To each their own, right? I mean you can do what ever you want to your drum kit. Here’s the thing, though. There’s a lot of drummers out there, young ones in particular, that are putting the kit before the horse, so to speak. There’s no question that drums are the coolest and most fun instrument on the planet. No. Question. Have you ever seen a three day ‘keyboard fest’, or ‘guitar fest’? Nope. Could you imagine sitting through three days of ‘meeedly meeedly meeedly waaaaaahr waaaaaahr waaaaaaaaaaaahr’?!?! Well, maybe if you’re a guitarist. But there are just as many non drummers at a drum festival than there are drummers. Why? ‘Cuz they’re fun. Exciting. And very cool to look at! Younger drummers get this. So when they get their first kit, it often starts as a 5pce, then comes the double pedal or second bass drum. Then a couple more toms. Next thing you know, a year later, that 5pce kit turned into a massive percussive monstrosity with about twelve drums and fourteen cymbals on it. Now again, to each their own. But there’s a potential problem with this.

Many young drummers get distracted by their drums. And as a result, it severely slows down the vocabulary building process. There’s too much emphasis placed on the amount of drums in front of them instead of the language they need to learn to hit them. So when the time comes to improvise, it just turns into a big ol’ ramblefest of random hitting and there’s no actual music being made.

Now there’s nothing wrong with big kits. Mike Mangini, Mike Portnoy, Virgil Donati, Thomas Lang, Simon Phillips, these guys all have pretty big kits, but they also have a lifetime of technique and a very extensive vocabulary to be able to speak on them so that they can entertain us. The best thing to do, obviously, is start small and work your way up if a big kit is the end goal, but I understand that it’s not the most fun route when you’re 13 with a room full of Joey Jordison posters on your bedroom wall. I guess the actual potential problem is not starting there; it’s starting there and never coming out of it. The amount of drums in front of you will not make you a better drummer. Faster and louder, maybe. But not better.

The Process of Elimination

One of the best ways to practise your improvisational skills and build your vocabulary is to start eliminating pieces during that time in your practise session. Or just force yourself to not hit them. Start with using just your kick, snare and hats and see what you can say on them. There was a point where I’ve gone weeks without hitting anything else on my kit. Remember, the vocabulary is more important than the drums themselves. Once you get to the point where you can effectively improvise over those three pieces, introduce a fourth. The floor tom, for instance. Then play on the four pieces and just stay on those for a while. The long term benefit of doing this is that you’re forcing yourself to think more about the rhythms instead of the drums and this, in turn, with strengthen your ability to improvise on the kit. Then once you start adding more pieces onto your kit, it’s now for ‘colour’. Each new piece that you add is now a ‘musical option’ instead of just another drum or another cymbal. And if you don’t need it, you won’t add it. Just food for thought. Drums are fun. But they’re even MORE fun…when you know what you’re doin!

Pembroke, ON. Best Western Hotel. 11:22pm

One of my favourite things to do after a show while Im on the road is go back to the hotel room and chill out! Not that my job is so incredibly taxing that I just need to collapse on a bed afterwards, but some days just take a little out of you and after the show, you just want to get to your room, grab a cold Pepsi and decompress. For me, that involves writing. Or blogging, or whatever you wanna call it.

Tonight’s gig at the Festival Hall in Pembroke with The Stellas was another great one. Sold out show. Great audience. There are two shows left for me on the Ontario leg of this tour and like tonight, I’ll be playing a different kit other than my own. I’m completely in love with my Yamaha PHX kit. You’ve seen it; 10, 12, 16, 22 with a sweet ass Sabian cymbal treatment. But as an opening act, sometimes you need to adjust and be flexible to help things run smoothly or accommodate allotted budgets. We’re on the road with Terri Clark at the moment. I’ve had my PHX with me for the first few shows on the Ontario leg but these last three, I was asked to use Terri’s drummer’s kit. Jason Cheek is his name. A Nashville’ian. Great drummer. Great guy. You can come across some real douchebags and difficult musicians on occasion but Jason is a hell of a nice guy. “Help yourself to whatever you need.” Class act. Well, as much as I don’t like to play other people’s gear, that comes with the job. At least in the beginning stages of a brand new artist and still a supporting act, or during the summer festival season dealing with backline kits. In this case the kit I was offered was no slouch. Jason’s kit just happened to be a gorgeous Ludwig Classic Maple kit. 12, 16, 22. I did, however, use my own snare. This kit sounded awesome!…But it wasn’t ‘home’. I much prefer a 5pce. This was a 4. I generally have more cymbals on my kit, along with a splash or two for colour. This one had only three. Two crashes and a ride. Simple. But did this affect my performance?!….Well yea. It did. But not in a bad way. Mainly because I didn’t, and couldn’t let it. There’s a job to do.

 Your Voice is More Important Than the Instrument

By that, I simply mean that you should be able to say what you need to say regardless of how many drums are in front of you, or what sizes are in front of you. It doesn’t matter. What matters is your performance. Don’t let what’s in front of you hamper your performance in any way. Make sure that you have a large enough vocabulary so that you can reinterpret what you would normally say on your own kit. With less drums in front of you, you’ll have to reconfigure some of your fills to make them happen, or get creative with cymbal work to compensate for the lack of splashes that you’re normally used to. But you’re a drummer. Adjust and make it work, then thank the other drummer for letting you use his gear, even if it’s completely ghetto styles. Trust me. That will do a WHOLE lot more for your reputation than complaining because there’s no double kick or one less floor tom than you’re used to. The drums are merely just a vessel for your voice. Don’t let the type of drums or the number of drums diminish the effectiveness of your performance. Re-translate and crush it!

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned having played on stages of all sizes over the years from small clubs to hockey arenas, is that your environment should never affect your technique. When we play in smaller, more confined environments, it feels more natural to lay back, relax and play comfortably, getting out all of the rolls, ghost notes and cymbal dynamics that we need to because we’re not hitting our drums as aggressively. It’s just a more relaxed atmosphere in a smaller space. The drums aren’t mic’d and the closest audience member is no more than six or seven feet from the stage. So we can get all of our cool and tasty licks out and KNOW that the audience will hear all of them along with all of the little notes in between.

But our mentality can change once we get in a much larger space. I know it used to for me! Once we get onto a much larger stage with more space, bigger PA, big wedge monitors everywhere; things can change. Our drumming can become less refined and a little more aggressive, barbaric even! I don’t know about y’all but this was my case. I shied away from playing the little technical stuff, almost subconsciously because I thought I had to hit harder just to be heard. This mentality SERIOUSLY affected my playing. I sounded much more ‘stiff’ and ‘choppy’ on the larger stages, especially when the floor monitor beside the kit was cranked! I’d try to play rolls and ghost notes and all that technical stuff and none of it sounded good, if I could actually hear it at all. I was all of a sudden pummeling my cymbals, thankfully having not broken any of them, but at the same time really surprised that I didn’t! I realized that my needless overcompensation was only hurting my performance.

Let the PA do the work!

Great advice, eh? I mean ain’t that what it’s there for? It took me a while to get there but once I did, everything was right with the world again! I had to realize that regardless of what it sounded like behind the kit – that’s not what the audience was hearing. There was no need for me to have to play any different than I do when I’m practising in my drum room at home. Seriously. I’m a bit of a nerd so I actually got myself a bracelet made to remind me of this whenever I hit the stage. I had the initials ‘R&TYOS’ engraved on it. Nothing special. It was a simple stainless steel bracelet that cost me about $40. The initials stood for ‘Relax and Trust Your Own Strength’. Whenever I started to get excited on the kit, the bracelet would remind me to chill and just play. Don’t worry about how hard you’re hitting. PA systems are LOUD, man. And they’re going to pick up everything you do. So NEVER compromise your technique. If you’re not loud enough for the audience, let the SOUND GUY do his job and turn you up. Because in a large stage setting, whether indoors or outdoors, your drums are only as loud as the PA system that’s pushing them. You physically cracking your snare or your cymbals harder won’t do ANYTHING for the volume level hitting the audience. So relax. Play. And enjoy the performance.

Most serious improvements don’t happen overnight. MOST don’t. But some do! I consider myself a drum geek. to the 10th degree. I’d always be thinking of licks, writing them down, tapping them out, etc. My iPhone at one point was full of little notes and LLRRLR patterns and all kinds of stuff that goes through my head, usually when I’m supposed to be concentrating on something else. Some things I discover by accident. But some things I pick up by observing. And the odd gem, I just pick up. Don’t know where it came from. I just pick it up. And those things are sometimes the most valuable!

Transform Your Playing Overnight!

One of the most valuable things that I’ve picked up has literally transformed my drumming overnight. I’ve always considered myself a strong player. But something changed when I applied this theory. The reason why this can happen for YOU overnight is because it’s not a physical exercise. It’s mental. All you have to do is think about something; switch gears on your thinking to improve a physical action. This ‘thing’ I’m talking about…is the idea of ‘playing from the foot‘. I’ll explain.

Most drummers, while playing, place the majority of the emphasis on the hands while the feet just participate in what’s happening. This sort of makes sense as we’re always working on the hands. Tapping on the dining room table, working the practice pad, etc. So we get on the kit and play what we’ve been working on, usually not thinking much about what’s happening on the bottom. We lead with the hands, and the feet follow. But let me encourage y’all to SWITCH THAT UP! Lead with the FOOT! What does this mean? Just how it sounds. Let your bass drum foot, be it left or right, lead while the hands follow. Concentrate on nailing those bass drum notes while you’re grooving, phrasing and soloing and watch the strength of your playing skyrocket! Never underestimate the power of thought. My playing has never been stronger since discovering this. You should always…ALWAYS be aware of how you’re subdividing every bar. If you nail those bass drum notes, the hands will follow and your groove overall will sound more solid. A great example of this is Keith Carlock. Just watch him for five minutes and you’ll see what it means to play from the foot. Steve Jordan is another great example. Try to imagine a mixer while you’re playing. Playing from the foot is the equivalent of bringing the kick drum up in the mix. You’re not necessarily playing your kick ‘louder’, you’re just bringing it to the forefront of your mind while you play and hitting it stronger. It might take you a little bit to get used to doing this, but trust me. It works. Give it a shot!

I was looking forward to playing Dauphin..but REALLY excited about the Cavendish Beach Fest, for a couple reasons. First off, PEI is absolutely gorgeous! Second of all, I knew that Cavendish was HUGE and couldn’t wait to get on that stage. It’s through the amazing administrative skills of Tracey Wilder of JohnnyMac Entertainment that The Stellas, a new artist, was able to get on the main stages of these festivals. But, and being as unbiased as I can while still being totally biased, they deserved to be up there. Along with Nick Czarnogorski and Ben Rutz from Johnny Reid’s band, the five of us went up there and KILLED the set! The chemistry between the five of us is clearly developing. Although it was 2:30pm when we hit the stage and we played to about 30% of the crowd that would later show up for the headlining act, which was Toby Keith that night, 30% of a Cavendish crowd still means a couple thousand people.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a gorgeous and brand new Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute kit up there when we went to set up. These festivals don’t allow for a full soundcheck but the sound guys there were some of the most professional guys I’ve ever seen. The line check went like clockwork, Casey from CMT walked out to introduce The Stellas, and it was go time, dead on schedule. It was a great day in Cavendish, PEI and if THIS is how small the small beginnings are for this band…we’re in for a great ride! Next up…St. Johns, NFLD where we’ll open up for Johnny Reid at Mile One Center. My first stadium gig! Let’s DO this.