To successfully learn something difficult you must first simply commit to learning it. You have to have a truthful feeling that, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes, you will not stop working on said pattern, lick, beat, concept, rudiment or whatever it may be, until it is tight and up to speed. After that you only need two things: patience, which allows you to practice in a relaxed way without giving up, and faith, which allows you to press on even if the skill is coming slow, because you know that eventually you will have it and people will love it.

Now onto the main topic. That credit card company has their “what’s in your wallet” ad campaign, so I though I’d do “what’s on my music stand.” I love my music stand. It’s a good old Manhasset (like the ones in band class) with an authentic Manhasset stand light on it. It’s like being in the orchestra pit of the civic light opera all over again. (I played for the Santa Barbara C.L.O. while in college. Seven shows a week on top of a full course load. By the end of the first season I was an overworked wreck. I’d walk down to Tommy’s during intermission and slam two gin and tonics, then head back to finish the show. Ridiculous.)

I took pictures of the books I’m working out of opened to the appropriate pages. They’re just sitting on the stand. Here they are with a little write-up about each one. Many of you will recognize some of these as they are classics of the drumming canon of study.

Not a classic- THEE classic. Carmine Appice’s Realistic Rock came with my first drum set: a 1969 red (not sparkle) Ludwig four piece. As a kid I took to Realistic Rock right away. The beauty of the book is that the beats are badass and, therefore, really fun to play. That’s why I like to use it with my younger students, too. The page pictured here is not that as funky as some- I was using these exercises to work on hi hat consistency and my 16^th note subdivisions (see my blog from July 31 for more on that subject). You could take most of the beats in this book, loop them and build a killer track right over the top.

I use the etude on the right (page 37) to work on double stops (playing both hands at the same time on various surfaces), independence (various limbs playing different patterns) and interlocking Moeller strokes. My main freak with this page is playing a cascara beat on the ride cymbal and bass drum while playing the etude as written in the left hand. Of course, switching limbs is always beneficial- left hand cascara, right hand etude. If fact, that is where commitment to a study and patience really plays a part, because we really should be practicing anything we’re trying to own with both right and left hand leads. But, that takes more than twice the amount of effort and time because not only do you have to read the exercise down with the left hand but the left also has to catch up to the right. Not many drummers in history have developed the skill of being truly ambidextrous. Simon Phillips was probably the first to get it. Nowadays I see a lot of R&B drummers rocking left hand hi hat for beats.

Page 42 from the legendary Jim Chapin’s book Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. I took a lesson with Jim once. He gave me a sheet on the Moeller technique. I don’t think I have it any more. He also told a lot of stories about jazz drummers. He felt that Tony Williams didn’t count. That instead of 1-2-3-4 everything was just 1-1-1-1. I think I see what he means. Even if that was what was really going on in Williams’ head (and I think he was referring to the early, Miles Davis stuff) how revolutionary is that? Instead of looping a cycle of four, everything is just- “one.”

What I’m doing with this page is something Pete Magadini showed me. You forget about the ride and play the kick as-is and the snare with both hands, using double strokes whenever practical. It makes for a nice little jazz piece. The amazing thing about the exercises in this book is how much melodicism Chapin was able to express just with the snare and bass drum. That’s why it’s nice to orchestrate some of them as hand-to-hand solos.

It’s amazing how much drum teachers have milked just a few books- Chapin’s, Stick Control, Progressive Syncopation, etc. In a way, those early drum books became the main books for 60 years of drum study, adapted in hundreds of different ways to work for dozens of playing styles.

I’ve written before about my work with Bay Area teacher Pete Magadini on his book, Polyrhythms for the Drum Set. These are the last two pages of the first half of the book- sixteenths in four between the kick and snare while swinging in six on the left page. The right page is three polyrhythmic solos. The cymbal swings in six and the left hand and foot just sort of float around different subdivisions, almost like they are playing out of time. Wild, wacky stuff. I love it. Ultimately I want to be able to do something like be playing a regular, 16^th note funk groove and then have one of the limbs subtly slip into triplets while the rest of the limbs continue 16ths. Without a glitch. Mind melting… That’s why they’re called TRIP-lettes.

On these pages of my notebook I just write down all of the linear licks I stumble across while practicing. Every once in a while I’ll go back and draw from the well. My big endeavor from this, lately, is working on fast 16ths and 16^th note triplets between one hand and the bass drum. I saw the drummer for Zap Mama do this in a drum solo and it is a crowd pleaser. He even “toweled-off” while his right hand zoomed around the toms- filled in with kick. This lick has proved to be very difficult to learn, prompting the “patience epiphany.”

I just cracked open Steve Houghton’s Drumset Soloist book recently. It comes with a CD and corresponding charts, sort of like a Jamie Abersol book for drummers. A group of studio musicians loops a groove so you can blow solos in the privacy of your own practice room. Drum licks-a-plenty. Nobody gets hurt.

What are some of your favorite books? Talk to the blog, we love to hear your comments.

Thanks for reading…

Dave

That word, “intention,” keeps coming up for me. As I listen back to recordings of my performances, I often hear a slight difference between how I intended something to sound, and how it actually came out- usually in the areas of timing and feel. That conundrum was the subject of my last article. Breaking down the offending beat or lick and closely examining what-went-wrong-where helps remedy the problem, and I think that this form of deconstructive analysis is the core of any practice, musical or otherwise.

I am amazed at how the process of this intensive practice, which I thought would be primarily additive, has ended up becoming mostly subtractive. This is predicted by Kenny Werner in his book Effortless Mastery when he instructs the reader to take an honest inventory of what he knows and doesn’t know “as dispassionately as if checking on our supply of groceries or toilet paper.” How does intention relate to effortlessness? When musical intentions overshoot an effortless performance, the end result suffers.

I saw a fellow drummer a couple of weeks ago at a festival we were both playing. He is hip to my “masters project” and asked me how the “shedding” was going. He obviously meant “woodshedding,” musician jargon for intense and focused practice. But I’ve been so immersed in the discipline of “shedding” stuff I don’t really “own” as a player that I really had to do a mental double take to understand his question. I think that means I’m on the right track. And sure enough, the less I play (and it feels like I’m barely playing anything at times) the more people seem to have a positive reaction to my performance.

Entropy is a concept that lends itself to this practice. In its strict form entropy is a term from thermodynamics that refers to the loss of energy in the transference of heat. But it also describes the tendency for things in nature to move from organized composition to a disorganized state, and similarly, the fact that structures tend to break down over time. Think of an old car that starts to rust. At the mercy of the natural elements, the tight physical structure of the steel that forms the body of the car slowly loosens and eventually disintegrates into less composed matter.

Over the years something similar has happened with the structure of my drumming. When I listen back to recordings from my early days I recognize that, while my vocabulary might not have been as sophisticated back then, my feel seems more natural. Notes used to just fall in the right places. There was never much effort involved- I could play quickly when I needed to, etc. But as years have passed the amount of useful effort in the total energy I’m putting out has lessened. More and more rust has risen to the surface of my sound. This partly due to the fact that my muscles are simply less efficient as they were 20 years ago. But right along with that is 20 years of half-practiced licks and certain skills so taken for granted that they haven’t been maintained, as they should. Moving forward basically means undertaking a restoration project. And so, as I look to the future completion of my 10,000 hours, I also look back to reclaim the solidity of my old self. Instead of “This Old House,” it’s “This Old Drummer.” My master teachers and I are going to fill some cracks in the foundation, spray some insulation in the walls and put some solar panels on the roof of this mutha!

Many performers, whether artistic or athletic, have managed to recreate themselves after the age of 40. The one that sticks out most in my memory far above the rest, because I just happened to see his comeback match, is the boxer George Foreman.

When Forman was in his 20′s he was a very feared fighter. He was so strong that one well-landed punch could be devastating. He took the belt away from Joe Frazier, only to lose it shortly after to Muhammad Ali who, cocky as hell all the way to the end of the match, was actually terrified to get in the ring with Foreman. Many have forgotten that the cherub-like, gregarious George we now associate with his eponymous electric grill was once an aloof, emotionless slugger with little discernable personality.

Forman ended his first boxing career in his late 20′s as a legend- one of the greatest fighters of all time. Afterwards he became more personal. A near death experience had made him a religious man. He opened a youth center and had settled into a new career as an ordained minister. But at the age of 38, he started to stage a comeback, partly to raise money for his youth center but also to prove that the age of 40 was, in his words, “not a death sentence.” Although, he contradicted that by stating his intention to eventually get in the ring with Mike Tyson, who was by this time what Foreman was 15 years earlier, the hardest hitting boxer in the world.

As Forman started the slow, methodical process of working his way back up to a championship bout many fight fans noticed that, although the bruiser was certainly not in the same physical shape of his earlier years, he seemed to have increased stamina in later rounds, a problem that had always plagued him early on. He attributed this to a more relaxed fighting style, stating that his previous lack of stamina came from fighting with “nervous tension.” Now, he was fighting for different reasons. He didn’t really need to win a fight, but maybe he could. He could take it or leave it. He had already proven himself in other arenas. It’s a classic “life begins at 40″ situation.

In 1994 Forman challenged Michael Moorer, who had taken the IBF and WBA titles away from Evander Holyfield earlier in the year. For the fight he wore the same red trunks he appeared in 20 years earlier in his LOSS to Ali. How’s that for nothing to lose! Foreman knocked out Moorer in the tenth round and, at the age of 45, became the oldest boxer to ever hold the heavyweight title, won in a fight with the largest age spread in boxing history.

I remember watching that fight, at the age of 25, and being amazed. 45 seemed ancient to me then, and certainly in the sport of boxing- it was! Forman was clearly as astounded by the victory as those watching. Even someone like me, who didn’t follow boxing too closely, could tell it was a special moment in the timeline of the sport.

Anyway, the restoration project, the post-retirement comeback, the life-begins-at-40 endeavor, they are all opportunities to apply the wisdom of experience to what you have always been in order to create something more transcendent than what existed before. If you’ve made it to mid-life still alive you’ve already been a success. Let the nervous tension melt away. Perfect a style with staying power. Take inventory and honestly assess the situation. You’re older now- you can be honest. Strip away the rust, pull out the Bondo and look forward to the new finish on an old surface. Not to regain an old glory but to simply become the best you can possibly be for the rest of your life.

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Wow, I just got an image of like, a Cialis commercial. A montage series of fuzzy shots of older, middle class, men doing things like- walking on the beach with the wifey, playing catch with the grandkid, and one guy has just put the last coat of paint on his ’69 Camero in the garage, while the voice-over says, “don’t take Cialis if you have a history of certain kinds of heart disease. Cialis may cause a condition called Privation. If you experience an erection lasting more than 4 hours …you’re back, bro!”

So, while I haven’t had as much time as I’d like in the practice room lately, working in the studio always reminds me of the real-world challenges of drumming. It also reinforces in me the need to make recording a central part of any practice regimen. Here is one thing that came up that last week that I’ll be working on for a while.

For the Huckle song “Oceans” I was asked to play the following beat underneath a bass solo:

(the line above the last hi hat represents an open hat)

This beat seems simple enough, and my playing of it sounded fine on the live recordings we made in pre-production. However, when I got under the high-power microscope of a multi-track digital audio workstation, I found that I had to be very conscious to make it groove. There are three elements at play here that I find challenging: the two 16ths in the hi hat at the beginning of the phrase; the naked 16^th in the bass drum on the “e” of 3; and the open hi hat on the “and” of 4 with a 16^th subdivision underneath it in another voice- in this case, the snare.

For me, the 16ths in the hi hat threaten the evenness of the 8ths that should dominate the feel, and could lead to playing the first backbeat early. Doubling up on the hi hat is a stylistic habit I’ve recently identified. It’s a little “Purdie Shuffle” tic that I have and it often leads to rushing the backbeat and closing the pocket. No f-in’ bueno!

The naked 16^th on 3-”e” in the kick requires a lot of foot control. It’s Hung out there on its own and if it doesn’t fall right between the hi hat notes around it will be obvious. Low frequencies carry a lot of weight and, by their very nature, stick out. It’s like the elephant in the room- that doesn’t groove!

An open hi hat at the end of a bar is very common and, consequently, a common place for rushing. Many players, myself included, forget that an open hi hat closing on, or around, a bass drum hit is a foot move that requires co-ordination of the lower limbs. Add a note in another voice, like the snare here on 4-”a,” and even more coordination and concentration is required. It’s easy enough to rush back into the 1 with the syncopated snare hit alone. It’s not that simple!

I finally got this beat to groove, but not without hearing it not-groove first, which is never fun. I made a note to further examine this odd specimen in the practice room, which I did the next day. I also decided I better get out the click and Pro Tools to further identify what needed nudging.

Another thing about this pattern you might notice is that it’s loaded up with syncopation on the backend (beats 3 and 4). You might say it’s a little square up top with funky behind. He he. Anyway, I think that adds to the challenge, because the drummer has to constantly switch his balance from on-beat to off.

I practiced this beat with a click generated by Pro Tools and recorded “on the grid” with a single mic so I could zoom in and see where I was hitting early, late, or  right on. I also came with some variations to expand on the challenging elements of the pattern that I listed previously.

On this variation I moved the last snare hit on the “a” of 4 down to the kick. This adds difficulty in foot coordination, balance and speed (double 16ths in the right foot going from 4-”a” back to 1).

This is a variation of the original pattern that I played on the actual track. It adds another dangled “e” in the kick right after the second backbeat.

This pattern shifts the second and third bass drum notes from the original beat one 16^th to the right. It gives you a dangled kick 16^th on an “a” and changes up the balance overall, moving from an “a” to an “and” to an “e” in the right foot. That’s groupings of 16ths in threes.

Finally, another balance shift. I also wanted to practice a 16^th in the kick leading into a backbeat. The 8^th note kick underneath the open hi hat slightly alters the challenge to not rush back to the “one.”

As you can see, the hi hat part doesn’t change, and the snare barely does, between these four variations. In a way these are bass drum control exercises with a couple of hi hat and snare elements thrown in on top to add difficulty. In practicing foot control, it’s easy to grab an etude out of a book and play it on the bass drum while doing the default even 8^th rock beat in the hands. A pattern like this is a little more “real-world” for me because a producer often wants a little more spice on the beat, and I like to add some filigree on my own, too (i.e.: the Purdie habit).

If you’re a drummer, try out this series of beats and tell me what you think. I highly recommend recording yourself playing against a click while doing so. The ear always seems more refined on playback when the rest of the brain isn’t preoccupied with controlling four limbs. Just to mix it up I like to record myself playing without a click. I also sometimes play to a click but also have some music in another tempo playing in the background in order to work on concentration and solidity.

What I’m going for in practicing these beats is spot on timing of ALL hits (or at least control and awareness if I am hitting early or late on purpose) and keeping each voice (hi hat, snare and kick) sounding consistent from beat to beat and measure to measure. Speaking of consistency, there is a good article by Jeremy Colson, Billy Idol’s drummer, on the subject in the May / June issue of Drumhead magazine. It’s another one of those unglamorous skills that separates the pros from the joes.

As always, thanks for reading.

Dave

This week, though, I’m posting drum cam highlights from a show I recently played at the Crown Room in Lake Tahoe with Steve Adams and Lebo from ALO and Tim and Nicki Bluhm. The Crown Room at the Crystal Bay Casino has the best acoustics and one of the greatest sound systems west of the Rockies. The sound system’s designer, legendary mixing console builder Jim Gamble, was on hand to mix the show.

I shot the kit from two angles. The angle shown here is from a Zoom Q3 taped to a mic stand over the ride cymbal. The audio is taken from the Q3 as well. There are a few moments where I’m playing a fast two beat with a sort-of latin sounding bell part on the cymbals or the toms. This is the concept of interlocking Moeller strokes in action. Hope you enjoy!

Dave

I had to learn a varied lot of new material for these different gigs, from originals to Merle Haggard ballads to Rolling Stones rockers. One skill that would have helped me immensely that I do not yet possess, is not currently part of my “Master Study” plan nor is it really taught in any drum book I’ve ever seen is tempo memory- the ability to look at a metronome value and know, within a bpm or two, the actual tempo to play.

It’s a skill similar to perfect pitch, and if you’ve got it you become a human drum machine (if you can play with the precision of a machine, that is.) At any rate, there was no way I could have memorized the approximate feel of every song I played over the course of the festival. Some songs I had only run through once before we actually played them, but I did have bpm markings for all of the songs as a reference. Without a well-tuned inner clock, though, those markings were not of much use.

As a drummer, counting off a song in the right tempo is part of the job description. I usually try to sing a little bit of the chorus to myself before counting in the band …if I can remember the chorus. There was so much music to learn in such a short period of time for this festival that an absolute memory of bpm’s (beats per minute, by the way) could have replaced an intimate knowledge of the tunes.

Why not just get the “close enough” instead of splitting chronological hairs, so to speak? Playing a song in the right tempo is crucial for singers. Too fast and they struggle to cram in all of the lyrics. Too slow and they might have to sit too long on notes, breaking the flow and exposing them to more error. I still believe that the most important element of any song is the lyrics. And lyrical delivery is closely related to tempo.

A drummer with a stellar sense of tempo is more badass than the greatest shredder because at the end of the day, it’s the singer that really has their butt on the line and the rest of the band just wants the song to feel good. Like my friend Jerry Hannan once said to me, “just figure out a beat that feels good and then don’t fuck it up.” When I led my own band from the front of stage on guitar and vocals I was amazed how much more I noticed even the tiniest fluctuations in time. If the drummer slowed down for even a couple of beats I was annoyed. I generally wanted things to push ahead a little, not rush, just push. When I’m drumming I generally try to lay back a little because that is what I think great drummers are supposed to do.

Ringo supposedly had a stellar sense of tempo. He always knew exactly the right tempo to play a song in and, now that I think of it, I’ve never heard tempo fluctuation on any Beatles record. My friend Scotty Rager, from the San Francisco band Tea Leaf Green, also has an uncanny knack for time. I’m told that if someone starts a song off in the wrong tempo he’ll come in with the right one, and show you exactly where it should have been.

By the way, my newly designed drum set, hihat directly on top and in front of the snare which I debuted at the fest, worked beautifully. Since returning I’ve been practicing some more with the design, shown in the picture below. Getting ready to take it into the studio next with Huckle, my own drum project and ALO. I’ve found it much easier to adapt to than I first imagined. No more crossing over to play the hihat. Never again!

Until next week, stay funky!

Dave

Although I plan on doing a whole blog entry on drummer jokes soon, I heard one this last weekend that I’m eager to share: What’s the difference between a drummer and an investment bond?

An investment bond eventually matures and earns money.

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I’ve been delving deep into Kenny Werner’s book, Effortless Mastery. Reed Mathis, a master of bass and improvisation in his own right, recommended it to me. Werner’s trip is all about discovering and releasing the master that’s already inside you- waking up to the mastery you already possess as a musician that may be stifled by fear- fear of sounding bad, not being liked and so forth.

In fact, Werner encourages the reader in search of mastery to surrender their “obsessive need to sound good.” He elaborates by comparing the master’s state of mind to the mind-set you have when you’re playing in your basement with a couple of good friends. You’re just playing for the hell of it. Having fun. Reveling in the mere fact that you can make sounds together on musical instruments. It’s a purity that, over the course of our lives, usually gets diluted by music schools, peers, teachers and our own insecurities.

Werner, a very accomplished jazz pianist, mixes a down-to-earth gigging musician ethos with liberal doses of eastern philosophy and western new-age practice and recommends the reader reprogram him or herself with affirmations and meditations. I tried one of the meditations today and found it very positive and relaxing. In it he keeps inviting my subconscious to intone, “I am a master. I am great.”

I think Werner’s concepts are going to be a good balance to working through the canon of drum books and private studies. His words ring true. I can spend hours woodshedding polyrythms and etudes and chop-building exercises but at the end of the day I’m still a musician that has to go out and express myself with all of it. Or, none of it. I’m hoping the technique will simply provide tools for expression. But if I haven’t done the inner work necessary to use the tools correctly to express something meaningful, how’s it going to sound?

One concept I really connected with in Effortless Mastery was the directive to practice slowly and patiently in order to fully master one thing at a time. Playing an etude over and over again, examining it from all angles and using it to explore music and yourself is what Werner seems to be talking about here. I already had a feeling that I might have been falling into the trap of glancing over things in order to just “get through a book,” especially in the area of polyrhythms. I think it’s time to go back over the first half of Magadini’s book and really dig in.

I also want to take Werner’s idea a little further and truly master one whole skill first, before moving on to other subjects. One possibility is something I discovered while working out of Jim Chapin’s book, Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. The example below is one of the most basic exercises out of the book, which is basically a coordination and physical training book for jazz drummers.

From looking at the page we can see that a fair level of cognitive and physical independence is required simply to play the counter rhythms together in a clear manner. (Focus only on the left column of rhythms, by the way.) But there’s another level of independence required that is not so obvious if we’re just looking at the notes as written.

As I worked through these exercises at slow tempos I could easily play them with single strokes in each hand. Doing this, I simply had to work on each one until my brain identified and logged when the hands hit together, and when they hit separately. As I increased the tempo this was no longer possible. The top (usually right hand) rhythm requires a single arm stroke (Moeller stroke) and two additional rebounds to form the fast swing pattern, a triple stroke rhythm on beats two and four. (Tony Williams was a master of this, but he would constantly switch the beats that the arm stroke fell on).

In the left hand you’ve got a variety of stroke combinations- single double and triple. The same principle applies for this part at high speeds- two-for-one and three-for-one strokes come into play. The consciousness has to switch from simple double-stop (hitting both hands at the same time) execution at slow speeds to how triple and double arm strokes (that’s two or three hits for one fall of the arm) interlock with each other. In exercise #3 on this page we see the same three note cycle (DAT-duh-duh. DAT-duh-duh) fully displaced with each other or, 180 degrees out of phase. As the last rebound is sounding in the left hand, the right arm is starting its cycle. This is easier for a drummer familiar with Moeller technique to understand without a visual demonstration. Hey, maybe I’ll just add a video demonstration to this blog later in the week.

Anyway, the choreography of how these arm strokes fall in relation to each other is the first thing I want to master. This will allow me to play interlocking double stops (which I like to play, and hear) fluidly at fast tempos and evenly at slower ones. I’ll do this with some choice exercises from Chapin’s book and Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation.

I will chronicle the progress on this subject here, before, during and after, with videos.

Until next week, be well.

Dave

They are:
1) Conceptual Understanding – A comprehension of the musical idea I am trying to play and how it relates to general music theory and practice overall.

2) Physical coordination – the right hand is doing one thing, the left another, and the feet… oy vey! Not only do the four limbs have to line up but the the elbows, wrists, fingers, hips, knees and ankles are all interdependent of each other. Technique also falls under this category.

3) Physical Stamina - I can hold the stick between my right thumb and index finger and play constant 16th notes at 105 bpm with one hand. Great. Can I do it for 30 minutes? No. And for some reason in some weird context, I might have to. Stamina is always a factor, especially at high levels of performance.

4)  Aural Acuity – i.e., ear training. If I can’t hear in my head, clearly, from all “angles,” what I think I’m trying to play- I can’t really play it. The ear is the ultimate reality check on the previous three actions. I’m always surprised at how much hearing plays a part in learning. Many times I can get around what seem to be physical or conceptual barriers by focusing on listening. There is also the practice of “hearing” the negative space of my playing, the time between the sounds, which is musically interpreted mostly with the body, although the ear and musical sense combine the two energies into a musical gestalt. This is a concept most famously put forth by drum guru Freddie Gruber.

With practice, each of these four criteria are satisfied and the lick, beat, fill, sticking, whatever is loaded first into the brain’s RAM / conscious (whatever that part is called) and then stored on the ROM / subconscious, where little angels of light guard over it for about 17 days and then throw it out unless you use it all of the time. Which is why you’ll see all the great drummers do endless variations of the same four ideas over and over again. More on the conscious and subconscious as it relates to drumming later… maybe.

Thinking contrapuntally, all contrapuntal rhythms fall somewhere on a spectrum of interdependence (close relation) on one end, and independence (unrelated) on the other. Many polyrhythms would tend to congregate on the independence side of the spectrum. The one shown above is a classic and at the core of many of the exercises that I’m working on with Pete. Using this 6:4 skeleton, either the quarter note triplets of the upper part or the steady quarters of the lower could be further subdivided by either two’s or three’s (or conceivably any other number, but I haven’t got that far yet). Those subdivided notes can also be broken up around the kit- an interplay between the snare and bass drum for instance.

Playing these rhythms has really helped me with ear training, developing better time-keeping behind the kit and, strangely enough, helped me get a little bit of groove back that I felt I had lost over the years. (It would take something like that for a 42-year-old white guy who constantly over thinks anything and everything. Yes, makes perfect sense).

But what’s truly interesting about my experience with polyrhythms is not what it’s done for me but what it does TO me while I’m in the process of learning them. And believe me, this is cognitively painful, brain hernia type learning we’re talking about here. It’s not just rubbing your stomach and patting your head- it’s rubbing your stomach in one time signature and patting your head in a completely different one. The key is trying to hear how these seemingly unrelated rhythms actually fit together into a composite rhythm…

…and then forcing your muscles to do it. It takes a little faith (I will eventually get it) and a lot of will (I’m not moving from this ket until I get it!). As I tackle this material I feel new neural pathways being formed- at the speed of a smacked-out snail. Like a microscopic man trying to dig his way out of Alcatraz with a dull spoon. Ten minutes of confused, stuttering strokes. Wait-wait, ok. No. Wait, ok. No. Rest for 30 seconds think about something else. Go back to it- it’s a little easier. I think I’ve got the first half of the bar. Fifteen more minutes of struggle, another rest. Repeat, over and over.

One day I had a whole page of this stuff down cold. I was OWNING it. Went in the next day for the lesson and it was all gone. NOTHING. It wasn’t even a matter of choking. It was like I’d never seen the page before. Still, I wouldn’t say that these rhythms are merely mathematical or wholly “unnatural.” In fact, there is something profoundly natural about them. They approach the irrational simultaneity of nature- the sound of water droplets falling out of trees and striking the dead leaves below. The cyclical interlacing of hundreds of singing crickets. That type of stuff. The rigidly divided grid of 4/4 is starting to sound more like machines.

Anyway, this stuff is heavy lifting for the brain. It challenges all of the facilities needed for acquiring drum knowledge: conceptual understanding, aural acuity, muscular performance and limb coordination. I’d love to see a researcher at Stanford hook up a drummer trying to execute 7 over 3 to a live cat-scan sometime. I’m going to do this stuff for the rest of my life. It might keep the Alzheimers away! I’m ooollllddddd.

I am creating a self-designed program of master studies in drum set performance and teaching. While the area of study is drumming, I’m sure that I will uncover many jewels of knowledge applicable to life in general on my path to drum-buddha-ness. In this age of hyper-social cyber-sharing I will share my insights, endeavors and entreaties with you, my dear reader, here, on this blog site.

More to come soon for sure. You can also find out more about me through my website: davebrogan.com.