Casey Scheuerell’s Masterful Drum Pocket on Chaka Khan’s “And The Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)”

Today probably more than ever, the division between drum pocket and drum shredding has become quite a point of discussion and display. An entire generation of players have attained a level of technical ability, blazing speed, and consumption of available space in musical time that leaves many drummers from the time before MIDI in the dust.

But in 1981, Casey Scheuerell’s drumming on Chaka Khan’s “And The Melody Still Lingers On (Night In Tunisia)” laid down a pocket that made all the chops in the world irrelevant. If you’ve not heard this song, well, you need to, because the drumming lesson within its measures will cure you of the urge to blaze and make you want to ride the whitecap of a wave that pocket drummers should strive to emulate.

I found an excellent blog post quite by accident the other night that covers the song’s history, and you can check it out here: https://movingtheriver.com/2015/05/04/story-of-a-song-chaka-khans-and-the-melody-still-lingers-on/

I can really only add a few personal comments, because this post nails what you need to know. What I love about Casey’s playing on this track is how with almost every hit, he was leaning about as far forward into the groove as he could without rushing it. That in itself in an art. So, I’m going to break the song down into the sections I could identify and share my appreciation for the groove he laid down (according to the post) in one take. Casey joined Abe Laboriel here on bass, Paulinho DaCosta on percussion, and David Foster and Ronnie Foster on keyboards.

The unmistakable essence of the melody is stated on trumpet from the start over a synth intro, and that horn is played by none other than Dizzy Gillespie, the bebop legend who composed the original tune in 1942 that this version draws inspiration from. Chaka Khan covered the hit with producer Arif Mardin, and her instantly recognizable rubato phrasing graces the first :32 seconds of the classic, followed by Casey’s single-headed tom lead-in that sets the pure pocket pace.

From that sound forward through the melody, he is on the edge of the beat, with a punchy kick that thumps you square in the sternum. The dynamic levels of snare, kick, and hi-hat find their respective places from loudest to softest, they don’t deviate from their interrelationship one bit. If you listen very carefully to Casey’s kick drum, you can hear the slightest and precisest dynamic level shift from pickup note to down beat in a two-beat pulse that rides like an elliptical cam in its delivery. Thump-THUMP, Thump-THUMP, Thump-THUMP.

Perfectly.

And when it comes time to play a two-note pattern starting on the beat leading into the bridge, each 16th note is equal in its dynamic level: THUMP-THUMP, THUMP-THUMP, THUMP-THUMP. The intentional and deliberate placement of these notes is a reflection of musical intelligence aiming exactly for the right place to put something. There’s no auto-pilot going on here. It’s a pilot flying the plane by hand every second of the song.

Casey’s fills compliment musical space the same way. They flow unobtrusively out of his hands, leaving precise room between each note, with narry a hint of hurry to get to the next one. He’s THERE. Right, where, he, needs, to, be…

Listen to the tom roll come out of nowhere at 1:45 in the song. It rise up like a swelling wave and delivers the only thing even close to fast hands. But they aren’t obliterating time and space with everything they’re capable of. They are contributing musically, like any other respectable and responsible melodic phrase.

From 1:41 to 2:55, Herbie Hancock contributes his Clavitar Keytar improv over the seamless rhythm section flow. At 2:16, Casey creates a brief floating moment with percussionist Paulinho DaCosto between two toms and the kick drum that is classic early 80s, with spacing that lets each tom hit and two-note kick phrase breathe and propel, like water drops. Again, he’s THERE… Right, where, he, needs, to, be… then back to the punctuating pocket.

From 3:15 to 3:46, the accents lead up to Chaka Khan unleashing her highest notes that go vertical and take you along for the climax ride. Then, at 3:47, producer Arif Mardin inserted a segment of the actual classic Charlie Parker’s alto sax run from the original recording, and it’s worth waiting the entire song for.

Dizzy Gillespie’s unmistakable one-of-a-kind trumpet voice restates the melody and improvises the song out to the end over Chaka’s haunting refrain, guiding the musical ghost back into the night from which it came. According to the above-referenced blog post, Gillespie almost wasn’t able to make the session. Doing so bridged a 40-year musical gap that no one else could have done, and seriously, it should give you the chills it deserves.

Nothing is going to stop the onslaught of all too often unmusical obliterating drum set overkill from its social media driven proliferation, but for 5:00 minutes in 1981, there was none of that to be found. There was only masterful pocket and musical excellence, revisiting and respecting a timeless classic that bridged that fused jazz and pop music in a very unique way. A tip of the hat, so to speak, to days gone by when musicans reached into their creative unknown, exploring a new style of jazz that begged for the dogs to be let off the leash to see how fast, far, and intensely they could run. With Chaka Khan’s “And The Melody Still Lingers On (Night In Tunisia),” drummers have a model of how to propel and support, thanks to the tasteful contribution of Casey Scheuerell. So crank this song and hit replay, and hear how your job as a drummer and a musician should be done. Right, there..

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Casey Scheuerell is known for his work with Gino Vanelli and Jean-Luc Ponty, and he’s the author of Stickings and Orchestrations for Drum Set (Berklee Press), as well as Berklee Jazz Drums (Berklee Press), which by the way, you might have seen a copy of the recent season of Fargo. Actress Sienna King, playing daughter Scotty Lyon, is seen holding a copy of the book at the dinner table.

Casey is a Professor of Percussion at Berklee, where has taught since 1993. His website is http://www.caseyscheuerell.com, and he probably doesn’t remember, but I sold him records once at Big Ben’s in Encino, California, way back in the day…

Neurodiversity Behind the Drum Set – How Accepting Tourette Syndrome Helped Me Embrace My Music Truth

The term “neurodiversity” has been making the rounds for several years now, the newest buzzword that carries interesting associations and implications. Socially, and more specifically medically, when someone says they are “neurodiverse,” the term is often used to express their particular condition, such as autism, Asperger’s, or in my case, Tourette Syndrome.

I did not receive a proper and correct diagnosis until I was 20; from age six to then, I had no idea whatsoever what was causing my body to move uncontrollably and make jerky movements whenever they chose to arise. I had virtually no control over these movements, but once I discovered the drum set at age nine, I found a pursuit that allowed me to release, harness, and express myself.

Playing the drum set also provided a socially acceptable means of moving my limbs, as well as receiving some degree of approval from people whom I would have otherwise dreaded being around for fear of being ridiculed and teased. This ever-present fear drove me deep inside myself, and to this day, nearly 60 years after the first symptoms began to appear, that withdrawing instinct still remains a force to be reckoned with.

So… when the term “neurodiversity” sprang up, and people started using it in reference to who they were, I was reluctant to use the word. I initially felt like it was just another buzzword that would trend and be used as some sort of crutch. I pulled away from it, quite honestly. The thing is, I’d also been pulling away for years from talking very much about Tourette’s and how it had shaped and helped my playing all my life unless I was talking with groups of people with Tourette’s.

I wrestled with how to incorporate Tourette’s as a topic of larger social discussion, and later out over the Internet into the musical community, because I didn’t want to be seen as someone who was labeling themselves. I wanted my playing to be judged on the basis of performance, not social categorizing.

This might not seem like a big deal to someone who doesn’t have any sort of neurological condition, but for those who do, you get it. I had a very hard time living with the duality of being known as a drummer and being known as a drummer with Tourette’s.

But then Dr. Oliver Sacks came along, and he started changed everything about how I viewed my dilemma.

I was doing an Internet search for my name one day several years ago to see what was out there, and I kept seeing my name pop up in reference to a book called Musicophilia, written by Dr. Sacks in 2007. I had no idea he’d included mention of me in his book, none whatsoever. I knew he’d written the Foreword to Don’t Think About Monkeys (Hope Press, 1992), a collection of short stories written by people with Tourette’s, and he’d liked what I had to say about how drumming had helped me in my contribution, “Rhythm Man.” What I didn’t know was that in the following years, he’d written about me in medical papers, and then in Musicophilia.

Finding these accounts helped me wrap my head around things better, but still, I felt uncomfortable with presenting myself as someone with something rather than just being someone, period. I can’t emphasize how much of an impediment this dilemma had been for me up until recently. However, that changed further last September 2023, thanks to a meeting of drummers in Boston at Boston University.

Dr. Gareth Dylan Smith and Dr. Virginia Davis co-sponsored an academic gathering titled “The First International Drum Kit Conference.” Academics from all over the world gathered to share thoughts and research about the drum kit, and I was invited speak as someone who had a very different perspective to offer than most… that of being a drummer with a neurodiverse condition.

I’ll be writing a separate post about that conference shortly, but for now, the moment that let me know how to find better balance came from a professor from Florida who replied to the small group meeting we had and the issues I shared about the term “neurodiversity.”

I was talking about how I didn’t know how to move forward with including the term and the ideas in reference to myself and my playing, or if I even should. He more or less said this: “It [Tourette’s] is an inseparable part of. It greatly contributed to the shaping of your playing. It’s not who or what you are, but it’s there nonetheless, and you don’t need to follow the conventional path, because your life is anything but unconventional.”

With those words, I finally realized how to move forward. It’s okay to talk about a term in relation to how it shaped my playing. It’s not a crutch of any sort. It’s a pair of shoes I’m walking in. That I can live with. That I can talk about. That lets me come out of my cave.

Hence this current blog post.

When I wrote Tourette Syndrome and Music: Discovering Peace Through Rhythm and Tone, my music autobiography in 2013 (Rollinson Publishing Co.), the term “neurodiversity” really wasn’t in use as far as I know. I self-published my story mostly for the Tourette community because I wanted them to know about how helpful music had been in my life and the control it had helped provide me over my body all those years. Still, I was reluctant to put the story for all the aforementioned reasons.

Today, I realize that I should be talking about all of this, a lot. The abilities that Tourette Syndrome have contributed to my playing have been lifelong and are fascinating. I now feel much more comfortable talking about them and will do so in future posts. One thing is certain: the hypersensitivity to touch has certainly helped me dial into the deeper subtleties of drumstick control, and I hope to be able to convey thoughts in the future that might help drummers with more normal neurological wiring.

Furthering those plans, I’m back in school now, working on completing my undergraduate degree in Psychology so that hopefully I can go on to graduate school to do research about the neurology of playing the drum set, to help bridge the gap between the arts and the sciences on this subject. I was recently invited by Dr. Smith and Dr. Davis to write a chapter about Tourette’s and drumming for an upcoming academic book publication, which I submitted a few months ago. The ball is rolling, and I finally know where to direct it.

We are the sum of our parts, and the resulting synergy is definitely greater than that sum. We all owe it to ourselves to be true to ourselves, embrace everything that’s there and do as much with it as we can in the short amount of time we’re here. That’s what I really get now and can embrace. Neurodiversity may be replaced with another term somewhere down the line, but whatever it’s called, it refers to the shoes we walk in.

The trick is figure out which way to point them. Once you do, the “path” becomes clear, because the real truth is, it’s more about embracing the path you’re walking the path than going in any particular direction. If this makes sense, then welcome to my renewed and clarified musical/life journey…

The Day I Met Lou Harrison, The Man Who Redefined My Future

In the summer of 1985, I was living in Santa Cruz, California. I was 26 and struggling to figure out how to complete what would eventually become The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II. I had handwritten hundreds, probably thousands of fundamental rhythm pattern combinations and their note value variations, but the book still needed a great deal of refinement and comprehensive structure.

I found the key to that structure one day while browsing through the nearby Aptos Library, where I came upon a small book called A Musical Primer (C.F. Peters Corp. 1971), written by the esteemed American music composer Lou Silver Harrison. In his very small book, Harrison presented the math that I had been using to systematically generate all of the finite building block rhythm patterns that all larger combinations were derived from. 2ⁿ was the key to creating the patterns, and Harrison was the first author I’d discovered in the course of my research to date who was using it.

The idea was simple: n = the number of beats or division of the beat, and 2 = the number of silence/sound combinations that were possible per beat. Duration was an additional variable; what I wanted to create were the OFF/ON, silence/sound, binary basics, like if you tapped a surface and no tonal duration of any significant length was present.

Writing these words now may not seem profound, but at the time, I felt like I’d come across the Holy Grail. A few weeks later, and quite by chance, I learned that a friend of mine actually knew Harrison, who as it turned out, lived less than two miles from my house. My friend felt sure that this iconic composer would be willing to consider meeting with me so I could show him my work in progress. I penned a letter, and couple of weeks later, Lou Harrison replied:

My mind was blown when I opened his letter. I could not believe that he was open to meeting, and I called him shortly after that to arrange it. About a week later, my world changed forever…

It was a beautiful September morning in the redwoods, and as I drove my ’72 Dodge Charger up the hill to Harrison’s house, I could hardly hold my thoughts together. Five years prior, I’d felt much the same when I auditioned in my drums for Frank Zappa, so at least I’d had a taste of what extreme stress felt like. I hoped to show Harrison my book draft and ask his opinion on how it could best be structured, and with that hope, I pulled into his driveway and walked towards a very cool and funky looking house surrounded by interesting lawn artwork.

Harrison greeted me with a jovial small, and I was immediately stunned at the likeness he bore to my father. I mean, I did not see that coming! In some ways, that was an odd but good thing, and we went inside to his living room to have a chat about rhythm patterns…

I explained to Harrison how my book idea had been born from a lesson with Terry Bozzio, who a few years before had shown me a list of 16 basic 2/4 patterns. He said at the time that these were the basics and that I should master them. I took his idea and expanded on it exponentially, and this is what I showed Harrison:

I told him that his own book was the first I’d seen that contained the 2ⁿ math approach, and he acknowledged that its source actually came from American music composer and close friend Henry Cowell. It seems that Cowell was extremely curious about rhythm and had been exploring the systematic generation of basic patterns many years before. He had also written a rhythm manuscript that Harrison believed might have been similar to what I was working on, but he did not know if it had ever been completed, or if it had, where it might be.

What Harrison did know and expressed what that figuring out the basic patterns and seeing them in print “had been a joy.” I’ll never forget those words. This was a man who had transcribed the music of Charles Ives in a similar obsessed and detailed manner, and as he thumbed through my insane collection of handwritten patterns, I’ll also never forget the bemused smile on his face. He understood the obsession and appreciated it.

Time seemed to fly talking with Harrison, and as we began to conclude our meeting, he suggested that I apply a world approach of some sort to my book, similar to David Reck’s Music of the Whole Earth (Da Capo Press, 1997). I think what Harrison had in mind was that I look at world music cultures and explore the universality of the fundamental building block rhythm patterns. I remember expressing doubts that I could tackle such a huge task, and he simply smiled and said, “You have the mind for it.”

We parted cordially, and I drove home in a state of bliss. I’d finally found not only someone who understand what I was doing but who had explored it in a similar way and had given me his blessing of sorts to carry on the work. A year later, I moved to Washington D.C. to use the Library of Congress to find every book published on the subject of rhythm, to see if anyone else had been working on what I was doing.

No one had. I was it. I believed that the future of rhythm pattern theory and exploration was in my hands, literally.

A few months later, I contacted Henry Cowell’s widow to ask permission to read his papers in the New York Public Library collection, hoping to find his lost rhythm manuscript. I took the train to NYC and spent a few days there but had no luck in finding the work that Harrison had referred to.

As I headed home back to Washington, I figured there was a very good chance that what I’d been working on was likely very similar to the collection of possible fundamental rhythm patterns that Henry Cowell could have been working on if he was using the 2ⁿ idea to calculate them. I’ll probably never get the answer to that question, and it would take me another 30 years to complete what I’d started, but I finally did in 2012, when I self-published The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II (Rollinson Publishing Co.). It had taken this long for music publishing technology to evolve to where I needed to create exactly what I wanted, but it was worth the wait.

I’ll always wish that Lou Harrison could have seen the finished product, and I’ll always be grateful for meeting him that day and benefitting from his knowledge and suggestions. He truly changed the course of my life that afternoon, inspiring me to do the heaviest mental lifting of my life and see things through to the end. It was the honor of a lifetime to be welcomed into his home and his world, because on that day, the vantage point from his Aptos hilltop home gave me the perspective to move on with every major project that would follow.

So to those of you with a vision for something beyond than anything you can imagine, I hope you’ll go for it with everything you’ve got. The feeling of completion will transform you, for the bigger and the better. Of that, I am quite sure, because I’m pretty sure that’s what Lou Harrison was really trying to tell me, in the long ago summer of 1985.

– David Aldridge

Kahokiss: The Superhuman Inferno for Otoboke Beaver

I was wandering through Instagram the other night and came across a random post that exploded in my face. I thought I was seeing things when this diminutive Japanese drummer was absolutely destroying the drum set with the rawest, focused energy I’ve seen in years. The last time someone blew up a kit with this kind of energy was the drummer for Fishbone back in 1984, when I saw them at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California.

And then comes Kahokiss, the drummer for Otoboke Beaver.

And you ain’t see ANYthing like this!

Japanese punk rock is not my thing. I have no clue as to what these energy bomb girls are singing. But I don’t care The sheer energy is off the charts! The focus and precision of their direction is hardly random, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Kahokiss’s blistering blast beats.

In this clip, Mike from The Art of the Guitar breaks down what Kahokiss is playing and does his humble best to work up to her speed. She’s clocking in at close to 250 bmp by his estimate. And she’s not hardly breaking a sweat. Kahokiss plays like this is the most ridiculously simple thing she could be doing with her morning. It’s frightening to think what she could do if she was pissed!

I’m quite serious about my respect for Kahokiss’s extreme drumming, because what I see is someone capable of delivering tremendous energy EXACTLY where she wants to like an A-10 Warthog tank killer unloading its 1,350 30mm rounds that almost push the jet backwards as it unleashes its merciless assault. The fluidity of her hands and arms is an exercise is relaxation. And what makes it all ever more interesting is her attitude.

Do you see even a hint of ego here? Of course not, because there is none. She’s having the time of her life letting every bit of energy the universe can send her way get into her body and find its way out. I can relate to this on the deepest level, and I know it when I see it happening. Kahokiss isn’t just a drummer; she’s a live wire conduit!

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A post shared by かほキッス (@kahokisss)

Here’s another perspective of Kahokiss playing “I Checked Your Cell Phone.” Unreal! She’s completely unleashing, and you know damn well there’s a helluva lot more under her skin that could be let out.

I hope someone in the Japanese music press will interview her and present it in English, I really do. Kahokiss joined the band in 2018, and while there was a little more I was able to discover in general about the band, I could not immediately find more information about her.

I suppose that only adds to the mystery and intensity. Now I get that not everyone is going to enjoy Otoboke Beaver’s music, and really, that’s okay. But I truly do hope the drumming community will take notice of a human nuclear reactor whose rods are melting down and burning everything to the ground around them.

Like I said, it’s been a very long time since I heard a drummer who was completely off the charts, who is frighteningly ferocious, and who isn’t anywhere near the apex of her playing capability. This is the kind of raw, unrestrained assault that hits precisely where its being directed is artistry in chaotic motion, fueling the other member of the band to equally go sideways while keeping it all together. It’s like watching four runaway trains about to collide from north, south, east and west but not. They instead merge onto four parallel tracks and scream towards the edge of a cliff, driven by a two-legged inferno who wears colorful print dresses and who could devour anything in her path.

Check Otoboke Beaver out on their website of the same name (www.otobokebeaver.com) and on Instagram (@otobokebeaver) and YouTube (@otobokebeaver22). You can find Kahokiss on these social media sites as well. She’s a force of nature to be reckoned with, and I seriously think she’s only just getting warmed up…

Whisper Drumming and Why You Need to Practice It

I was reading a great blog this morning by Cruise Ship Drummer about YouTube drumming videos at an absurd level. By absurd I mean ridiculous content taken to extremes. So much of the Internet bombards us with louder, faster, stronger, that it becomes the norm and the expectation of what we should learn and how we should practice.

 

We have for at least a decade and will likely continue to be inundated with so much of what we don’t need and precious little of what we really do need. We all want better control, right? This is what I want to address here, but likely not in a way you’re used to hearing about.

 

Now in the time it took you read this far, the typical impulse is to be fulfilled with some sort of instantaneously transforming content or move on. If you stick around and fight the 900 mile an hour sound note world we live in, you won’t transform instantaneously, but I’m confident your perspective will change for the better if it’s not already there.

 

I coined the term “whisper drumming” this morning as I was drinking coffee and streaming the Netflix series “Suits.” Throughout the episodes, I sit my desk with my classic Ludwig Billy Gladstone pad, and I play as slowly and quietly as I possibly can. I play my double strokes rolls without rebounding, feeling every sensation of from delivery to surface impact and all the range of motion in between.

 

I use 7As and then switch to marching sticks, paying close attention to what the tendons in my wrist feel like through all ranges of motion. The tendons are the primary lifter for the German grip (back of the hand flat), and the supination muscles (outward rotation) are the primary lifting tools for the French grip (back of the hand sideways) as well as for traditional grip in the left hand. The pronator muscles are what turn the left inward towards the drum.

 

What we really need to do to develop more control and tune into these muscle groups, as well as every nerve ending in our finger tips, is simple: play at a whisper. But our current drumming culture doesn’t really foster this notion. It’s all about louder, faster, stronger, which quite frankly, is bullshit.

 

So try this quick exercise and see what you think: play a double stroke roll at about 50 bpm, moving the sticks no higher than you see in these two pictures. Even better, try it with two significantly stick weights 7A and marching stick seen here).

Try it for two minutes. As quietly as you possibly can. At a whisper. Then come back and finish reading…

 

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Peter Erskine has long been an advocate for practicing single stroke quarter notes on the ride cymbal for a reason: it simplifies your discover of the sound you’re creating, makes you listen to the duration of each cymbal ping, make you think about the placement of the stick… all that from a single stroke.

 

The world is not going to slow down, and our bombardment of advertising, information overload, and the illusion that we must keep up with it all is here to stay. What we must do to fight it is slow down, become very quiet, and listen. If you practice whisper drumming for even 15 minutes through half of your favorite show, you’ll want to do more of it, because it will give you the control and awareness you want and need to become better.

 

In closing, I’ll leave you with this thought: when I was 15, I used to sit behind my kit and slowly move my hands from the snare drum to the other drums and cymbals, and I would pay attention to and feel every possible millisecond that I could of physical contact with the stick and every part of my body required to move it.

 

This you should practice in silence so you can tune into things at the deepest levels. If you give the method a shot, you’ll not only improve your drumming, but you’ll also receive a tremendous side benefit. You’ll develop a tool to cope with all of the overload, a place to go to where you can escape the madness. You be improving control in more than just your drumming, I guarantee it.

 

As always, thanks for checking thing out. I hope that this blog post in particular does indeed give you some fuel for rhythmic thought.

 

– David

 

Hand Exercise Warmup: 6-stroke Rolls + Paradiddles

Howdy, folks. It’s 102 degrees in Austin right now, and well, I can’t say it’s delightful. However, there’s still practicing that needs to be done, so here’s a simple hand warmup exercise with a video clip that’ll do the right thing for your chops.

It’s a combination of 4 sets of 6-stroke rolls (RLLRRL, RLLRRL, RLLRR, RLLRRL, played like triplets) immediately followed by 4 paradiddles (RLRR LRLL RLRR LRLL). Start slow, then work up to around 130 bpm.

The important thing is to:

1. Let the sticks bounce freel
2. Stay as relaxed as possible.

You can find more short clips of my drumming at David Aldridge Drums over at YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUhGP1o0cnLefOoKowozRPQ

I need to update these clips, as many are fairly old, but they still have good stuff to offer. I’m going to be revising my channel with regular updates that I hope will provide you with useful exercises.

If you like what you see, please subscribe. It’s not a fancy channel with high end production, but it’s got practical content that won’t take you long to watch.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Hudson Music and The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II

The world has changed exponentially since I first began work on my binary rhythm pattern theory books, The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II. What started in 1981 with a simple drum lesson with Terry Bozzio at a rehearsal studio in Los Angeles became a three-decades-long journey to figure how to make sense of the origin and evolution of rhythm pattern development.

During that time, electronic publishing was born, and the creation of books was forever changed. What was once thought of purely as the realm of science fiction became reality, with the knowledge of the world becoming available at our fingertips. Some people pulled away from technology, and others leaned forward into it, seeing and making the future unfold before their eyes.

Hudson Music was one such company. Putting things into place during Covid was no easy chore, but thanks to Rob Wallis, the reality of my books becoming available through Hudson Digital and their Hudson Digital Bookstore app overcame the challenges.

In the coming months, I’ll be expanding The Elements of Rhythm website to include tutorial exercises and video clips you can use to explore all that the books have to offer. It hasn’t been possible to do until now, but thanks to Hudson Music and Hudson Digital, I can continue to move forward with technology in a way I only dreamed of thirty years ago.

As always, thanks for checking out my blog, and look forward to more interviews and profiles with some very interesting members of our drumming community in the year to come. We have access to an overwhelming amount of knowledge now at our fingertips, and I appreciate every visit to this site.

I hope you’ll consider adding The Elements of Rhythm, Vols, I & II, to your musical libraries; if you’ve seen the books and want the direct link to Hudson Music, click here:

http://www.hudsonmusic.com/product/elements-volume-1/

http://www.hudsonmusic.com/product/elements-volume-2/

If you’ve not seen the books yet and would like an expanded preview, please visit www.TheElementsofRhythm.com, where you can also find a link to Hudson Music. They have of drumming resources for you to check out, and I hope you will support their continuing efforts to advance drum education into the 21st century.

Thanks, and keep pushing. We made it through Covid and kept on going, ‘cuz drummers never stop…

Drumming and Interval Hand Training/Conditioning

Here’s a post with three suggested approaches to help you develop and condition your hands to keep them working for many years. With just a few minutes a day of dedicated warm-up practice, you’ll feel results very quickly, and you’ll be quite pleased.

The exercise is divided into three parts, Strokes, Weights, and Volumes

Part I are the Strokes: Singles, Doubles, Triplets, and 6-Stroke rolls.

Part II are the Weights: Very light, light, medium, heavy. For this part, I use Regal Tip 2B’s,  5A’s, and  7A’s. I try this exercise first with Regal Tip brushes (Classic model) and then work my way up to a pair of Vic Firth marching drumsticks, graduating through the three different weight sticks mentioned.

If you don’t have brushes, you can substitute 7A’s for similar lightweight effects. I also sometimes use a classic pair of Pro-Mark steel drumsticks to wrap things up in place of using marching sticks.

Part III are the Volumes. You want to utilize Soft, Medium, and Loud volumes for each different set where you vary the stick/brushes weight. Keep loose at all times, no tension. If you feel tension, stop immediately and shake it off, then get back to it.

Part I – The Strokes

Start with Single Strokes, very slowly, to wake up the wrists. Play as loosely as possible so you feel the tendons doing their wrist support work. Focus on pulling the stick back off of the head and feeling the tendons doing the lifting work. Terry Bozzio gave me this exercise back in the early 80s, and I have used it steadily since to warm things up. In fact, it was his exercise that actually inspired me to expand the notion, so I owe him thanks for that.

The idea here is to tune into your muscles and tendons throughout the entire range of motion. It’s not a speed exercise. It’s an awareness exercise that actually carries over into live playing. That’s something I’ll talk about in a future post.

Next, perform slow Double Strokes, and do it two ways:

1. No rebound, just tapping twice and then alternating to the other hand

2. Use rebound and control it very precisely.

Spend several minutes just relaxing with this to keep the wrists and fingers very loose. When you use rebound, really feel the stick bouncing on the head, don’t just take it for granted. The idea is to get more in touch with sensation by using simple movements.

Then proceed to Single-Stroke Triplets for a few minutes. The key is to keep feeling the muscles and tendons moving and to stay aware of that sensation. It’s very easy to go on autopilot after a few minutes of this, but this is exactly what you want to avoid. STAY IN YOUR HANDS!

Lastly, we’ll put single and double strokes together for one of the best conditioning rudiments ever, the Six-Stroke Rolls (RLLRRL). There are soooo many applications of this rudiment that allow you to create fast and fluid combinations, but for now, speed is not a concern. Precision is.

Part II – The Weights

Use at least three different weight sticks to create your warm-up and exercise sets. Brushes first if you have them, and 7A’s or something equally light if not. Work your way up to the next weights, but do include brushes if you can along with three additional weights of drumsticks.

The key here is to keep your hands and fingers as relaxed as possible while practicing. Getting tight serves no benefit. If you get tight at all, stop and shake it off, then resume playing.

Part III – The Volumes

Here’s where you keep from getting bored and have something additional to concentrate on besides motion. The order is very important: MEDIUM, LOUD, then SOFT.

The leap back and forth from the different volume levels with each set of sticks keeps the sensitivity up, which is what really provides the control. The more in touch you are with the different feel of the sticks, the more precisely you can play.

Going from LOUD to SOFT is the critical shift, because you instantly have to relax your hands. The Doubles and 6-stroke rolls are really interesting to play here because of how you need to vary the stick height. It’s physics made fun!

CONCLUSION

Consider using both matched grip and traditional grip with these exercises. If you are familiar with both the French and German tympani matched grips, you can add some interesting and beneficial variation to your hand development.

Try playing 10 minutes with each stick weight group. At the end of 30 minutes, you will definitely feel like you’ve done something good for your hands.

Lastly… I know there are literally hundreds of videos out there that emphasize speed development. There’s never gonna be an end to the discussion about the pros and cons, but I will say this: if you DO want to improve your speed, you first need CONTROL. Try these exercises for a few days, and you’ll be on your way to improving both aspects of your playing.

Enjoy, and as always, thanks for checking things out here.

After Covid, Where Do We Go As Drummers?

I’d like to continue a bit of thinking from the previous post (NAMM 2020 and Sonor Vintage Series California Blue kit) and ask readers how they are feeling now that Covid has been somewhat contained and life has almost returned to normal.

The toll it took on live playing was devastating. Clubs closed, gigs dried up, and to some degree, it was replaced a little by more on-line studying, creation of video content, and a whole lot of home practice.

But where do we go from here?

Are you exhausted from it all? Did you pack things up and move on? Did the prospect of limited live performance change your life radically? I would really like to hear from readers in the Comments section about how you dealt with things and how you are moving forward.

I think it would be of great benefit to your fellow drummers to share, if you felt like it, how you got through things and more importantly, what kept you from giving up on playing. I believe as drummers that we have a unique community; always have, always will, and supporting our drumming goals is a big part of that.

Personally, I went through stretches of extensive hand conditioning, followed by months of no full drum set practicing. I couldn’t handle the isolation and the boredom, and I didn’t have an on-line network of musicians to interact with. Instead, I eventually sat down wrote a 400-page novel and then turned it into a screenplay. That took two years of writing and re-writing, shopping to find agent, not landing one, and then… Covid subsided, and my mind returned to drumming.

It was also very difficult to want to write pieces for this blog, obviously, as you no doubt saw there was very little activity for quite some time. But, sharing interesting drumming information and notions with you is something I really do enjoy, and it feels great to be getting back into things, with much more to come.

But back to your, the reader and the drummer: I sincerely hope you made through Covid okay, and while things will likely never return to what I call the Before Times, where we go from here is still fairly wide open. I hope you caught your second wind, pointed your finger at a new target and goal for your playing, and kicked things into high gear.

I really would like to hear how you pushed yourself and where you’re going if you’d like to share in the Comments section. If not, thanks for checking in to this little blog in the Cyberverse, and keep your energy up and moving forward. The drums don’t play themselves, and we can’t fully live without them. It’s the best teamwork I’ve ever known, and this community is like no other.

Sonor’s Vintage Series California Blue – Time Travel Made Possible

It seems like one hundred years since I set foot in the Anaheim Convention Center in the Before Times. No masks, no hand sanitizers, no fear… and no clue as to what awaited the world just two months later. They say hindsight is 20/20, which makes the year 2020 all the more ironic, doesn’t it? We had no idea…

It was at NAMM 2020 that I found what still remains the most stunning, classy, eye-catching and jaw dropping drum set I think I’ve ever seen. I remember coming around the corner and stopping in my tracks. There at the pristine Sonor booth was pure vintage artistry, a double bass kit showcasing Sonor’s Vintage Series. 6mm, 9-ply German beech shells, falling back to round edge bearings and styling from the 50’s and 60’s. A look that made you look and would not let you look anywhere else.

It’s been almost three years now, but I could not stop thinking about that kit. So you see, this particular blog post is not exactly a product review. It’s purely about being mesmerized by impeccable German artistry and craftsmanship. I would love to have been in planning room when the powers that be got together and someone said, “What would happen if we brought back something from the classic era… and made it… truly classic?”

I believe Sonor first released their vintage series back in 2015, but it didn’t include the finish you see here. Even though these pictures are now three years old, Sonor’s California blue finish still has no aesthetic peer, at least not to my eye.

Like I said, it’s been awhile since I first saw this kit, and unfortunately, the onset of Covid hit hard and took my interest away from my blog activities as I pondered what was going to happen with our world. But the other day, I was browsing through old NAMM photos and found these two, and decided I wanted to share my passion for what I saw.

However… and I am being entirely honest here, I did not notice until tonight (as I’m writing this) one of the best testimonial images I’ve ever seen responding to a drum product. Look closely at the guy in the picture. This was not staged, I promise. Look at the stunned reaction on his face…

Sonor, your design engineers knocked one out of the ballpark with this series. This kit is in a league of its own, and it was the highlight of my 2020 NAMM visit. I hope you continue making this finish for many years to come with this series, and thank you for reminding us that true legacy never goes out of style.