DRUM LESSON: Drum Fills

I decided to do a few lessons on fill ideas...Enjoy!

Drum Lesson: Traditional Grip

Drum Lesson: Killer Chops...Finger Technique for Faster Hands-Matched Grip

I've been working on my "skills" w/ the video editing, as well as audio recording/editing...so the sound quality should be much clearer on this lesson, along with there being a hi definition option for the video...I shot this one and the next lesson while I was on the road this past week...expect full kit lessons to start coming in the next couple of weeks as I'm off the road and able to get back into my studio...

EPIC FAIL: A gig gone wrong...

So I'm on the third day of a 5 day stint on the road...On hour nine of an eleven hour stretch...and seeing as I've had nothing but time to sit and think, a few of my past “adventures” have come to mind...I actually started laughing out loud thinking about some of these stories while riding last night. And so since I have nothing but time and a laptop, I figured I would throw one out there...

A few years back I had a friend that was making a go of it as a country singer. Her husband and I had randomly met, become friends, and I eventually started drumming for her. She needed a whole band, so she asked me to head the thing up as bandleader. I'll skip all of the details of putting the band together, management miscommunications, and other details...

The gig was simple: A one off fly date to Colorado. Fly down one day and play the show, fly back the next morning...simple, by the book...

What should have gone off without a hitch slowly began to go downhill...when I found out we were flying out of St. Louis...Missouri...??? We lived in Nashville...which has an international airport...why wouldn't we fly out of there? That being said, common sense usually doesn't prevail in situations like this..so ok...whatever...St. Louis it was then... the flight left out at 6 in the morning. Again, common sense kicked in for me and I assumed we'd be leaving the night before...until I spoke with her manager...he thought a 3 am leave time would be just fine...??? I explained to him my logic of not only needing to be a little early for our flight, but actually needing to MAKE the flight...and so we should probably leave around 11 the night before (it actually takes about 5 and a half hours to get to St. Louis from Nashville)...He countered with “Why would we leave at 11 the night before? It's a 2 hour drive!” I assured him it was actually over five hours...and this is the point where any normal person would pull out the phone, or laptop, or roadmap and look this little detail up. Much to my chagrin, I was the only one that ever looked up the travel times...he argued with me about the leave time up until 2 days before the trip...but I was tenacious! Thinking about this right now, I'm still amazed this was even a discussion...

So he humored me...we left at midnight Nashville time...which was hardly enough time but I was tired of this ridiculous discussion. So at 5:50 am we came running into the airport, 10 whole minutes to spare ( I'll skip the I told you so's)...and somehow we miraculously made the plane...this was the last thing that went right with the trip...

We landed a couple of hours later in Greely, Colorado. To save money, and presumably time, they had booked our plane tickets, a shuttle ride to and from the airport, and the hotel as an all in one package...I forget who they booked it through, some travelocity knockoff. The shuttle pulled up to get us on time...with only one problem...the A/C was broken. Perfect. We were in Colorado...it was stiflingly hot...

Calm...stay calm...we'll roll the windows down. Besides, we didn't have time to sweat (pun intended) the trivial details like comfort...we had to check into the hotel before the gig, then get to the venue, set up, and soundcheck.

So we pull up to the hotel...excuse, I must have been mistaken, motel (and yes there's a HUGE difference)...motel was stretching it...brick structure that housed random travellers...and I'm thinking this must be a joke cause this place is a dump. Super manager proceeded into the office to get our rooms as we sat on the curb outside...he was taking a really long time...and then I started to hear raised voices...and then a door slamming, with lots of muttering.

“The rooms don't have A/C,” Manager of the year exclaimed.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“They don't have A/C...I can't believe this...I specified the rooms had to have A/C!” he said while wildly paving back and forth.

Wait a minute...he TOLD them the rooms HAD to have A/C? This was Colorado....the US of frickin' A..I assumed A/C was a given in any modern building structure. He said he'd deal with it, we were way behind schedule...luckily our ride was there to take us to the venue. He'd get the rooms changed while we were at the gig.

We were supposed to be playing a local festival...outside, which is never a fun thing, but I had high hopes. I guess there are different definitions of “festival”...

New Definition of Festival (I'll post it on Wikipedia later...): A stage set up in a car lot, where they were having a sale on their cars over the weekend....and we were the featured entertainment. Now, nowhere in there do I get “Festival”...nonetheless...at least there was a stage.

We were a 5 piece group...drums, vocals, bass, guitar, and fiddle (always a fiddle...)...backline was provided...was supposed to be provided...and to a point I guess it was...

So I walked on stage and hit my shin on something...what was that? It was a small, square....well, it sort of looked like an amp...but it was less than a foot tall...

and then I realized it was the guitarists amp...

HA! Surely not! It was the mighty Roland Micro Cube amp...weighing in at 9 by 10 inches...the picture is still etched in my memory of the guitarist staring defeatedly down at his feet...almost sobbing...

The bass amp was actually a normal size...he got off the best...and then to the drums...

They were a ragged group of percussive elements...but I managed to put together a semblence of a kit...now for the cymbals...cymbals...hmmm...

I asked the manager about them...he asked the sound guy...I cried in the corner...sound guy gave us the number of the rental company...which informed me when I called them that we had specifically told them NO cymbals...

Super Management strikes again!

And to top it off, they were closing...so no dice.

But wait!!! There was someone running one of the food tables, waving frantically, that said “hey, I think I have some cymbals in my attic!”

Perfect.

This was getting humorous...really humorous...ok, I'll bite...I asked her to go get them, having no clue what kind of cymbals they were, how many there were, sizes...

Motto to live by 20 minutes from showtime: Bad metal is better than no metal...

So the kind cymbal donor arrived back promptly holding what appeared to be dusty, dingy, old cymbals...I grabbed the first cymbal and after I brushed enough dust off to see, I was pleased that the hi-hats were actually an old pair of Zildjian K's. Score. Now on to the next cymbal...it was some sort of factory piece of junk...fail...and now on...to...wait...that was all there were...ok, hi hat and crash, I can work with it.

After we'd “soundchecked”...which consisted of listening to the "sound guy" explain what killer tones he gets out of the cube amp the guitarist was using and making sure all of the equipment at least made some sort of audible sound, we started our set...to all 4 people that showed up...

There was the sister of the bass player (her and her girlfriend had come out)...and an old friend of the guitar players...and two other people that were wondering around...

It was a rip roaring set...the guitarist roared through his solo's, barely audible to the mass of empty chairs in front of us...the fiddle player missed every cue and solo she was supposed to have...it went unnoticed by the rabid crowd...I queried the meaning of all of this...the crowd yawned enthusiastically...and I laughed the whole time...

After the 8 hour set...or was it 30 minutes? I don't know...we had been up for over 30 hours straight at this point...time was pointless...

I think the manager took us for dinner afterwards...it's a blur...there may have been some steak and a cold beer in the mix...

Back at the A/C challenged motel the manager had failed yet again...we had the same rooms...with the same lack of air that we'd had before...

Luckily, while we were standing outside getting our room keys, our guitar player was accosted by a rather drunk Latin thug like figure...demanding to know why he was wearing the blue dew rag he was wearing...which resembled, as in an exact replica...of some common gang colors...fantastic....we were rooming together...so we walked, rather quickly, to our room...with thug guy following us behind...yelling for us to stop and “discuss” the dew rag issue...

I stripped my bed...and my clothes...and spread out, trying to allow as much air as possible to get to my body...the Latin figure remained outside for about half an hour, knocking and hollering irately...

I drifted in and out of a sweating sleep...I heard children screaming...running by the room...it was so hot...and they wouldn't stop screaming...if I could imagine what hell might feel like, this was coming awfully close...sleep deprived, oppressively hot, screaming...

And then the two hours that we had to sleep were up...and I was sitting on the curb outside the front office again, waiting for the shuttle...

Only the shuttle never came...

Awesome...it was a package deal, pay once and they'll take care of the trip to your hotel and back to the airport. They had forgotten the return part.

The manager called every number he had...kicked and screamed...threatened lawsuits...and finally got a ratty looking four seater to show up...so the artist stayed behind, and we squeezed as many of us into the piece of junk that was a car, and flew to make our plane.

She wound up buying another ticket and we took two planes back...

...and I wound up finally getting to sleep...right by the air conditioning vent...and forgot about the whole escapade until last night...

By the way...There's nothing to learn from this...

The Difference A Little Acoustic Treatment Makes To Your Drum Room...

Above is a before and after video of my studio...

It's happened to all of us...you get to a gig, set your drums up, do a sound check...and they sound GREAT! You can't imagine your drums sounding any better...they're warm, inviting, everything you play sounds sonically pleasing...the gig goes off without a hitch and you go home feeling like "Sid the Wonder Kid, Drum Tuner to the Stars"!

Then, on your very next gig...you rush to get there because you can't wait to play your drums again (after all, you're the greatest drum tuner that has ever lived...remember?). You set them up, pick the sticks up with a small cocky grin, and start to play...and...they...sound......like CRAP!!! The worst sounding kit you've ever played...the toms have strange overtones, the bass drum is uncontrollable and boomy, the snare makes you wince every time you hit it...even your cymbals sound horrible! How could this be?! You had just played the night before and they sounded heavenly...and now even your cymbals are out of tune? Say it ain't so...and so you shove your earplugs deeper into your ears, hoping that by some act of God you'll be transported to the end of the gig so you can pack them back up and have a nice bonfire when you get home...

This happens to me ALL OF THE TIME...and it's really hard not to get down about not only your drums and your tuning ability, but your playing too. After all, why put all of that practice time in if your going to sound bad no matter how hard you work?

Allow me to explain a little about what is actually going on...You can be the best drummer in the world, you can have the top of the line drums made out of endangered wood that was harvested from the monkey trees of Argentina...all of this won't mean a thing if the venue or room that you're playing in is acoustically off. What do I mean?

There's alot going on that you can't see at a gig...there's countless invisible sound waves that are bouncing around you at all times. If a room is built for live bands to play in, and they don't take the time to sonically treat the room to address the issues of standing waves, flutter echos, modal ringing, and improving stereo imaging, it can lead to disastrous results. Let me go ahead and say, I am no expert on this subject...FAR from it...I also am not going to attempt to explain all of the intricate details of sound waves...and I'm sure you really don't care to know all of those details (that being said, if you really do want to know about the ins and outs of sound waves, go HERE for a much more in depth explanation.)

I'm going to explain what I did, my reasons for doing it, and the cost effective ways I found to achieve my desired results without breaking the bank.

I've recently remodeled my garage and made it into a drum studio. After all of the build out, I was left with the problem of my room sounding like an echo chamber. The room is a rectangle, a horrible shape for acoustics...it's roughly 300 sq ft in size with a 10 foot ceiling...or a large box in other words. So once I finished drywalling and painting I was left with the enormous task of learning about sound treatment and applying it to my room.

So I started to read on the subject...and I read alot...and for my particular room, here's the solutions I came up with...the photo below will let you see somewhat of what the room looks like, although it was taken right after I had finished so none of the recording gear, pictures, or even a full drum kit for that matter, are set up...




1.) For the wall behind my drumset, I decided to treat it with acoustic foam sound dispersing panels that would eliminate the standing waves. To keep this explanation easy...if you have two parallel walls, you need to treat one of them (and only one) with some type of material that will both absorb some sound and disperse it at the same time. So I took forty-eight 1x1 square panels and hung them on the wall behind my drums...I made four large diamonds in the middle of the wall and placed two rows of 8 panels each on the bottom of my wall. That took care of the standing waves from two of the walls. I would have been out of pocket a little bit of money, but thankfully I had some band members that had the sound panels sitting in their closets not being used...so that treatment was free...BONUS!

2.) I needed to treat the corners of the room with bass traps to control the bass. Pre-fab bass traps can get quite expensive...and so my solution was to make my own. I made four 2'x4' bass traps (using 4"x1" strips of wood, I made a frame, stuffed it with Rockwool insulation, covered the front and the back of it with fabric, and hung it where it would straddle the middle of the corner) and hung one in each of the four corners of the room. I then made four 2'x2' bass traps and hung them at an angle in the four tri-corners of the room (where the ceiling meets both of the walls). Bass traps done...total cost for screws, fabric, insulation, and wood was a little over $100.

3.) I wanted to hang a panel above my drums that would disperse the cymbal bleed and keep the sound from bouncing straight off of the ceiling and back into the microphones. So roughly three feet right above where my drumset is set up I hung a 4'x'6' piece of particle board covered in rigid styrofoam dispersement panels, in no particular pattern. There's roughly a 2-3 foot gap between the ceiling and the panel...I simply found two studs in the ceiling, hung two hooks that are used to hang swings on porches, and then attached some chain...I learned my lesson with my first attemp at hanging it...I didn't bother to find the studs, got the thing hung, got to the bottom of the ladder, and SMASH!!! The whole contraption came down on my head. Painful, but a learning experience...note to self...always find a stud to hang large, heavy items from the ceiling. I already knew this, but apparently I needed this experience to really instill it in my thinking. Again, one of my band mates had the dispersement panels, so all I paid for was the wood, screws, and chain...roughly $25-35.

4.) The other two parallel walls have been taken care of with pictures, a piano, a couch, and a bunch of bookshelves...all of these items eliminated the squareness of the walls and improved the sound.

5.) I have a rug underneath my drumkit, but other than that I have an open concrete floor to maintain the "live" sound and feel of the room...the rug was about $75.

And there you have it...for a couple of hundred dollars I treated a very large room and now have a pleasing area that my drums sound good in. So if you have a practice space that sounds horrible, don't just live with it...do something about it! You'll play so much better just by hearing better tones. You can bring in furniture, curtains, etc...anything to make the room less square and a little "softer". And please, if you get to a gig and your drums sound like you're hitting glass, just ignore it...it has no bearing on the quality of player you are...unless you can't tune...and then we have a whole other set of problems...

You Tube, Bass Tracks, and other news...

So you may have noticed that I'm fully functioning again...life has been hectic, to say the least, as of late. Here's a brief rundown of what's been happening the past 6 months or so, some having to do with new additions to the blog, and others not so much...

1) My wife is pregnant w/ our second drummer...I mean, um, boy...we're due at the beginning of September and we couldn't be more excited about it!

2) You've probably already read in a past post, but my band Lovers and Liars signed w/ Universal Republic Records (Owl City, 3 Doors Down, Amy Winehouse, Mika, Colbie Caillat, Tori Amos...) a few months ago and we've since been going non-stop to get all of the details that go along w/ that in order...studio time, contracts, rehearsals, pre-production, recording, photos, management, booking...it's been quite exciting, but alot of work at the same time. We finished up recording a few weeks ago and the final mixes should be in by the end of the week...If you'd like to check out a video of our studio time go here.

3) I finished my home studio (See the photo above)...it's taken me over two years to purchase the house, buy the equipment, build the room out...lots of time, but alas, excepting for a few minor esthetic issues, it's finished...

4)You can now find www.DrummerEtc.com on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and most recently..... YOU TUBE!
You've probably noticed alot of the new posts have been lessons from the YouTube page...I'm having ALOT of fun getting these together and have TONS more to come...I've been out on the road a good bit this month, and so most of them have been me w/ a practice pad or brushes...look for more full kit posts in the next month as well as a series on the different grips, finger control, etc. In addition, the sound quality should be getting MUCH better...to do all of this I've had a huge learning curve w/ video editing, recording software, and the likes...but it's all smoothing out...thanks for bearing w/ me while I work on getting better quality videos and lessons to you.

5) And the most recent addition, one that I'm STOKED about, might I add...I've been pooling my resources and have started collecting play along bass tracks from several producers and bass players in the Nashville area...some really great players. There are two tracks up at the moment...they'll be getting better as we go. Check out the top of the blog to hear them. I really just wanted to test the waters w/ the first couple and the response has been really encouraging! I had a cd full of play along bass tracks in college that I absolutely wore out practicing to...and hopefully I'll be able to build a really great library of tunes for you to download and practice w/...that being said, there is a small charge. To bring you the quality I'm wanting to in the future, it's costing a bit of money...so hopefully your donation per tune will help to offset some of those costs so that I can keep putting them up...and PLEASE, I love feedback about these things! Feel free to contact me through any of the social pages, here, or via email...I love hearing from you guys!

So I really haven't been sitting on my laurels...I've been busting hump, and hopefully you can benefit from some of my work! Thanks again for reading!