These are the kind of headlines people use for blogs all over the internet. Remember the days when you had to go out to a record shop if you wanted to buy a new album? Maybe the shop didn’t have it so you’d have to order it and wait a week. Now you can buy it on iTunes almost instantaneously, or just find it on youtube. If you want a physical CD you can order it on Amazon and have it in your hands the next morning.

We’ve come to expect instant delivery of what we want, and subconsciously it feels like it should also apply to the acquisition of skill. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work like that. Acquiring a skill takes as much time and requires the same amount of work as it used to. If there were instantaneous ways of acquiring them then we’d no longer call them skills.

Back in 2001 I saw David Blaine on TV for the first time. He was biting chunks out of coins, waving his hands over things to make them disappear, and levitating. I’d always had a soft spot for magic and I really wanted to believe this stuff. The reactions of the people around him certainly suggested that it was real. Same thing with Uri Geller bending spoons and stopping watches. As much as I wanted to believe it I was well aware that ‘if’ somebody figured out how to levitate I would be watching it on the news rather than a prime time entertainment slot.

In the same way, I’m sure if somebody really did figure out a way that you could acquire a skill in next to no-time, a bona fidé short cut, then that would also be newsworthy. Hence, I’m fairly confident that not much has changed as far as the human ability to acquire new skills.

On the other hand the arrival of the internet and youtube HAS given us instant access to information. Almost all the information you could possibly want about anything is just waiting for you to enter the right search terms. Combine that with a lot of time practicing and the results are extremely impressive.

The downsides of this are that it can be off-putting to see just how many amazing players there are out there and just how much stuff there is to learn. If one person has spent a lifetime working on one style, and another has spent a lifetime working on another style, you’re not going to be able to be that good at both of them (unless you live twice as long!)

Despite there being no genuine shortcuts there are certainly better routes. You might be trying to tunnel your way out through a 5 foot brick wall with a spoon when you see a youtube video that shows you how to use a hammer and chisel, or even points out that there’s nothing on the other side of the wall.

A good teacher watching you playing can point out things that might take you years to discover for yourself. It’s hard to put this information into a video or a book as everybody is struggling with their own problems and it’s not always easy to identify what they are.

My personal approach to my own development is to seek out things that I think ought to be simple, but that I struggle to play. You’d be surprised how many of these there are! I figure that improvements in these areas will pay off in multiple ways. Not only are they the building blocks of more complex activities, but the fact that they’re simple and you set yourself simple goals means that you can witness the improvement and that encourages you to continue.

I try to make my youtube lessons as informative as possible, but there’s a limit to what you can fit into 10 minutes or so. The MasterClass lessons are where I go into details about all the subtleties that I’ve discovered over the years. More often than not it’s these little insights that click with people and get them over a hump. I try to share not only the exercises that I do, but also why I do them and where they come from. That way you can develop your own approach to improving your playing, and that is what’s going to make the difference.

I’m currently working on a new series of MasterClass lessons which will really break these concepts down. If you don’t already have an account be sure to sign up to be notified when they go live.

If you usually mic the kick drum through a hole in the head with a short mic stand maybe you’ve experienced some of the same problems I have…

- the singer kicks the stand and knocks it out of place
- it’s a shitty stand that keeps drooping
- the mic suddenly swivels round in the middle of the gig
- the vibrations from the stage get picked up by the mic
- the venue doesn’t have an appropriate stand

Out of all the things that could go wrong in a gig, these were the most common problems.  All of them related to micing the bloody bass drum.

I’d considered the May micing system before but I didn’t like the idea of drilling my bass drum shell and it all looked a bit convoluted to me.  So I was overjoyed when a friend recommended the Kelly Shu.  As far as I’m concerned it’s the ideal solution to this problem.  I’ve used it for the last two tours with Wishbone Ash and it has saved time and space as well as providing the exact same kick sound to the engineer every night.

I was in the process of installing new loops into my studio kit and I thought I’d give it a bit of a plug as I would never have heard of it if it wasn’t through word of mouth.

Check out the video to see what a neat solution this is…

If you want to buy one, I opted for the pro version and bought it on Amazon.

Since I only have one Shure Beta52 and there’s a hole in my bass drum head I decided to buy an off cut of leather and make extra loops.  I’m installing them on my studio kit and the US touring kit.  I’ll just move the Shu and mic between them

Check out this video and see if you fare any better than I did… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg8a0J6Wiks

I find it extremely difficult to stay in time if I’m not moving any part of my body or singing/counting out loud.  Once time is relegated purely to a mental state it seems almost completely elusive.

I find myself analysing and questioning my precision while trying to keep time.  Once the click has stopped I have to imagine the clicks filling in the space I notice my inner voice asking “did I just imagine that click too quickly? Or too slowly?”

The same thing happens when I’m playing drums on a gig and trying to really hold down the time.  I can only imagine that those thoughts get in the way of actually keeping good time.

What I need is confidence that I can keep good time without having to keep asking myself and questioning it.  In order to gain this confidence I need to successfully stay in time (working with these time check exercises) more often than not.  In order to test whether I can stay in time when I’m not analysing, I need to believe that I can keep good time.

But I still feel like I need a method.  Let’s say the click stops for a bar and I just guess where it comes back in.  I clap where I think it’s going to start again and I absolutely nail it. It happens again and again.  Could I have confidence without having a method?  It’s like being able to accurately guess the number of peas in a jar at a fete and always getting it right, but not knowing how you can do it.

For now I’m testing different approaches.  For example, I might count at a 1/16th rate (mentally), or at an 1/8th note rate, or a 1/4 note rate.  Or I might just imagine a rhythm in one of those rates.  Or I might imagine a bass line for a song.  I’m testing each of these to see which seems to be most effective.

Let’s say I want to be scientific about it I might try each method 10s of times on different days and note how well each seems to work.

The really strange thing is it’s not even that easy to know what you’re doing.  Say you’re imagining counting, but suddenly you question whether you just counted the number 7 or not.  Then you have to answer that question before you know which number to imagine next, perhaps feeling like you have to back track because by this time another 2 imaginary pulses have passed.

The mental world is all very strange.

If you have any success with this post a comment and let me know…

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.

Tuning

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!)

Over Playing

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.

Self Confidence

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…

snare sound

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.