Natalie: Hi there, welcome to Gigajam, the essential drum skills course. Episode eight we're on now
Brian: Yes
N: I'm Natalie Barrass, you are
B: Brian Greene
N: Good I was forgetting that name…
B: (Laughs)
N: …for a while there
B: Thank you
N: Back on track
B: No probs
N: This is a continuation, isn't it, pretty much from lesson seven?
B: Yes lesson seven introduced phrasing, and now its phrasing part two, the return of phrasing
N: (Laughs) You need to do the movie trailer voice
B: You do really yes, but we'll move on from that quickly
N: Yes
B: So again sort of learning outcomes is pretty much the same as, as what we experienced in part one in lesson seven
N: Mmmhmm
B: But we're gonna be looking at strengthening our sixteenth notes, our single stroke rolls, through the use of phrasing, which will increase our ability to play with our non-lead hand
N: Mmmhmm
B: Develop more fluency around the kit, or increase fluency around the kit, and create even more, even more…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …interesting fills than we did in lesson seven
N: More interestinger
B: Correct
N: Essentially, I mean it's the same kind of things that we were talking about in lesson seven, we're just taking it that step further, a little bit more involved
B: It's a continuation, absolutely. So what we're gonna start off with by doing is, as we did in lesson seven, is kind of jumping to the final result
N: (Laughs)
B: At the beginning so you get some idea of what it is that we're aiming to do
N: Mmmhmm
B: Okay? So we're trying to develop a creative use of the accenting structure that we've developed with the right hand playing the accents on the one and the 'and', and the left hand playing the accents on the 'e' and the 'a', and using the floor tom and the high tom introducing that and that L shape which you may remember from lesson seven
N: I do indeed remember the L shape, yes
B: Marvellous, so we're gonna be, you know, expanding that into our playing. What I'd like to do is just demonstrate, pretty much, our learning outcome that we're going to try and achieve…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …at the beginning of the lesson to hopefully sort of wet the appetite of our viewers
N: Indeed Brian?
B: Yes
N: Do that demo
B: I will do that demo, so here it comes (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Three, four. Okay, so (Xtractor stops playing)
N: Indeed, lots going on there
B: Lots and lots going on, and as the Xtractor showed there the whole point of these exercises is to play them round and round and round and round. Get good, get comfortable…
N: Yeah
B: …repeat portions of the exercise which perhaps aren't moving so fluently. But what we're, what we're looking at there is being able to take the accents, structures that we've developed and then be able to mix them up. Again it's a bit like taking the eighth notes and sixteenth notes and quarter notes as we did…
N: Mmm
B: …in lesson four, and mix them up to create new patterns. What we're doing here is taking the accents and instead of having the same accent throughout the bar, we're mixing the accents up to create more interesting phrases. Now phrasings or, sorry phrases or phrasing, musical phrases comes from where, you know, in the music as you, as you heard there you know sort of bah, bah pe te, bah pe te, baaaah daaah
N: The human beat box!
B: Lovely singing huh. That phrase, almost musical in that particular instance
N: No it was
B: The way we play it on the drums is to put a roll in the middle of it and highlight the notes as they come along so it's dah, dah, dah, daaaah dah. And we're filling the gaps, so with those little ghost notes that we talked about….
N: Yeah
B: …that we were playing with the tap strokes, so we're filling it
N: So is phrasing an extended fill, or is that the wrong way to look at it?
B: Well no it's, it's when we play phrases on the drums we're actually creating musical fills. They are fills but they're musical and to, even at this early stage, you know in grade one we're still in grade one, we're trying to say to the drummers be musical, listen to the way phrases take place in your music and listen to the musicality of it and how drummers phrase so there is, you're not just playing fills, you're not just hitting quarter notes and eighth notes in a sort of abstract pattern around the kit
N: Mmmhmm
B: You're actually creating musical, musical phrases in your fills. So I think, I think you know most drummers will find these a little bit more interesting musically it's moving in a direction that I'm interested in, in helping drummers progress in…
N: Yeah
B: …so they're not just playing techniques or what are called chops, you know…
N: Mmm
B: …lots of, you know, fast motions, they're actually playing in a musical way, creating musical phrases. That's the essence of what we're trying to do
N: I like it
B: Okay, so the concept here is creating a phrase and to do that what we have to do is actually understand how a phrase is constructed, and to do that I'd like to use my notes if I may?
N: I will let you…
B: You are…
N: ….use those notes
B: …extraordinarily kind
N: (Laughs)
B: So what we're going to do here is we're going to build a phrase step by step. So in exercise one what we have to do firstly is have a look at the phrase itself and understand the position of the accents. Well that was quite straightforward in lesson seven because we only had one type of accent in each bar
N: Mmmhmm
B: In this exercise, or in the other exercises that are going to follow on in the lesson in part two, we're going to have a series of accents in different places. Let's look at them. So this is the phrase that I played and it's written on the snare drum
N: Okay, so the accents are the sort of upside down V that's above the notes there
B: Yes this is the kind of roof tops as they're called, roof top accents here
N: Yeah
B: So we've got an accent on beat one, and then we've got a second accent on the 'and' of one
N: Mmmhmm
B: Then we've got a third accent on the 'and' of two
N: Yeah
B: A fourth accent on the 'e' of three, and finally we have an accent on the 'and' of four
N: Mmmhmm
B: So we now know the position of the accents one, and, two and, three e and a, four and. So that's the phrase that we're creating, that's how we play that
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now there's a very interesting point that we need to get in here, is that actually there's a rule we can now follow very carefully. What we need to understand is the sticking, you know we talked about the order of the sticks
N: Yeah
B: Okay? So if we go down to our, our example below, I want to talk about the accenting sticking for a right-handed drummer. Now remember we're using a single stroke roll so right, left, right, left all the way through
N: Mmmhmm
B: So the concept is here, if we're using single stroke rolls what will happen is your accents will fall under a pre-determined hand, if you, if you play the pattern
N: Okay so this is a handy rule to take note of
B: Absolutely
N: Alright
B: So the concept being is, here we've got the accents on the one and the 'and', and the 'and' and the 'e' and the 'and'
N: Mmmhmm
B: When we look at them you'll see that the one and the 'ands' fall underneath the right hand
N: Yes
B: And then the 'e' falls on the left hand
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now we can recall that from when we were going through those exercises in lesson seven
N: Mmmhmm
B: Yeah? So one e and a, two e and a, falling on that hand
N: I mean you're always starting, yeah, if you're a right-handed player you're always leading with your right
B: Precisely
N: So the first one is always gonna be, yeah
B: Yeah
N: I understand
B: So when you get on to your 'e's' and your 'a's' they're always going to be on your left hand
N: Yes
B: One e, and then on the 'a' one e and a. So it's a rule, what will happen then is this will, this will bleed into the way that you read so when you see notes you'll see which hand, you'll actually understand, your hands will actually read the notes…
N: Mmm
B: …before you read the notes because they become familiar with that phrasing pattern. Okay, so what we should, what we should do is just demonstrate that quickly, and play along to the exercise. Use the Xtractor
N: Mmmhmm
B: I'll play this on the, the snare drum, and we'll play it quite slowly so that we can follow the patterns so that you can see the changing of the hands
N: Yeah
B: Now being able to play different accents within the currency of only one bar means that you have to be extremely focused, extremely focused indeed on making sure that you're moving fluently between them
N: Like a Jedi warrior
B: More like a, you know, a focused professional drummer is what I was thinking of
N: Right
B: But Jedi warrior, that works for many people
N: (Laughs)
B: But the whole idea is that you're changing between your hands, you have to get that control, control of the kit together. So okay I've loaded the file up, I'm going to slow the tempo down here, nice and slowly. So..…
N: Sixty?
B: Well I'm gonna just go a little under that, I'm gonna go to fifty-five just so that I can keep my breath and count clearly…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …here it comes (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Two and a, three e…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…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…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…and a, three e and a, four e and a. Okay? So that's enough for me (Xtractor stops playing)
N: (Laughs)
B: So the whole idea there is that you have to conc…you've got different accents, different notes coming at you quite quickly…
N: Yeah
B: …so, you know, slowing the exercise down is very important so you get, understand when to prepare your, your hands for the notes. But you can see we're creating a phrase now
N: No absolutely
B: Now we did the same thing in lesson seven when we were building those phrases, I know we were only playing one accent in a particular bar, but now we're playing a, multiple accents within a bar. We started on the snare drum to get used to the pattern, then the next thing to do will be to look to move those accents onto the toms. And you can remember where we moved the right accent can't you?
N: Yeah to the low tom
B: And the left hand accent?
N: High tom
B: Brilliant! Okay? So what I'd like to do now is just move on to our second exercise so we're developing movement and fluency
N: Mmmhmm
B: And we're now going to play the same pattern, but this time put the 'one's' and the 'and's' on the beats and on the 'and's' over onto the right, onto the floor tom…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …on our right-hand side. And then we're going to play the 'e's' and the 'a's' on our left-hand side
N: Okay
B: Up on the high tom. Here it comes (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Three, four, one…and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one…and…and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a…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. Make sense? (Xtractor stops playing)
N: You know what? It makes perfect sense, everything makes perfect sense to me. There's gonna be more perfect sensical things coming up in part two…
B: Excellent
N: …join us then
N: Hiya, welcome back to Gigajam. This is the essential drum skills course, episode eight, part two phrasing
B: Correct
N: And talking of phrasing, lets re-phrase what went on in part one
B: Absolutely
N: (Laughs)
B: So what we were doing there was moving on from lesson seven we were developing the accents so that we could create more interesting fills…
N: Mmm
B: …and in fact not just fills but musical phrases, so that was the essence. So what we're doing here in this lesson, lesson eight as you said
N: Indeed
B: Is we are developing our ability to play accents with both hands, but to mix them within a bar and over numbers of bars. So lots of different accents to create these musical phrases
N: I like the sound of it all
B: Great, now you probably remember that in part one we looked at how you build up to create a phrase. So firstly we looked at a snare drum pattern, we looked at the position of the accents
N: Mmmhmm
B: Then we decided that with the position of the accents that actually gives you a unique way of playing those accents with the beat and the 'and' always played with the right hand
N: Yeah
B: And 'e's' and 'a's' always played with the left hand
N: That's a simple rule but I mean, probably something that some drummers may overlook for weeks and weeks, and months and months and then it just clicks
B: If you know about it you can apply it so, you know, it, one of the reasons why we've introduced it at this relatively early stage, I mean still at grade one and we're playing musical phrases so very important skill for the drummer. So as always we've now have created a musical phrase
N: Mmmhmm
B: Drumming in general as I've said before, I mean very generally, is made up of grooves
N: Yes
B: And our fills. So with grooves and our phrases in this, okay, so our grooves and our interesting phrases
N: I.e. the fills
B: Correct, so what we're going to do now is actually take the phrase that we've learnt, and the fill that we've learnt and apply it with the groove so that we can move fluently between grooves and phrases
N: Mmmhmm
B: To incorporate that into our playing. Now at the end of part, part one of lesson eight we looked at moving the accents onto the floor tom and up to the high tom with our right hand and our left hand. So we're going to do exactly the same thing but we're going to try and play the phrase that we looked at at the beginning of the lesson, by putting a groove in front of it and putting the phrase afterwards. So what I'd like to do first is have a look at the video of the clip of the exercise that we're going to play
N: No problemo
B: Which is exercise three here
N: Are you just reminding yourself what you're supposed to be doing?
B: Absolutely
N: What every good student should do
B: Correct. Here we go, so here's the groove (Video starts playing)
B: Onto the low tom, up to the high tom, and then back to the groove again..
N: Mmmhmm
B: …so, you know, don't forget the importance of the groove… (Video stops playing)
B: …in all of this to make sure that you've got the necessary fluency, the groove and the fill, and then back to the groove…
N: Mmm
B: …and so on. Okay, great, so having had a look at the, at the exercise itself and how it should be played
N: Mmmhmm
B: What I'd like to do now is build up that ability to move between the groove and the phrase by playing along with the Xtractor as usual. And we're gonna focus on the fluency and to do that I'm going to slow the tempo of the exercise down. I'm going to use the tabletop drum kit here
N: Right
B: So that we can perhaps record into the computer to see how accurate my performance is and perhaps, you know, might make a deliberate mistake here and there
N: (Laughs)
B: And see how that looks on our, on our analysis when it comes up
N: Brian is that, is that a deliberate mistake?
B: Well can we wait and see what happens?
N: Fine
B: (Laughs) Okay so here we go, let's drop the tempo down, nice comfortable sixty beats per minute
N: Yeah
B: Okay, let's play the exercise, four bar count, play along with the file (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Three, four, one, two, three and, four, one and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one, two and, three and, four and, one and a, two e and a….e and a, four e and a, one and, two and, three and, four and…and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one and, two and , three and, four and, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a. One more time through I think
N: Okay…
B: Three and
N: …don't make any mistakes now
B: Okay. Two e and a, three e and…
N: One
B: …a, four…
N: Two
B: …e and…
N: Three
B: …a
N: Four
B: Try'na put me off
N: (Laughs)
B: It's so… (Laughs)
B: …unkind. Okay, so we've recorded the performance in there, let's see what we, what comes up on the screen. But basically that was okay and one of the things that I was really trying to demonstrate here is that the actual movements and the motions are as relevant here
N: Yeah
B: As they are on this kit, and in fact our Rowland electronic kit there. So whatever you're playing on, whether it, even maybe the mouse mat that I described in one of our earlier lessons where you've drawn the drums on or…
N: Yes
B: …you were talking about turning tin pots upside down. You know the same…
N: Cheap way to do it
B: …the same movements apply
N: Mmmhmm
B: So you know if you haven't got loads of really, really nice gear you can still practise
N: Does it matter that it's obviously I mean to look at it is smaller?
B: Yeah well, it does to some extent but not, not significantly. As I say the movements are still the same motions…
N: Yeah
B: …okay you may have to make larger motions on the kit because you've got a greater distance between the drums. But the actual ability to move from this to this is not really a big issue
N: The skill and the sort of technique is what, is the same
B: Yes it is the same
N: Okay
B: And that's what we're looking at here is it, so whatever you're playing on, what I'm basically trying to say is whatever you're playing on it's the same skill. You're not changing the skill, the innate skill remains the same
N: Mmmhmm
B: Okay, so, so let's just take that to full screen there, so okay couple of interesting things that come out firstly
N: Mmmhmm
B: Fifty-five point four seven percent
N: Well percentage is out of a hundred isn't it?
B: Yes, okay
N: (Laughs)
B: So…
N: But did you only do half the exercise?
B: I didn't get all the way through the exercise so it's only scored me out of what I've played
N: It's a good excuse
B: However let's have a look at what's come up here. Firstly, it's picked up the high hat pedal being depressed by me
N: Ah okay
B: Before the exercise started, so it's a good idea, you know, to get in position, have the high hat down before you start playing. Okay, the first bar the timing here with the greens and the yellows is okay timing but not perfect, so
N: Mmm
B: You can see how sometimes to get into an exercise it takes a while to settle. That's my excuse
N: (Laughs) And you're sticking to it
B: And I'm gonna stick by it. So most of this first bar of phrasing was pretty good as we can see by all the black notes here
N: Yeah
B: But one vaguely astray note here, this green…
N: And what was wrong with the green note?
B: Well the green note there it's the correct note
N: Mmmhmm
B: It's very close to where it should have been in terms of timing, but looking at the screen it looks as if it's a little late
N: Ah right
B: Just a miniscule late, green is good so it's, it's probably imperceptibly late
N: To the human ear
B: To the human ear
N: But not to the computer ear
B: No the computer doesn't let you get away with anything, in fact the computer's even noticed here in bar one that I should of played three and, but I only played three
N: Right
B: So I missed a note out there, or the bass drum pedal didn't pick it up. I'll…
N: Mmm
B: …I'll work on the latter principle…
N: (Laughs)
B: …for the moment. So bar five as we can see here, let me point to bar five, yeah that's pretty much on the nail but it looks like I made a real ham fist
N: Mmm
B: Of getting out of that phrase there
N: You've got extra notes in there
B: Well in fact actually yes these notes are late, this note here wasn't played so missed a note and it's, looks like I played it at the beginning of the next bar
N: Mmm, so indeed that fifty-five percent might have been out of a hundred…
B: Well…
N: …mightn't it?
B: …it could well have been by this…
N: Mmm
B: …particular disappointing performance. But it goes to show when you get the, when the notes aren't quite in the right place if you hit the notes incorrectly then it's going to show on here. You can go back, listen to the file…
N: Mmm
B: …and see how you're getting on. Just to finish off on here most of these notes are in the right place
N: Mmmhmm
B: Little bit of slack timing here just going into the, into the goods, slightly yellow I've, early on the bass drum here in bar ten
N: Yeah, I mean by using this you're perfecting yourself, you're making it spot on aren't you?
B: Yeah its detailed analysis isn't it? So you can be really harsh on your performance and it, the idea is not to be harsh in the sense of to judge yourself harshly, but if you are actually looking and hearing and trying to establish 'look where am I going wrong? Why doesn't…
N: Mmm
B: …this feel quite right? Why is my timing not right? How can I improve my flow and my fluency in the playing?' Then you are going to be wanting more information, and this is a handy feedback
N: Yeah
B: And of course what you should do is definitely listen back to the file, so if I just get the Analyser out the way a second, let's listen to the file quickly. I'm going to mute the perfect performance, and listen to the slightly less than perfect performance that was mine (Xtractor starts playing)
N: (Laughs)
B: And see if you can notice those errors that I made
N: Oh I will do
B: There's the high hat. Yeah, definitely late coming in there. Slightly late on that note, that green note there. Whoa
N: Something there
B: Horribly wrong there, caught something out
N: Late
B: Bit late. Yeah? So… (Xtractor stops playing)
B: …the, you know, the analysis is reinforcing exactly what goes in there. So if you're playing a little bit sloppily
N: Yeah
B: It's gonna pick it up. You can hear it back, you can see where your mistakes are being made
N: Yeah always the way you improve is by figuring out where you've gone wrong, so if you don't know where you've gone wrong then there's no way of getting better
B: Well exactly that's why we've taken time over, over this particular exercise to look at the analysis side of what we're doing here. To feed back to ourselves the performance and how we're developing, but you'd look to go again and say 'right okay I need to tighten that up, I need to make sure I'm playing my beats in the right place'. The technique is fundamentally there, it's all happening, let's improve that, let's make it better. Let's tighten the timing up, get the flow between the grooves and the fills and ensure that we're actually making those transitions comfortably
N: Mmmhmm
B: Okay so what we've done is we've actually gone through the building up process of creating more interesting fills in this lesson
N: Okay what if we wanna practise those?
B: Well if you wanna practise it of course with the lesson notes and the, the patterns and the exercises, go through those, repeat them over and over. But we've, we've looked at the building blocks
N: Mmm
B: So this approach that we've taken, this step-by-step approach applies to all cre…the creation of all phrases. So the lesson, the Gigajam lesson has more exercises for you to go through
N: Mmm
B: And hopefully what we've managed to do today is explain the process of creating more interesting phrases, mixing them up and turning them into, into musical fills
N: Brian I couldn't put it better myself
B: Glad to hear that
N: (Laughs) Alright unfortunately that's all we've got time for…
B: Okay
N: …today, that is the end of episode eight. Join us again very soon, for episode nine. I'll be here and so will Brian