5 years ago I ran out of cash in New York City and almost didn’t make it back. The funny thing was…this was on my honeymoon.

My wife and I decided to do somewhat of an East Coast road trip for a week after we got married, and our tightly budgeted trip included a day trip to NYC from Washington DC. I’d never been to New York, and now was the perfect time to finally make it there - even if it was just for an afternoon. I’ve always been really excited to go to a place I haven’t been to, and this was no exception. 

Now if you do the math on those drive times, you’ll find that we were easily going to spend more than 8 hours driving that day. I had carefully scheduled out our time in the city, planning every detail of what we’d see and do and when we’d do it. We’d get to the “Top of the Rock,” stroll Central Park, see the new One World Trade Center, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, stroll the High Line…literally do...

We’re gearing up for Christmas here at the Clark household, and we're super excited for our 5-month-old daughter's first Christmas! :)

If you’re blessed this Christmas with cash gifts you’d like to use on quality gear investments, I’ll give you some good ideas today.

Whether you’re new to the drums or a few decades into the instrument, make sure you own these 7 important tools for success. Of course, this is isn’t an exhaustive list because I could just as easily send you another email next week with 7 more things. But these are the most essential, most important physical items that will contribute most directly to your personal growth on the drums. Here we go!

[1] Metronome

Seems pretty obvious. However, plenty of players fail to regularly practice with a metronome either because they’re lazy (I’ve been guilty too!) - or they feel it might damage their “natural, organic feel” on the drums. The latter is false, by the way,...

Back in February I was on a gig that I was really excited about. This was basically a weekend event gig where we played a few different sessions throughout the weekend, pulling from a master setlist of 10-15 songs. Everything about this gig was perfect, and I knew everything was going to be great. The bandleader was a good friend I loved, and I was super excited about the keyboard player who would be joining us. He was one of those guys who just makes any group sound and groove better. That’s a rare thing with keys players, and this guy’s ability was definitely something to be excited about. This was shaping up to be a great gig, then something happened.

I got sick.

Now this was weeks before the COVID lockdowns began, so this took place in the “olden days” when we were still allowed to show up to work sick. ;) It’s interesting to think how this kind of thing will be forever different now! Anyways, I came down with a bad cold just two days before this...

Will reading music make you a better player? Is your playing ability suffering right now because you can’t read music?

Maybe you’ve taken the time to learn, and you’ve been left wondering what all the fuss is about. It’s not like your groove and pocket became better after learning to read. So do we drummers really need to learn to read music? Is this important? Let’s unpack this a little.

Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Chad Smith, and Buddy Rich are just a few famous players who never took lessons - and who most likely never read a musical note. Legend has it Buddy Rich would listen to the band play the tune once, then he’d jump on the kit and play it. No chart, no notation. Each of these drummers were (and are) a force of compelling groove and musicality, and their inability to read sheet music or drum charts didn’t seem to hold them back in any way. What they may have lacked in the book-learning department they made up for with ear...

During several college summers and falls, I worked at a local high school with the marching band. I generally worked with the front ensemble or “pit,” which consisted of all the mallet instruments, synthesizers, and other auxiliary percussion. This was a lot of fun, and a lot of it was right up my alley as a percussion performance major in college. I had never played in marching band myself, but I knew and understood the instruments the kids were playing.

To be honest, though, I always felt a little bit like a fraud in this job. This was classic “imposter syndrome,” where you feel like you don’t really know what you’re doing and you’re going to be “found out” at any moment. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of that cliff the entire time I worked this school job. The kids were great, the instructors were great, and the band director was a great guy to work for. But I always felt like I wasn’t really cut out for doing...

I recently heard a gig horror story involving a drummer who failed at his job in more ways than one. The sad thing is, he may not have realized how badly he was failing and wreaking havoc on the band.

Now my point today actually isn’t to share with you all the details of how this guy failed miserably. It’s really to give you some preface to today’s video, which highlights the “5 Toxic Drummer Habits You MUST Avoid.”

This particular drummer actually excelled at all the usual “drummer skills” that come to mind, like solid timekeeping, appropriate playing (playing for the song), arriving on time prepared, and in general “sounding good” on his instrument.

So what went wrong?

The drummer on this gig had an ego problem, and his lack of respect for the bandleader and overall arrogance led to a whole host of issues that good timekeeping and proper playing couldn’t solve. He failed to have the vocalist's best interest in mind,...

I remember playing a church rehearsal when I was in college where I was struggling to remember what was coming next in the song. I had a chord chart next to me with some notes I’d scribbled, but they weren’t doing me much good. I felt clueless as to what to play at the end of each song section, because I wasn’t really sure what kind of fill should happen. Sometimes I wasn't actually 100% sure what was coming next, so that made it pretty tough to know whether to play a fill. Everything felt like a stressful mess, and I was honestly pretty lost. I was faking my way through the song, but I probably sounded anything but professional.

I remember that particular week when I was in school, and I was so busy that I literally was scrambling to listen to the songs for Sunday in the car on the way to the rehearsal. My phone wouldn’t plug into the radio of my 1997 Honda Accord, so I had it sitting in the cupholder blasting the songs loudly enough to hear while driving. I...

Happy Friday! I’ve dubbed this weekend a "bye-week" on the channel. (Maybe some of you astute viewers happened to notice that a video didn’t go up today!). So instead I’d like to shoot you a sneak peak of an upcoming lesson in the works.

I’ve been getting questions about drum stool height... How do you know what your ideal stool height is? How does this factor into your height, playing style, and foot technique? Let’s dig into this. (Stay tuned to the channel, because the full video on this will be up soon.)

I’m just under 6’4” tall. For you metric folks, that’s roughly 193cm. I measured both drum thrones that I use often and found both to be right at 22” (56cm). If we do the math here, that gives us a 3.45 to 1 ratio - or 29%. My throne height is 29% of my physical height. So take that for what it’s worth, and use this as a starting point if you’d like. But there are other factors to...

I sat on the outside deck of a coffee shop, overlooking the Chattahoochee river near Atlanta on a perfect day in June. I was sipping probably the best frappuccino I’d ever had, and my girlfriend (now wife!) sat across from me. This was one of our favorite date spots when we were in college, and this summer afternoon was the perfect moment to drink coffee to the sounds of a river. But then I received a text that instantly reversed the carefree mood.

My wife and I were both in music school together, and our university was launching a marching band the coming fall. I had opted to stay out of marching band for a few reasons: Number one, it was a huge time commitment on weekends, and I was already a gigging drumset player at the time. I didn’t want to sacrifice my paying drumset gigs to go play in marching band. Number two, I’d never even been in marching band before. Never in high school, and I literally had zero interest. Number three, I was entering my junior year of...

The envelope sat on the kitchen table, staring up at me. This was it. This moment would decide my future. What was about to take place would set into motion the course of the rest of my life… what friends I’d have, what kind of music career I’d have, where I’d live…who I’d marry. All of this would be determined by one of two words: …pleased… or …regret… Which would it be?

Hundreds of emotions coursed through my unemotional persona on this spring afternoon my senior year of high school. Would my dream college accept me? Will plan A work? I had worked so hard for this. I had practiced like crazy all through my senior year, preparing for a music school audition I honestly had no business attempting. I had never played percussion before, yet I had signed up for a percussion audition. I had never played jazz drumset before, yet I auditioned for the drumset program. My high school drum teacher had put me through a crash...