Ok, I can’t post the video to this, but if you’ve seen the video of Vinnie messing around in a Chaka Khan soundcheck this is one of the licks he plays (at the 2:28 mark).
It sounds a bit like a songo groove if you start it in a different place. I’m not sure where he was feeling the 1.
On beat 4 he plays the &a with the left hand. After that he goes back down the toms just repeating the same pattern used for beats 1 and 2.
I’ve been recording every gig on this tour and listening to the recording on the journey to the next gig.
I always find that when I’m disciplined enough to do this regularly I learn a lot about how I can improve my playing. While you’re actually playing the gig there are so many things to think about and it’s very difficult to know if how it feels or sounds in your head is how it feels and sounds to the audience. Recording the gig is a great way to know…
I want to talk about three particular lessons I’ve learned in the last two weeks… These relate to tuning, over playing, and confidence.
The thing that stood out in the recordings from my first few gigs was how loud the snare drum seemed in comparison to everything else.
I hit the drums pretty hard and I figured perhaps I needed to lay off a bit on the snare drum, or maybe not play rim shots for all the back beats.
It just so happened that the support band’s drummer had a great sounding snare drum and I’m always interested to see how different drummers tune their drums and what they use. When I went to check out the tuning I realised he was using the exact same model that I use – the Pearl Ian Paice signature snare (it’s a knock off of the Ludwig Supraphonic that was used on so many 70s records)
We compared the tuning of our snares and his was only a tone or so lower pitched than mine. I only had time to quickly drop the tuning of my batter head to match his before people started coming in. The drum felt a little less responsive (that’s probably the reason I usually opt for a slightly higher tuning) but I figured I’d leave it and see how it felt on the gig.
2 hours later I was on stage and my snare felt great to play and sounded fantastic in my in ear monitors. Listening back to the gig recording the next day I no longer had a problem with the snare sticking out, and the sound was much more consistent. It appears that tuning the drum slightly lower not only makes it sit better within the kit, but also makes it much easier to have consistent sounding rim shots. In short, I was very happy with the results. The last few gigs have been a real pleasure to play, largely as a result of this new snare sound.
After the gig our sound engineer asked me what I’d done to my snare because it sounded amazing. He has two theories about rock bands…
1. If the drummer is good, the band will sound good.
2. If the snare sound is good, the kit will sound good.
In my previous blog post I uploaded a recording of the tuning. I’ve dropped it a little lower since then (to approximately an ‘A’) and it sounds even better. On another note I also have the snares pretty loose so they don’t choke the drum, and I’m using a coated Emperor on the batter head. I always used to use coated Ambassadors until I heard that John Bonham used an Emperor. However, the support band’s drummer is using an Ambassador and his snare still sounds great (perhaps still even a little better than mine!)
Another thing I noticed when listening back to the first few gigs was that I played a lot of fills and had little habits in certain grooves that just weren’t cool. I’d either loose the groove slightly, or what I was playing just didn’t sound good. I decided to go back to basics and play as simply as I could. It was much more satisfying to listen back to a gig where the time was great and every note was intended. Everything just grooved better and sounded more solid. When I wasn’t playing unnecessarily complicated things I could focus on what was important and the music definitely benefitted from that.
After a few gigs of playing this way I’d start to add certain things back in, but they’d be more considered and intentional. I made mental notes of the habitual things I did that I didn’t like the sound of and eliminated them from my playing altogether. It’s a bit like catching yourself adding unnecessary words into sentences (“like”, “er”, “you know what I mean”, etc.) Once you’ve become aware that you do it you begin to catch yourself and you can start to eliminate them from your speech.
Have you ever played a gig and wondered if it’s grooving? Maybe you think it’s a bit too slow, or perhaps you feel like your bass drum is lagging, or your snare is rushing. Or perhaps your hihat seems to be wavering in volume. Once you start thinking about it you start getting in the way of actually doing it well.
I’ve been re-reading “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Timothy Gallwey. It’s a great book about achieving peak performance and improving learning. You can apply it to any skill and in fact there are many “Inner Game” books which have been co-written with other authors to cover other topics. I’ve read “The Inner Game of Music” but I got more out of the tennis book and “The Inner Game of Skiing” (which I re-read every time I go skiing). When reading these books I always find many concepts that I can easily apply to drumming.
An underlying concept of the books is that if you feel like you do something badly and criticise yourself (“that fill sucked – you were rushing and came in way too early”) then you’re kind of having a conversation with yourself. In this scenario, who, exactly, is criticising whom? After all, there’s only one of you.
In order to play the drums well your body has to learn what to do. It’s like learning to drive. When you start out you have to think about every single thing and it takes an enormous amount of concentration. When you’ve been driving for a while it becomes almost automatic and your conscious mind takes the roll of deciding where to go. You no longer have to think about the biting point of the clutch, or when exactly you have to signal. In fact, if you do start paying too much attention to those things then you might miss your turn. You’ve learned to trust what Gallwey calls ‘self 2′ to do its thing, and you just decide where you want to go.
I realised that when I’m playing a gig and I start questioning the position of my bass drum, or whether I’m speeding up or slowing down, then I’m essentially getting in the way of self 2 doing what it does best. However, it always felt like a cop out to say that I play better when I’m not thinking about it. Maybe I feel “in the moment” and I could assume that it’s better that way, but I fear that if I’m not analysing what I’m playing then how do I know that it’s any good? The ideal situation would be to know that I could let go and enjoy playing without analysing it and the result would be good.
When I’m recording gigs, I can allow myself to be in the moment and not let my conscious mind get too involved in analysing and pulling apart my playing as it’s happening. Then, after the gig I can listen back and see how that sounded. In this way I’m learning that I can trust “self 2″ to do a pretty decent job.
Listening back I might realise that I have a tendency to speed up a little when I go to the bell of the ride in a certain song. The next time I’m playing that song I might consciously decide to hold back a little, but I’ll avoid trying to analyse the situation there and then. I’ll just pay attention to how it feels. Maybe I feel like the song is a little slow and I’ll remember that for when I’m listening back but I’ll just go with it. If, when I listen back, it sounds very groovy, then I know for future reference that even though it feels slow, it can sound groovy.
The result is that, over time, I learn to trust myself to play well without analysing what I’m doing. That allows my conscious mind to think about where I want to go and I can let “self 2″ do the driving.
That’s all for now. I have another 20 or so gigs to figure out some more things. Check out the Tour Dates and come and say hello if we’re playing near you…
The above is a recording from my iPhone of how the top head of my snare drum is tuned.
It’s a 6.5 x 14 Ian Paice signature model.
I’ve been recording gigs on the tour and I was unhappy with the tuning of my snare. It was too loud and pokey, and I decided it was tuned too high. I dropped the tuning a bit and now I’m happy with it. I recorded the audio file for future reference when re-heading.
One thing about touring is it gives me the opportunity to try out different techniques night after night and see how they affect the sound, accuracy, and ease of playing. So far on this tour I’ve been focussing mainly on my bass drum technique. Specifically, I’ve been directing my attention to the point of contact between my foot and the pedal.
I’ve played heel up pretty much since I saw Dave Weckl’s “Back to Basics” video when I was 13. When he talks about foot technique he says that he plays with the ball of his foot, rather than his toes. I thought I’d been following his advice to the letter until recently when I took a running lesson from a boxing coach. He was talking about the ‘ball’ of the foot and how it has more nerve endings than the other parts of the foot. Boxers like to put their weight mainly on this part of the foot when they’re moving around as it gives them better feedback about balance, etc. He then showed me what the ball of the foot was and pointed to the bit of the foot that looks like a ball – where the big toe joins the foot. This was a revelation to me, as for some strange reason I’d thought for the last 17 years that it’s the area where all the toes meet the foot – more like a row of balls. And, this “row of balls” is what I’ve been attacking the pedal board with for just as many years. I wondered where I’d got that idea, and suspected that when Dave says he plays with the ball of his foot that maybe he also points to this area. I’d have to dig out the video to check.
On closer examination I realised the reason for this was that in order to play these notes my leg would tense a bit and I’d lift it higher and try and play the notes as my heel descended. If you try this you’ll find that it’s nearly impossible to retain the point of contact as the ball of the foot (under the big toe) if your heel is too high. In order to do that you’d need to flex your toes back a long way. Perhaps female (or transvestite) drummers, used to wearing high heels, could manage this, but for me it’s definitely a strain.
esult of trying to play specifically with the ball under my big toe I’ve modified my technique to lift my heel less in preparation for multiple strokes. Instead, I’m pulling my foot back (as if I were playing heel down) while keeping my heel off the ground but only by an inch or so. I’ve found that this makes the multiple strokes more even and less ‘panicky’. So far, so good.