How does he do that?
‘How the f**k does he do that?’ is the more accurate version, actually. This is something I always think to myself (and sometimes say out loud) when watching/listening to Buddy Rich & Dave Weckl work their way through hits & accents like only they can.
Both of these players are, in my opinion, the absolute kings of negotiating music that has any kind of hits/accents/unison sections. Whether it’s a dense set of hits that they catch with the band while filling in & around them or some kind of unison section, they are so incredibly tasteful, fluent & musical in the way they orchestrate everything. The choices they make; which parts of the kit to use with which accents, depending on note length, is always so perfect. And then there’s the incredibly tasteful, smooth and exciting vocabulary they manage to weave in between everything, with beautiful touch and dynamics, while also keeping the music feeling great.
Check out the Buddy Rich album ‘The New One’ for a spectacular masterclass in this. And listen to anything with Dave Weckl, but particularly his playing Chick Corea’s music - ‘Inside Out’ is a real favourite of mine. (Oh, and to add another layer of disbelief, Dave was sight-reading the music for that whole album recording. Unreal.)
Anyway, I spent many hundreds of hours working on this kind thing when I was younger. I would take vamps from my favourite records and program them into Logic myself so I could loop them for long periods of time and attempt to develop that smoothness. It’s great practice; it really teaches you to be musical and to make your vocabulary flexible. You have to be able to make your vocabulary make sense for the situation you’re in. The more situations you can mimic in your practice room, the less you’ll be thrown when you’re presented something new to interpret & negotiate your way through.
This loop “Space Jam’ from the new play-along pack I just released is a great example:
This is a challenging thing to play through. First off, the medium swung feel isn’t easy to play. Hitting the accents, supporting the level of energy that the track is giving and keeping things feeling good, while also figuring out what fills to play, is very challenging. But, it’s also very rewarding to practice things like this for long periods of time, over & over, and start to see results. Drummers often fail at these types of things, or feel dread when faced with them, but that’s because they never practice it. Putting on tracks like this and going for 20 minutes at a time really gets you to tackle so many things at once (feel, taste, ideas, sound, execution, creativity) - if you do it enough you WILL see results.
Want to try it? Check out the new play-along pack HERE. Six tracks, different feels and time signatures, all pre-looped to be 20+ minutes long. MP3 & WAV versions available.
Let me know how you get on. And please tag me on social media if you post any clips of you practicing these!
Thanks!
Louie
Here’s the full promo for the loop pack with demos of all six tracks: