Natalie: Hi there Giga-drummers, welcome to Gigajam, this is the essential drum skills course, part seven. I'm Natalie Barrass, and he is Brian Greene. Brian
Brian: Hi
N: Hello
B: Hello Natalie
N: How are you?
B: Very well, thank you very much, you?
N: Good, I am also very well, yes
B: Good
N: Okay
B: Yeah big lesson, lesson seven
N: Yeah, I had to intake breath then, cos I knew what was coming
B: Yeah it's, this is where we start to really put it all together
N: Yeah
B: And it starts to get very exciting. The concept around this lesson is to start using all of the skills that we've got and to develop some pretty exciting fills. This lesson is actually a pre-cursor to lesson eight. So it's almost like two lessons
N: Mmmhmm
B: Over two parts. It's called phrasing
N: Phrasing
B: Phrasing, and we create phrasing by developing accents. So what we should do though is just have a little chat about the learning outcomes
N: Yes
B: And then actually because it's such a big lesson I would actually like to demonstrate what we're hoping to achieve by the end of this lesson. So we'll play…
N: At the beginning?
B: Exactly, so we're gonna play what we're gonna get to at the end, at the beginning. Or an example of it
N: Alright
B: If that's alright?
N: So record this show, rewind it, play it again and it'll all make sense
B: It'll make perfect sense. But if we just go through what we're going to be doing. We're going to be developing more interesting fills, we're going to be strengthening the use of our sixteenth notes and our single stroke rolls, something we've been banging on about for the, these last six lessons or so
N: Is that a drumming pun there?
B: Well it was an accidental one…
N: Very good
B: …but lets move on before anyone notices. We're going to introduce greater use of our non-lead hand. Now, up to this point I've always been going on about, you know, starting with your lead hand on the beat
N: Mmmhmm, so if you're right-handed your right hand, left-handed your left hand
B: Correct. What we're now going to do is create more emphasis to strengthening the non-lead hand, in my case it's gonna be my left hand, through the development of accents. So one of our learning objectives today is to increase our flexibility and use of our non-lead hand, our weaker hand. And then lastly we're going to try and look at developing more fluency around the kit. Thus far we've only gone around the kit in that direction
N: Mmmhmm, in a clockwise direction
B: I believe so
N: Yes…
B: That's correct
N: …check the time
B: Yes
N: (Laughs)
B: So that's, that's great, so what we're now going to do is move around the kit, and actually we're going to use an L shape to play accents and play fills round the kit. And that will start to develop more fluency and control when we actually move away from this, from the groove position
N: Mmmhmm
B: Yeah? So what I'd like to demonstrate is just a couple of bars of, of an example of what we're going to end up with, roughly what we're going to end up with by the end of the lesson
N: Alright
B: And I'll just play these on my own. So a bar of groove and then some vaguely interesting fills, okay?
N: (Laughs)
B: Here we go
N: They were more than vaguely interesting Brian
B: Thank you very much indeed, just trying to be modest there
N: (Laughs)
B: But actually, you know, if we're talking that this is in part one of the course, you know I think this is quite an exciting thing for the students to be getting involved with. Lot's of movement, we're gonna be talking about developing accents, ghosting, using the toms in a different way, and of course the interplay between grooves and fills, you know re-emphasing that point that you have to have fluency through your music, playing grooves and fills, being able to go between the two smoothly and fluently
N: Mmmhmm, it's like learning a language, isn't it? Fluency, accents, phrasing
B: Well there is all of this sort of jargon, vocabulary which comes along with it, but we're explaining it as we go along, so hopefully the viewers at home are on top of that
N: Mmmhmm
B: So let's get into our first exercise now, which is being able to build accents, okay? So we're gonna move through the lesson quite a bit here into our very first exercise which is building accents
N: Mmmhmm, I can do many accents…
B: Can…
N: …French, German, Australian
B: Yes, so when we're building accents what we're looking to do is develop the ability to play more dynamically, okay? So…
N: What do you mean by dynamically?
B: Well play with different layers of volume within our playing. So we can play softly, and we can, we can play loudly and aggressively, and everything in between. So we have to have control over all of those dynamics
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now an accent is when you highlight a note. Now just because you're highlighting it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be loud, but it's probably going to be louder than the other notes
N: Right, so you're drawing attention to it
B: Correct. Now what you also need to do when you're drawing attention to that note is control other notes, so that they don't cloud the accent that you're creating. And what we tend to do is, is either play those very quietly or as they're sometimes called ghost notes it's almost as if they're not there, and I'll just demonstrate that through the technique
N: Yeah, cos you mentioned ghosting, and I thought I've not heard that term before, and now you're gonna exemplify it to me
B: Well there we are
N: I'm fine with that
B: Good. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to play, well let me just play a bar of single stroke rolls, sixteenth notes on the snare drum, no accents, which may sound a little bit like this. Or in fact it sounds exactly like that
N: (Laughs) I'm glad you said that and not me
B: So they should be relatively even. Let me show you again. Okay? Now if I want to accent on the beat, for instance, just the first note, it becomes hard if I don't quieten the other notes down. So perhaps what I should be thinking about is creating an accent by bringing the stick higher
N: Mmmhmm
B: And then dropping the other notes down a little so that we've got that contrast, that dynamic I was talking about, so perhaps something like this. Now that's a, you know, that's a moderate accent, but what we probably want to do is actually look at really playing the notes quietly so that we don't have to put too much into the accent at all for it to stand out
N: Okay
B: Let me just show you. Ghost notes, I'm going to play them using what's called a tap stroke
N: Tap stroke
B: So it's a very, very small wrist action here
N: Mmmhmm
B: So this'll be a tap stroke
N: Right so that's a tap stroke, so what's the normal stroke that you do? Is that just called a regular stroke?
B: Well a normal stroke is just a, yeah, a straight forward wrist motion, but I'm just using that wrist motion to play a very small note…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …so we use that, that's called a tap stroke
N: Okay, and that's, is it, are you closer to it, or is it just gentler?
B: Yeah, very good, I'm lower down and I'm just playing a much, with a much smaller wrist motion
N: Mmmhmm
B: And that applies in both hands
N: Mmmhmm
B: So the idea when you play a series of tap strokes, you end up with little ghost strokes effectively. Now if I want to accent the, the most, the sensible thing is to bring the note that you're accenting up higher
N: Mmmhmm
B: Rather than hitting harder
N: Yes
B: Now there can at a later stage be hitting harder as well…
N: Mmm
B: …depending on how loud you want that accent to be, but just in terms of highlighting the dynamic I'll start to play one note more loudly than the others. So the first one, bringing the note up high, one e and a. So I'm not actually having to put a great deal of effort, into the accented note
N: Mmmhmm, are you slightly hitting the rim there are well?
B: I'm avoiding the rim at the moment
N: Right
B: But yes you can of course bring the rim into that accent, again depending on how loud you want that accent to be. Quite often, yes, on the snare drum I would use the rim to include the accent. What, what I'd like to do now is move into exercise two. Now there I've used the right hand to play the accent on the beat
N: Mmmhmm
B: Okay? So that was from our exercise one. In exercise two I'm going to still play the single stroke rolls, but I'm gonna accent the second note
N: Mmmhmm
B: In the series
N: Could you show me on the computer?
B: Yeah that's a good idea isn't it?
N: As it's here I thought we might as well use it
B: You're very good indeed
N: (Laughs)
B: Here we are, exercise two. What we're going to do here is instead of accenting beat one, you see we have an accent symbol above the second note of each beat here
N: Okay, and that's how it appears in regular sheet music for the drums
B: Yeah, if you're gonna play an accent that's what you need to do
N: Alright
B: So we're gonna play on the 'e' on each beat. One e and a, two e and a, three e…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …and a, four. Here we go so ghost notes and then bringing the accent up. So it's one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. Make sense?
N: It does make sense. Are there any problem areas that you see there? Do you have a tendency maybe to want to do the accent with your lead hand?
B: Well there is always that potential that, you know, that you want to accent with your right hand or your lead hand more than, more than your left…
N: Mmm
B: …cos it's more comfortable. But the key thing that is you just need to get used to playing with your left hand, and over time, lots of repetition, that will help you do so
N: Mmmhmm
B: So as we go through, so we've played the one and we've played the 'e', we need to accent the 'and', which will fall again on the right hand using the single stroke roll. So our third exercise is one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. And our fourth exercise would be where we accent the 'a' of the beat
N: Yes
B: Which will fall on your non-lead hand
N: Mmmhmm
B: So here we're getting lots of non-lead practise, which is one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. Now to get good at all of those exercises you're gonna have to repeat them a lot, you…
N: Yes
B: …know, much, much more than I've just demonstrated there
N: Mmmhmm
B: But of course we're short of time so you get those exercise going round and round and round and round and round them. Now what I'm hoping that you'd be able to get to by the end of this part is that the students understand that, okay so you can play those individually
N: Mmmhmm
B: We need to be able to play them one after the other. So here we go
N: (Laughs)
B: So this is….
N: You said it, you have to do it now…
B: I'm gonna…
N: …Brian
B: …have to do it now, so exercise five is where we play a bar of accents on the one
N: Yeah
B: Then a bar of accents on the 'e', and a bar of accents on the 'ands', and a bar of accents on the 'a'
N: Okay
B: Should just get this in before the break, here we go. One e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a
N: Brian, as ever, being a drummer your timing is impeccable
B: Thank you
N: Because it is now time for the break but join us back here for part two. See you soon
N: Hello, welcome back to part two, now before the break it was part one
B: It was
N: We had a lot to get through
B: Yes, a lot of material to get through and, you know, one of the things I wanna point out to the students out there, the viewers, is that the exercises that we run through would be a, you know, a series of weeks of work
N: Mmmhmm
B: So obviously, you know, I was playing a bar or so of the exercise but you would work with the Xtractor, you work with your teacher to play those exercises over and over increasingly improving the amount of control that you have over the accents, the height of the stick, the ghost notes, the tap strokes, getting those little finite motions together. And then actually it's a lifetime of study after that so, you know, to try and get that in with fifteen minutes
N: Yeah
B: Was quite tough going but, you know, they've gotta understand that there's a lot more work that you have to put into those exercises
N: Mmm it's not just fifteen minutes of your time
B: It isn't, no…
N: Yeah
B: …considerably more
N: And I happen to know there's a lot more to come, isn't there?
B: Yeah, well there's a big half to come now, so I just wanna recap quickly over what we're trying to achieve so that the students understand what we've got in the second half. We're looking at strengthening our ability to play the single stroke roll
N: Yes
B: We're looking at applying that around the kit to create more interesting fills. We're developing accents on both our hands so we're developing our non-lead, non-lead hand skills together with our right hand lead skills, or left hand if you're left-handed out there. And then putting it together, grooves and fills, to create that fluency that, you know, I've been hammering on about…
N: (Laughs)
B: …since we, since we started these lessons
N: Alright so we're gonna start with an exercise?
B: Yeah, I want to recap the exercise that we did at the end of part one. This time I'm going to play it with the Xtractor
N: Yes
B: So I'm gonna play it solidly in time, hopefully, and try and get those accents together, get the difference between the ghost notes, get the metronome going so if I miss the accent
N: Mmmhmm
B: I'm going to hear that I've gone wrong
N: Yes
B: Okay? So we're going to use it as a support
N: And again we will hear if you go wrong
B: Yes I look forward to that!
N: (Laughs)
B: Here it comes (Xtractor starts playing)
B: One, two, three, four, 'e', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'a', 'a', 'a', a one, two, three, four, 'e', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a'
N: I'm glad, I'm glad you gave us the one, 'e', 'and' and 'a's there as I was losing track
B: I just had to get my breath before I started counting them, but yeah that's a really difficult thing to do because these are heavily syncopated, which means off the beat. So being able to count, so you can position them correctly, it's very odd…
N: Mmm
B: …to begin with so you've gotta take them slow, do all of your counting. And quite often what I do is I just tap my heel as I'm going along so that I know where the one is, one e…
N: Yeah
B: …and a, two e and a, three e and a, four…
N: As I was…
B: …e and
N: …saying I could get it again when you came back, when you came full circle…
B: Great
N: …and you were hitting the one's, two's, three's and four's
B: Yes
N: That, they were kind of my waypoint
B: Yes, but of course what we're doing is we're keeping the music steady
N: Yeah
B: It's just that the accent is moving. So it has, it creates a lovely effect, I mean particularly once you start to put it with music, put it into your fills and move it around the kit
N: Mmmhmm
B: Which is where we move to now
N: Excellent
B: Phew! Exercise six
N: Yes
B: And what we're now going to do is look at putting the accents, those big, those big motions there, onto the toms, so then…
N: Oh right, we haven't really sort of used them before have we?
B: Well only in going round the kit in this, in this motion this way
N: Mmmhmm
B: Or on the acoustic kit here moving round the kit in that way. That's the only way we've playing fills so far
N: Yeah
B: So what we're now going to do is change to an L shape as I, I think I explained in part one, if my memory serves me correctly. And what we're going to do here, is we're going to put right hand accents
N: Mmmhmm
B: Which are on the one and the 'and'
N: Yes
B: Or the beat and the 'and' to be precise, on the floor tom
N: Yes
B: Or low tom as I should be referring to it as
N: Mmmhmm
B: And then we'll be putting the left hand accents on the 'e' and the 'a'. So what we will have is right hand accents down here
N: Mmmhmm
B: Left hand accents up here, and all the other business takes place here on the snare drum
N: Yeah, so it's effectively sort of superimposed over your drum kit as a big capital letter L
B: Absolutely, like so. Let me demonstrate each of those bars individually so we get the idea of the motion. And what we're going to do is try and keep these notes as quiet as possible on the snare drum, so these ghosted tap strokes, and then we're moving over to each of these drums to create an accent, lifting the stick up in a preparation motion…
N: Mmm
B: …to the, to get to the, to get to the necessary toms for the accents. So we'll start with playing on the beat, on the floor tom. So one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. Okay?
N: Mmmhmm
B: Then we're gonna play the 'e' on the hi-tom. So start with a quiet note and then move up here, so one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a
N: Yeah
B: After you've played the accent, one of the tricky things is if you play the accent try and come down low
N: So that's one sort of fluid movement coming down
B: One tries to
N: (Laughs)
B: Absolutely that's the idea
N: That's the aim
B: And then repeat, basically repeat the same process with the 'and' and the 'e', which I will just demonstrate now if I may. So one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. And then up to the hi-tom for the 'a', again
N: Yes
B: One e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a
N: I noticed there that the movement that you're doing when you're going over to play the accent on the toms
B: Right
N: With the right hand you're almost sort of doing, it's like an arc motion…
B: Yes
N: …as you go over, it's not kind of so quick that you're slamming your hand across…
B: No
N: …ready and waiting, you know it's one controlled movement
B: Yes I, well that is the intention, is to create this preparation so that if you're playing an accent as I said earlier, I don't want you to hit the drum hard…
N: Mmm
B: …or even for instance just flick it hard…
N: (Laughs)
B: …like that, cos that movement is out of time with the rest of the motion. So any movement that you make should be in time with, with the exercise so you're moving within sixteenth notes here so it's one e and a, two e and a, three so…
N: Mmm
B: …any motion should be fluid within the timing of the piece, the subdivision that you're playing in sixteenths in this particular example
N: Have you got any sort of hints and tips for the left hand, you know, cos you're coming up and you're almost, are you crossing your right hand there?
B: No, well hopefully not quite crossing. It does raise an interesting issue that as you come up to this hi-tom here, you would then find it difficult from this position to get over to this side of the kit
N: Mmm
B: That becomes a little tougher, so it makes sense that having the ability to develop your flow and fluency around the kit is why I'm starting with this L shape here
N: Mmm
B: And why I talked about playing on the beat with the right hand previously. It's to enable you to get the correct flow, the easiest flow, what's on this side
N: Mmm
B: So you can get to it. And it's another reason why we have the crash, a crash symbol here and a crash symbol there, cos there are occasions when you'll want, be wanting to play a crash on this side. So it's a question of having the kit open to you to play comfortably without having to cross over
N: Yeah
B: Where you can have minor stick disasters
N: (Laughs) I don't wanna know about any minor stick disasters
B: No, it's for the best really
N: Alright
B: So what I'd like to do now is we've, if you're okay with the technical side of that?
N: Mmmhmm
B: Is to look at putting those four exercises together into one which is…
N: Absolutely
B: …our, which is our exercise six I believe. In fact I'll use this file here, so we'll play this exercise six, we're now putting the accents on the toms
N: Alright
B: Okay? Let me run through it (Xtractor starts playing)
B: One, two, three, four, 'e', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'a', 'a', 'a', a one, two, three, four, 'e', 'e', 'e', 'e', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'and', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a' (Xtractor stops playing)
N: Breathtaking
B: Great stuff. So, you know, that's what we're looking to do. It's obviously quite a big gig this, you know
N: Mmm
B: Lot of simple information but, you know, a lot to put into practise. So what we now need to do, finally, is use those, those exercises now where we can play on the toms
N: Mmmhmm
B: Into creating, creating fills. So I'm gonna put a bars groove in front of each of those. So it'll be a bars groove
N: Yeah
B: One, two, three, four, bars groove, 'e', 'e'
N: Mmmhmm
B: Bars groove, 'and', bars groove 'a', and round and round
N: Same bars groove, different fill
B: Exactly, same bars fill, different fill each time, and then that's going to develop your ability to play more grooves, more fills…
N: Mmmmhmm
B: …develop the flow, the L shape, the fluency around the kit
N: Okay
B: And I'll play it along with the Xtractor here, so we can see if I can keep in time
N: And so for those following along with the Gigajam notes this is exercise seven that you're about to do (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Exercise seven, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one and, two and, three and, four and, one, two, three, four, one e and 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a' one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one…one, two, three, four, one and, two and, and, and, two, three, four, one, 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a' (Xtractor stops playing)
N: As ever, perfect timing there…
B: Thank you…
N: …Brian Greene
B: …Natalie
N: That was brilliant, well done
B: Thank you
N: That's it for today guys, that is the end of episode seven, but phrasing as a notion isn't over, it'll be appearing again in episode eight so join us again for that. See you soon