Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Old Dog, Meet New Tricks

 This coming September, I will have been playing the drums for 45 years, and man are my arms tired! 

Seriously, it amazes me after all this time, experience, listening, and frankly hard work, there is still so much to learn.

Case in point. I have been using a hybrid "push/pull" technique to play streams of notes, especially in my right hand, but I've never been super satisfied with the results, and it tends to feel very inconsistent. I stumbled across Rick Dior demonstrating Peavey drums. As he aptly showed in that video, he is a great drummer with very good technique. So, when I saw he had some videos involving push/pull, I had to check it out. NOTE: This is not his first video on the subject, so if you're just starting to develop this, I would advise you to watch his beginning video first.

So, there's lots of great info here. I have decided to work the concepts he's talking about here to clean up my technique. I'm vowing to work on it at least a half hour a day, but also to make sure to play along with recordings, jam etc. as well so I don't get obsessed with this one technical idea. ( I have done this in the past, and the results weren't pretty.) When this post is published, I'll have been working on this for about a month, so I'll let you know of my progress. Oh, I also wanted to mention that I like his demonstration because he also mentions how to apply this technique, because without application, what's the point?  

So, it's not really a trick I'm working on, but a technique that hopefully will open new paths to creativity. Stay tuned……

UPDATE # 1

It's only been 3 or 4 days, but it's starting to feel a LOT better, particularly in the left hand. I'm also trying to be equally comfortable with the technique in French and german grips, so I've got my work cut out for me!

Another set of factors when learning something new within a skill set one has are proactive and retroactive interference ( thank you university 1st year Psychology! ). The proactive interference (my new learning being affected by my old learning ) is that I use so much rebound, I now have to control it in a different way to make this technique work, and it makes it challenging for sure. The retroactive interference I have to manage is that the old way I use rebound works very well for things, particularly playing a fast Jazz ride rhythm, so I don't want this new technique to affect what I already am happy with. Okay, back to the shed………

UPDATE # 2

It's subtle, but I think this technique is starting to influence my sound. Because rebound is part of this technique, I find that in general I am playing more up off the drums rather than down into them and getting off the drum head slightly quicker. Not that I'm comparing myself to them at all, but the sound and feeling is more bright and ringy like Buddy Rich or Louis Bellson and I'm digging it a lot!!!

AARRRRGGGHHH!!!! UPDATE #3

A couple of weeks later. It's coming along slowly. But then Guelph fine drummer Sam Cino posts this!!!!!!!

Mr. Montagner has really mastered this, and without using his fingers!!!! Also, he shows a lot of other great techniques. I think as far as a lot of this extreme technique stuff goes, I'm most attracted to the Brazilian take on it because it always seems to be about representing the music. Okay, back to the drawing board…...

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