Today’s topic sort of takes us in a different direction, but it’s a logical next step after last week. Once you’ve gotten motivated by your favorite artists, bands, and musicians to work up your drumming skills…where should you start?

You’ve heard me say before that there are two sides to drumming: the musical side & the technical side. Really the technique has to come first in order to make music on the instrument, but simply by listening to music you can already be working up that "musical" part of your brain before you even start learning how to play the kit.

But as for conquering the “technical side”… Are there good method books out there that you should start with? Absolutely. By the way, before we even get into this, check out the recent video on the channel about how to read musical notation if you haven’t learned this before. I believe this is a crucial skill to gain, even if you consider...

A little over a year ago, I added an email topic idea to my list. It was called “get outside your own head and get inspired!” - all about hanging out with other musicians and receiving new ideas and inspiration from them.

I had that idea after I met up with two of the best musicians I know over coffee one morning. I was in the midst of working on a bunch of Non Glamorous Drummer content at that time, and I was feeling a bit musically bored. I needed some direction and some goals to set for the year, but I didn’t really know where to start or what to focus on.

At that coffee hang, the three of us nerded out on music and our favorite records, and we literally just sat there talking about music for an hour. I didn’t receive any particular enlightenment at all, but something about just being around the energy of other musicians helped to revitalize my motivation. I went home excited to practice, excited to record some new ideas, and excited to add new...

I had the opportunity a little over a year ago to attend a masterclass by one of my all-time favorite drummers. This masterclass wasn’t a clinic, though, where a bunch of folks gather in a music store to listen to their favorite fusion drummer shred for an hour. This was a true “masterclass,” where the objective was to actually just hang out and have a Q&A session.

Only 12 slots were open, so the group attending was kept small. This allowed for more of a “hangout” kind of vibe, where the masterclass was all about group discussion instead of watching a performance. The entire event lasted for 3 hours, and it took place in a recording studio.

For the first hour and a half, we all sat in a circle in the tracking room and just asked this drummer questions. We talked about the music industry, getting paid, working in studios, how to learn songs, and lots more. It was really fun being in a room with 11 other guys my age who shared my exact interests and...

I was playing a church gig years ago with a bass player I’d played with a bunch. He was one of those guys who was a lot of fun to play with, and he had a keen interest in my personal growth on the drums, skill-wise and career-wise. That day he happened to mention a drummer friend of his he’d like me to meet…

Now this drummer-friend wasn’t just any drummer. He was a monster-player who was currently touring with a major act, and who had toured with several nationally-renowned bands in the past few years. He had played on several records I listened to a bunch in high school, so I felt like I already knew him. The realization that I could meet him had the introvert inside of me very nervous. But of course, I couldn’t resist.

I was able to get in touch with this drummer, and we set up a time to just hang out and chat. It’s amazing the power of a mutual friend!

As we conversed and got to know each other, I got the feeling that this guy already...

I recently played a gig in the most “live” room I’ve ever played in. When I say live, I mean that the room is very loud, reverberant, and there’s nothing in it to absorb sound. The opposite of this would be playing in a closet where all the clothes make the room extremely dead. You get the picture.

The problem, though, wasn’t just that this room was very live. It was also very small. While I was setting up I placed my foot on my hihat stand to close the hats, and the hihat chick echoed right back to me off the back wall. I was also set up in a cube-shaped nook in the corner of this venue, so the drums sounded a little like they were in a bathroom. If you know anything about room acoustics, you know that a cube-shaped room is the absolute worst shape a room could be. Weird things happen to the low end, and the high end gets slapped around in annoying ways. Basically this setup was becoming the perfect storm of everything you...

I received this question recently, and I thought it would make for a good “email lesson.” However, you can let me know if you still have questions about anything, and I might make a video going deeper.

Miking the Kick

On just about every gig I play where I bring my full kit, I’m miking my kick drum. Unless I’m in a very small, intimate setting, I always want some extra low end beef from the kick.

I can think of one specific example where I didn’t mic the kick, and that was at a private dinner party event in a small space. We were playing lightly while folks had conversation over dinner, so it was important we stayed very much in the background. I think this is the only scenario where you don’t want that extra low end. Otherwise some extra “foundation” to the sound is nice.

I like to be super simple and place a Shure Beta 52 inside my kick, laying on a towel. This may have started because I was lazy, or maybe it was just years ago when...

In February of 2015 I was wrapping up my college career and enjoying a final semester of smooth sailing to the finish line. I had already performed my senior recital the previous fall, and I was just finishing up a few class credits in the spring. I also had the time and opportunity to take additional lessons outside of school, so I reached out to a respected drummer in town whom my percussion teacher recommended. He solved a big struggle I had at the time by giving me some very counter-intuitive advice.

Now I was playing a bunch in jazz band at this time, and I was really working at being a solid jazz drummer. At the same time, I was also playing at my church every Sunday and playing in a cover band as often as possible. Genre-wise, I was gaining a lot of versatility just from these three groups alone. I had a problem, however, in the jazz realm.

Our jazz band director was constantly hounding me for not having the right feel in my ride pattern. Straight-ahead swing is...

Here’s the big thing I’m alluding to in the title… the one thing you need to possess in order to succeed on the drums…

It’s curiosity.

What do I mean?

Think back to when you were a kid. (This has been a fun daydreaming exercise lately, seeing as how life seemed so much easier back then!) Remember when you had an interest in something. Maybe it was the drums… Maybe it was drawing… Maybe it was rock polishing… Maybe it was digging holes in the back yard. What was the driving force behind all of these activities?

Curiosity.

What does curiosity do? It drives you to try things, to experiment, and to explore. As a kid you were curious about everything. The whole world was new to you, and everything was an exciting adventure.

Think back to the first time you listened to a record you liked. I bet that was a huge adventure of an experience. Remember the first time you listened to music and were emotionally moved by it....

In light of last week’s email about my first week of music school, I thought I’d share the most valuable and practical skill that I took away from 4 years in a university music program.

Here’s the cool thing: You don’t have to go to music school to gain this skill.

The most difficult class I ever took was ear training. In this class we had to “sight sing” melodies (read the notes on the page and sing the melody correctly without accompaniment), listen to and identify chord types, scales, intervals, and more, and listen to melodies and chord progressions and write out the exact notation for what we were hearing. This musical “dictation” was the most difficult and dreaded portion of the class for everyone. The funny thing, too, about this kind of class was that there was no possible way for anyone to cheat. YOU had to be able to sight sing your melodies for the professor. YOU had to properly write out...

My wife and I were on a trip recently, and we had the pleasure of hanging out with and observing an expert blacksmith.

He was working on crafting these iron rods into a decorative “track” on which you could slide a barn door. He was spending most of his time working on hammering out the end of the rod to create an end piece that looked like a leaf. This required a lot of precise hammering, which meant he was constantly going back and forth between the fire and the anvil. In talking to him we learned all about melting point temperature and the methods of heating up the fire over the years. We learned about anvils and their importance in metal-craft, and we even talked about how an anvil is often used as a percussion instrument in orchestral music from time to time.

But I noticed something in particular that the blacksmith kept doing over and over that fascinated me.

Every time after he struck the iron rod he was crafting, he’d let his mallet bounce off onto the...