing pretty quickly.  If that doesn't happen then you might come up with the same argument.  The trick is to catch yourself doing it and just make the problem simpler.  Failure is your friend.  It tells you when you need to break things down and try a different approach.  Don't let it dent your self confidence, just take the information and use it to successfully accomplish the simpler task.  Using that approach you'll leave every practice session feeling good that you've made progress, and you'll associate practicing with good feelings instead of bad ones.

750 Words - Day 12 : Good Noises

I've been trying to learn to speak Spanish on this tour.  I have an 8 CD set by Michel Thomas which promises that you don't need to practise outside of listening to the CDs.  You just listen, say the phrases when he asks you to translate, and that's it.  So far it seems to be working ok - I feel like I'm beginning to get a grasp of it.

Last night, after I'd set up my gear, I was sitting watching Muddy fool around on his guitar.  Some incredible Stevie Ray Vaughn was playing in the background and Muddy was standing on stage intentionally playing really bad blues licks.  I wondered what made something 'good' or 'bad' when it comes to playing the guitar.  I started thinking about learning to play an instrument verses learning to speak a second language.

Let's take learning to play the guitar and learning to speak Spanish.  Both require some technique to get the right sounds.  I'd say it's harder to learn the technique for guitar than for Spanish as we're already pretty competent with the techniques needed to produce sounds with our mouths.  Perhaps learning Chinese is harder, but it's still using apparatus that we're pretty familiar with.  Learning the guitar, on the other hand, requires you to do things with your fingers that may be completely alien.  It takes a long while to feel comfortable with those movements.

Let's say you're competent at pronouncing the Spanish vocabulary, and you're pretty good at getting around a guitar neck.  That's the stage I'm at now.  My Spanish vocabulary is limited, but I have no trouble actually saying the words, and I'm technically proficient on the guitar.  Now, a difference becomes clear.  I can make lots of noises on the guitar, but they're not necessarily 'good'.  I can run up and down scales, do some two handed tapping, and play other people's solos, but I often pick up a guitar and feel like I can't come up with anything good to play.

This, I believe, is where the difference in speaking and music becomes obvious.  In speaking, the first question is always "What do you want to say?"  If there's nothing you want to say, then you don't speak.  Perhaps when I can't come up with anything good to play, I should just not play.  If you don't have anything to say (the saying goes), don't say anything at all.

With Spanish, even if I know what I want to say, the process of translating and voicing the correct words feels difficult.  In a conversational situation, once I understand what has been said to me, I know exactly what I want to reply but it requires a lot of brain power to say it in Spanish.  Playing the guitar (or the drums) is different.  You may have nothing to say, but if you possess the technique and you know some scales so you can still make a noise and you probably will.  I think this is where the difference between a 'good' noise and a 'bad' noise arises.  Bad noises are generally those where you have nothing to say but you play anyway.

Knowing your scales and having the facility to make sounds with a guitar does not make you a 'guitarist', just as possessing vocabulary and knowing the rules of grammar does not make you a poet.  It's possible to write sentences which are grammatically sound with no misspellings and yet are complete nonsense.  

What's the solution to this problem of making 'bad' noises?  Practice thinking about what you want to hear before you make a noise.  Sure, it'll feel slow and awkward to begin with, just as trying to speak a foreign language requires extra brain power to begin with.  You may not be able to get your ideas out in the proper time frame.  This is all just part of the learning process.  Just make sure you don't say anything at all UNLESS it's something you wanted to say.  With practice, the time taken to get from idea to execution will reduce to the point where you don't even notice the process.  In language terms this is referred to as being 'fluent.'

This exercise may not be appropriate in a live situation.  If you seem to get by in gigs just making noises for fills and solos then don't replace that with silence or you'll probably get fired.  But when you're in the practice room, really work on this idea of knowing what you want to hear before you move your arms.  Maybe set up a vamp to solo over and only play when you have a complete phrase in your head.  With practice you'll become fluent at saying what you want to say on your instrument.

750 Words - Day 11 : Technique in Context

I had a gig last night.  Another gig.  That's 8 since starting this US tour just over a week ago, and about 70 since the beginning of this year.  There are some songs which we've played at every gig.  That's a lot of practice, and yet there are still things that I struggle with and have to make mental notes to work on when I get back in the practice room.

Sometimes I start trying to change my technique mid gig.  On occasions it seems to help, other times it just makes me more confused.  Last night I started thinking about playing more from the elbow.  When playing the hi-hat, for example, I was thinking about playing the quarter note using my whole forearm.  My wrist is loose so I get a kind of whipping motion, and the stick is allowed to move fairly freely.  Indeed, it looks a little like cracking a whip.  An important point here is that I was consciously making sure that my fingers pretty much stayed in contact with the butt of the stick.  I'm beginning to think that that's where the control is.  The tough part is making sure they can move out of the way enough to let that stick fly back.

There's one song where I play a pretty square 8th note groove.  It's quite slow and rigid.  I tried to throw in the odd 16th note between hi-hat notes and realised that I didn't have a technique for that and it came out sounding weak and unconsidered.  It's strange that such simple things throw me off track.

Try it.  Play 1 and 3 on the kick, 2 and 4 on the snare and strong 8th notes on the hi-hat.  Keep that going for a while, then throw in the 'a' of 4, or the 'e' of 1, or another lone 16th note.  Play them with your right hand (i.e. don't use the snare hand to add them.)  There are decisions you have to make.  How loud is this extra note going to be in comparison to the 8th note pulse?  Try and make them the same volume as the 8th note pulse.  If you were playing the 8th notes with your whole forearm it's going to be weird to suddenly double that motion.  At faster tempos it would be very difficult to do that.  So you have to decide whether you're going to play it from your wrist, and how you'll get back to the forearm motion for the following stroke, and whether the velocity or timing of that next stroke will be affected.  It's humbling to realise how difficult it can be to add one extra intended note and have it sound the way you want it.  Before you even consider the technical aspects you need to actually decide HOW you want it to sound.  Maybe you hadn't even considered that.  It's like a painter telling his hand "I want more paint there."  The hand can put more paint there but unless he decides how much, and what colour, he'll probably be disappointed with the result.

There's plenty of scope with the above example to occupy hours, if not days, of practice time.  I recently saw a Peter Erskine interview and, when asked what he practiced, he said he mainly focused on playing time and basic rudimental technique.

We added a new song to the set called 'Open Road.'  I found the chorus of this song a lot harder to play than I anticipated.  It's basically 4 on the floor with the kick and hi-hat, an off beat 8th note ride, and a back beat on 2 and 4 on the snare.  Something about having both of your feet and your left hand all playing at the same time is quite difficult to nail.  I'm also trying to add some interesting syncopation on the ride bell (a little like the outro of 'Cocaine' - .)  It's things like this that take me by surprise.  I never would have thought something like this would give me trouble, but at the moment it's the most difficult part of the set to play, so every night I'm re-thinking how to approach it technically. In fact, after listening to that version of 'Cocaine', I think tonight I'll try it with just 1 and 3 on the kick.

So, that's the kind of thing that goes through my head on a night to night basis.  It's always a quest to pick holes in my playing and gradually begin to fill them in.  I'm aiming for a gig where, if you played me back a recording, I could say that I was happy with every note I played.  I think it's still a fair way off, but it's the sense of achievement that comes with filling in these pot holes that keeps the gigs interesting.  If I can get to the end of a set and feel like I've learned just one thing about my playing then I consider it a good gig - even if I didn't feel like I played well.

750 words - Day 10 : Playing What You Mean and On Meaning What You Play

I remember one of the first times I ever played drums in a band setting.  I was probably 12, or 13, and my dad took me over to a room where his friend's son's band was rehearsing.  They were a few years older than me and did gigs.  I was quite nervous.  In fact, I'd been asked a year earlier if I wanted to go and sit in with a band and I'd turned down the opportunity as it had seemed too scary!

When I arrived everyone was very nice.  They let me sit in and play a few songs.  I'd done plenty of practice in my room, playing along with Beatles records and things, but it was different playing live with other musicians.  I recall my dad talking to the drummer in the band about playing in a band.  He was asking how you decide where to play the bass drum.  Chris (the drummer) said he usually just followed what the bass player was doing.  Up until that point I don't think I'd really even thought about the bass drum.  I'd learned some drum parts from records but hadn't ever had the opportunity to come up with my own parts.  When I did sit in with the band I don't think I paid that much attention to the bass drum.  It felt like it didn't really matter where it went.  How wrong could I be?!

I'd only been playing drums for a few years when I discovered Gary Chester's "New Breed" drum book.  The concept is that you lay down some kind of groove with 3 of your limbs, and play various rhythmic 'melodies' with the remaining one.  Often, the remaining limb is the bass drum.  If you think about it, most grooves have a fairly steady and repetitive pattern on the ride or hi-hat.  They have a consistent back beat on the snare, perhaps with a sprinkling of ghost notes or an added syncopated accent.  It's the bass drum that changes more than anything else.  I'd worked thorough this book  and had a decent degree of independence with my right foot, but I didn't really know where to play the bass drum and, as I mentioned before, I didn't think it really mattered.  

When I was playing a groove it felt like I could put it anywhere, and change it from bar to bar, and it wouldn't make a difference. I suppose part of the reason is, when you're sitting behind an acoustic kit, the bass drum is the hardest thing to hear.  You can be completely unaware that for someone standing on the audience side the bass drum is one of the loudest elements.  Certainly when it comes to playing a gig where you're fully mic'd up, the engineer often has the bass drum louder than anything else.  It becomes clear that changing the rhythm you play every bar will be unsettling and ungroovy, and that playing a note in the 'wrong' place will also throw the groove.

So what is the 'wrong place' and what's the 'right place'?  This is something that you come to figure out with experience.  Personally I know for sure if something's in the wrong place when I hear a recording and can listen as if I were in the audience.  When I'm actually playing a gig I find it harder to make that judgment.  I believe that with practice you can train yourself to hear what you're playing as if you were listening to the whole band from the audience, but it's far from easy.  I think the best way to get there is to record as many gigs as you can, listen back to them, and make mental notes of what works and what doesn't.  You can compare the results to what you felt while you were playing.

Usually, for me, the result of this exercise is that I simplify what I play on stage.  I realise that things that I just 'throw in', without much thought about how they'll affect the groove, generally make it worse.  The best fills and the best grooves are the ones that I knew exactly what I was doing.  The hi-hat is consistent; the bass drum notes are carefully placed; the accents on the crashes aren't too loud, there aren't too many notes; etc.  Even in a simple groove this is  a lot to think about, but it does get easier with practice.

Essentially, what you're aiming to do is have a fully formed idea in your head and express that directly on the drums.  If you think about an analogy to language it becomes more obvious that bass drum placement and note choice is important.  With regards to the spelling of a word a child might wonder why it's so important to have certain letters in certain places.  Surely you don't need to have "there, their and they're" as they all sound the same.  Or, if a word is unknown to a child they might interpret a sentence in a different way, replacing the unknown word with something they do understand.  I recall very clearly walking in a park singing Tina Turner's "What's love got to do with it" to myself.  I believed the words to the chorus to be "What's love, but a second handy motion?"  I wondered what the "first handy motion" would be.  I obviously didn't know that 'emotion' was a word so I used the nearest thing that made sense to me.

Back to the drums, you might wonder what possible difference moving one note could make.  Let's say, you move a single bass drum note by a single 1/16th note.  Surely it's going to be pretty much the same?  Take the example of a Dennis Chambers solo I know.  It's based around a foot ostinato where the hi-hat plays 1/4 notes and the kick plays "1   2 & 3   a" and rests for the 4th beat.  It's a really simple but groovy pattern.  Try moving that last 'a' to either the preceding '&' or the following '4' and suddenly it's turned into a very boring pattern!

If you extrapolate that example you begin to realise that the placement of every note in a groove has a function in making that groove what it is.  Changing some notes will have more of an impact than changing others, but they all make a difference.  Using the language analogy again, changing just one word in a zebra can make the whole thing meaningless.  See what I mean.

To continue with that analogy, perhaps you can consider technique to be the ability to correctly pronounce words with good diction.  Independence and coordination is the ability to string together words in any order you choose.  Vocabulary is having a large pool of words that you've practiced saying so you can throw them in wherever you want.  All that is great, but unless you have good ideas then all that'll come out is gibberish.  Once frog sadness building the a snuffle there garden badger.

One final thought on note velocity.  Accents in patterns also make a difference.  Changing the word emphasis in a sentence, or even the emphasis within a word, makes a difference to the interpretation.  Read the following sentence out loud and stress the first word.  Then do it again and stress the second word, then the third, etc.  See how it changes the meaning.

"I don't think he should get that job."

Check out the different meanings here (http://esl.about.com/cs/pronunciation/a/a_wordstress.htm)