 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I am beyond honored to be joined by Barry James who is the last living student of George Lawrence Stone who is still teaching this method. Barry, welcome to the show. Thank you, Bart. It's a pleasure. Oh, this is so cool. We've been working on getting you on the show here for a little bit and I'm glad we finally got it going. Man, that is, and you're 81 years old, correct? Indeed, yeah. Wow. And I just love how you're still very actively teaching and we spoke earlier about how during the corona virus, the COVID-19 stuff, you're using Skype and just still chugging along, which is just amazing. We're lucky to have you teaching still. Well, thank you. It's the only way to stay young. Exactly. Now, what I want to do today is really just hear the stories about what it was like to learn from George Lawrence Stone and I want to preface all of this with there's an episode I did with Dom Famularo about the history and basically the biography of George Lawrence Stone. We can briefly go over that a little bit, but if you want to learn more, a deep dive into his entire life and all that stuff, you can check out that episode that was a little bit before this one. So Barry, why don't you just tell us what was it like to learn from him and how did it happen? It was at college. Why don't you just take it away? Yes. After high school, I auditioned for and got into Boston University SFAA School of Fine Applied Arts, which was music art and theater in the same school. And one of the first things that happened to me as I went into school, what was going on at that time is there were a lot of musicians playing all instruments but the drummers I was most interested in were getting out of the military bands after the Korean War. And at that point time, they had the GI Bill, which allowed these musicians and all of the military to be able to go on to college and be paid for that to be paid for by the government. So I'm thinking I'm pretty heavy. I did very well in high school in the drum corps and competition, rudimental competition. And I thought I was hot stuff until I got up to Boston University. And the first week I started listening to all these folks that had been in the military band for four or eight years and they just blew me away. Well, we had our choice at that time of three staff members or teachers there. And one of them was the Big Firth. Another one was Bob Smith, who was the Tempest with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at that time. And the third drum teacher associated with the school was George Lawrence Stone. And I sat down in the practice room one day with one of the military drummers that came out and he heard me play and he said you need to go study with George Stone. You need to work on his technique. And I thought well, alright, so I got in touch with Mr. Stone and I signed up for lessons with him. At the time he didn't come up to campus so you just have to take a subway down to his studio which was on Hanover Street in Boston and pretty old district. And he was on the second floor in an old building Ramshackle Building all gone now. Now it's where the Quincy Marketplace is and some of your listeners might know the Quincy Marketplace. It's a tourist attraction in Boston. And Stone's studio was right there on the second floor. His dad used to use the first floor, George Burt Stone, to actually manufacture drums. And some of the George Burt Stone drums now are world famous and very expensive. On the back cover of my book, and we'll talk more about that, you see a picture of a George Burt Stone drum circa, I would say 1910 owned by a friend of mine here near Orlando and he allowed me to take a picture of it so that I could put it in the book. And it really is an example of really modern drum making at the time. So George Lawrence's son helped his dad in the store and then one of his dad passed away. They sold the business to the Ames drum company who continued it for some years and George continued teaching on the second floor of his building. So that's where I ended up each week taking a subway down to his store and going up and taking lessons and of course he started everybody out with stick control and that he had published in I believe it was 1935 and this was 1957 by the way at the time I went to study with him. He also had a very famous student by the name of Joe Morello who at that time was with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and had made numerous records and was considered probably and was voted actually by Downby magazine and other magazines as the best drummer in the world at the time. He was into a lot of odd time signatures and so forth, very modern guy and we'll talk more about Joe as we go along. But Joe was George Lawrence Stone's protege and they worked together for about 10 years not lessons only but working together on various books including Accents and Rebounds which was Stone's second book and much of that book was done with articles and exercises that was written by Joe Morello. In any event I started as an 18 year old going into Boston and to tell you the truth when you're 18 years old you don't realize who you're studying with. It was four years last when I got out and people would say to me drummers would say to me well you studied with Stone man he's the best he's the best in the country. How was that like? And I was like it's just my drum teacher. I think had I known his reputation when I was studying with him I would have been very intimidated but Stone was a very easy going gentleman. He wore a tie and a suit jacket even while he was teaching most of the time and I just went in and I started studying the stick control book and even though I thought I had good technique, good chops when I got in there by the time I got out they were just superlative compared to when I went in four years earlier. So between stick control and he had just come out with Accents and Rebounds at the time and we did some work with that in my third and fourth year with him he was just a wonderful gentleman he was kind he was generous and there was no attitude at all he would never give you a hell if you didn't practice he'd just say something like hey Barry I see you didn't put in much practice this week you know and that was my clue to get work in the next week and get it on you know as you know Bart the stick control book has become the classic gold standard of drum technique books some years ago when Martin Drummond magazine was going to publish their 25th anniversary of the magazine they decided to do an article on the best drum books ever written and so they contacted all of main drummers the big name drummers in the country but whether they were rock drummers or jazz drummers or country drummers and from Nashville or they were studio drummers, symphonic drummers and they sent them out a questionnaire and the questionnaire was just what do you consider the best 25 drum books of all time and which ones do you use and do you recommend and when the results of that questionnaire came back stick control was voted by almost every one of them there were about 100 drummers that were quizzed on this and stick control by stone came back as the best drum book of the era and it continued that way for some 83-84 years now so just taking a look at that and realizing that it's the gold standard of drumming and that many many many many students and particularly drumline and rudimental drummers have studied second hand from that book. It was just I'm very proud to have said that I had that opportunity to study with Mrs. Stone quite by accident because I didn't know who I might be studying with once I got into college and I spent four years with a genius and that's what it comes down to. Well and you also had Vic Firth there I mean that's pretty amazing on its own as well I mean he's no slouch right? For sure there were many drummers studying with Mr. Stone at the time and as years went by and I continued to teach the method, Stone's method, I found out that it really worked I mean there's just something about the way that book is laid out that just takes you progressively through the steps that will really train your hands The fine drummer by the name of Danny Gottlieb who was Joe Morello's protege wrote an interesting article when Joe passed away and he said that Joe and I mentioned me in the article as well were teaching the gold standard of drumming which would allow any person at all, any drummer to gain control and speed and strength in their hands and endurance by studying that method and by studying the stick control method and he's absolutely right that's exactly what that book does for you as I went through it in its various forms and Stone would teach it in many ways and I'll go into that a little bit with you What became apparent to me when I went out to teach myself is by teaching that method it just helped everybody and I would promise I would get to the point where I'd take a student and I said I will promise you that if you go through this book with me when you come out the other end your hands will be super strong and super fast and you will have complete control of your limbs and because we used to actually play the stick control with our feet and I think Dom in his interview with you mentioned that So that's the book The classic book was voted that way by Martin Drummer and I found it over the years to be just what every beginning student needs and it's been working for me for many, many years Well and I find it fascinating too that it's just it's lived on for so long because it's not I think it falls in the timeless category where it's not like let's say it's not 80s double bass drum techniques or you could even say double bass drum techniques for speed metal which would be very it's still current but like this is very timeless and you can use it forever and I mean I've played the drums for most of my life and I've been slowly going through it and hopefully we'll be taking a few lessons online with you just again because Dom in our interview really he really got in my mind the whole the lineage of teachers going from stone, Gladstone, and Molar that it's a very special thing to be able to take a lesson from someone who took a lesson from the previous person and it keeps going down and down and down so I think that's really cool Now can I ask you real quick so when you're doing the lessons with George Lawrence Stone you would get there and most well first off let's just go super simple were they were they half hour lessons were they an hour were you it turned out with him it was always more than a half an hour you know I was there around a Wednesday morning I remember took the subway down to his place and he didn't have any other foods maybe until two o'clock or so and so he would always give me an hour and fifteen minutes an hour and a half lesson and he had an interesting about that so when I started doing research for my book which is called drum lessons with George Lawrence Stone and Joe Morello and I worked on it together I started researching some of the things you know his articles and Dom Farraglaro mentioned this too he had written many many articles for the international musician which is the union the musicians union magazine and I was able to go and do some research and pull all of those out of there and he's been gave some of them to Barbara Haynes who is Stone's granddaughter lived in New Mexico and she now has finished with her with her cousins and the Stone family the book that Dom was mentioning called Techniques of Percussion which lists every one of the articles and so Joe and I went through the articles I had gone to New York and picked them up some years ago and Joe and I went through them and of course Joe was blind so he would have Marvin or somebody one of his students or his wife read the article to him or I would read the article to him over the phone and that's how we came about coming up with the 30 lessons by Stone in our book and what I found is I just want to give you an example of how this man evolved over the years thousands in the 1940s with somebody who asked him a question about if you're left handed should you be playing left handed traditional grip or should you be playing right handed and at that time he said no I believe you should continue to play right handed using the left hand as your now your strongest hand will help you with the traditional grip you know motion and it would be the best way to go well fast forward now 10 12 years and I show up in his office in his studio for a lesson at the end of the lesson since he didn't come to the campus I used to have to sign a receipt so he could get paid by the university and so after maybe the third or fourth lesson with him and by the way my drum teacher in high school believed in that same theory that you play right handed even though you're left handed and I am left handed so I learned to play drums right handed and so when I showed up at stones and then we were of course everything in those days was a traditional grip when I showed up at stone studio I was playing right handed and a couple of lessons then I was out of his front desk his wife was working the front desk with him you know doing the scheduling for him and I was signing a receipt for my lesson that he came out of his room and he looked at me and he said you're left handed I was signing the receipt with my left hand of course and he said he said what the hell are you playing right handed for and I said well you know this is the way I was taught and later on many years later I read an article where he thought everybody should be playing right handed regardless of which was their stronger hand you know their main hand and so he said no no we're going to change you around so there he did a transition between 1987 or so when he first wrote that you know in the international musician that everybody should be playing right handed to watch a meeting sign a receipt left handed and saying you're playing the wrong way the next week I went in and he switched me over to a left handed grip still traditional grip everything started coming so much easier for me of course I wasn't scuffling you know with my right hand trying to make it my strong hand so and I found over the years as I was researching for the book that he did a transition in his own thinking in just one on and on and as he matured as a teacher he also added that to many of the handouts that he would give to his students and when he wrote accents and rebounds a lot of the stuff that he did with the up strokes and taps and so forth the freehand style was incorporated in the accents and rebounds so he's a man that just matured as a teacher over the years and it surely helped me and I still play left handed and I play my image with my kids and my students and it seems to work I just I like that that he's I mean if my math is correct he was like 71-ish years old and he was teaching you and he's still evolving because he died 10 years later in 1967 so wow that's so neat now just so I can like kind of become like a fly on the wall there let me just ask you some super simple questions like did you guys practice and did you work through the book to a metronome yes we did really at the beginning of the lesson the first year maybe a year and a half going through the book and we spent and I'll tell you this we spent two and a half years on that book and using it in various ways and I'll tell you about that yes we always use the metronome and he would set the metronome the first week I'll give you sort of a history or a setup of how we taught it the book starts on page 5 pages of single beat combination right and left left and right paradiddle you know inverted paradiddle and so forth and I believe about I want to say 60 exercises 24-48 yeah something like that in the first three pages 72 maybe and what he would do is he would take page 5 as an example when you first walk in and he said now I want you to play this page for accuracy and I want you to play each exercise 20 times some people will just say well I'm going to play it for a minute I'm going to play it for two minutes but he said play it 20 times so you always sort of counting it after a while you'd get a pretty good gauge of what 20 times is and you would do that and he wanted because much of his teaching was based on repetition of motion and as I've explained in the introduction to the book in my book and he really believed that you know muscle memory was very important and we took that into consideration so the first week you would take page 5 and we would go through it for accuracy and he might set the metronome at 80 or 100 beats a minute for that then the next week he would say okay we're going to go to page 6 now for accuracy but I want you to play page 5 again for speed and he said then what is speed speed is whatever you can handle you know I'm not going to set it at 180 you know the metronome will set it at 120 or 130 140 you know whatever you're comfortable with so then you would play page 6 for accuracy and you play page 5 again for speed the next week you'd come in he'd put you on page 7 now the last page he had in the book of single beat combination and he would say okay we're going to play 7 for accuracy 6 for speed and I want you to go back to page 5 again and play it with your feet so we'd play every page in the book except the buzzroll pages actually you couldn't do that with your feet but we would play each page in the book three times one first week for accuracy second week for speed third week with your feet and we'd work through the book that way so you would think by the time you get to the end of the book that would be it well not so because now we go back to the first page again at page 5 again and what we would do that time is we would start putting four measure exercises together instead of the two measures that they were originally written in so we'd play exercise 1 and exercise 13 across the aisle from there and we'd play those two together and then we would repeat a four measure exercise then we'd go 1 and 14, 1 and 15, 1 and 16 finish down to 1 and 20 you know 1 and 24 and then we'd go back and we'd play 2 and 3 and so we would mix and match all those exercises on each page you can see that this could go on indefinitely this would never end you know because all we would do is turn those two measure exercises into four measure exercises and we'd get a brand new exercise with brand new sticking and we did go through the entire book again doing each exercise there are some four measure exercises in the book and we would turn those into eight measure exercises by mixing and matching them so you can see there's no end to this book no there isn't and that leads us very very perfectly to talk about your book and then before we move on to your book I have one quick question was this all on a pad or did George ever hop on did you have a drum set in the room that you guys would practice on as well yes we did everything all the exercises from stick control accents and rebounds we also did had read the book syncopation and he even by the third year he took me through Chapin's book he took me through the advanced techniques and on drum set and that was wonderful you know and the way he could teach that in that book and he really had the teaching down and of course he knew Jim and he knew Ted Read they were friends and you know and Bill Ludwig by the way quick story on stick control stick control as George told me it was never intended to be a book it was handouts for his private students and they just would come in and he would hand them this page and this page and this page but by the time I was with me stick control had been published obviously but you know originally these were just handouts and he went fishing one time with Bill Ludwig of the Ludwig Drum Company one of the founders of the Ludwig Drum Company and Bill said to him George if you would put those handouts that you've got your people and put them in some sort of order he said I'll publish a book for you I'll help you publish a book and that's how stick control came about that Bill Ludwig financed the first positions of stick control now stick control after 80 some years, 83-84 years is still selling according to Alfred my publisher and publishers stick control or distributors stick control anyway the stone family publishes it and the stone family and it's still selling about 22,000 copies a year oh man that's more than most people can sell wow I love hearing that too that he didn't set out and say I'm gonna write a book it was just like hey you got something I feel like some of the best things in any area of life are hey you might have something here you should do this when they're just doing it pure kind of like oh these are just my notes for students kind of thing and you gotta bottle the lightning alright let's talk about your book because you sent me a copy of this and signed it which is I gotta be honest now one of my prize possessions just to have this it's called Drum Lessons with George Lawrence Stone and it's by Barry James with Joe Morello so you can explain this better but you basically did where stick control can be interpreted in a lot of different ways and it's kind of a famous book for saying that people say you can look at it and then you know you can go through it really quick and not really get its full potential unless you have a teacher who knows how to actually you know show you how to use it so your book is a first hand example of how to use stick control right? yeah that's what we started out to do here's how this all happened Joe Morello came to town to Claremont to Orlando rather and Danny Gottlieb was living here at the time and he married a lovely lady percussionist Beth who was with the symphony here and also taught at the University of Central Florida and I believe that at Epcot Center when they were doing the Christmas show there and they travel together now and I'll tell you a little bit about that but Danny and Beth brought Joe in to do a clinic and he just knocked everybody out on the clinic and he knew that I had studied with stone and he told them that I'd be there and we got together after the clinic was over and we were walking down there and we were going to go get some coffee that's what we started out getting we got a little something more than coffee something else and Joe told me Barry said have you ever done a clinic or a master class or even you know a professional lesson with other teachers and somebody always asked how do you play page 64 46 in stick control and I said it happens all the time because stick control is a book completely exercise there's no explanation whatsoever as to how to play those exercises so Joe and I when I told him he said we ought to write a book on how to play the book he was joking and I said you want to he said yeah you want to and so we exchanged telephone numbers that night and I sort of pushed him into it and we had a wonderful conversation about our love for George Stone and how much he had done for both our careers Joe of course with an internationally recognized drum star and I had had a very great career as a teacher and teaching the stone method and it was all because of George Stone and so Joe and I decided to write a book well Joe you know being blind he couldn't do any research so that was my job so for the first three years after that or so I started researching everything I could find about stone and when I found out that the and then I did remember it a half or while that stone had written for the international musician almost on a monthly basis and it was called technique of percussion and it was article so I had been president of the musicians union here for a couple years and I sort of used my juice to get into the archives in New York of the and pick out all of these articles and I signed a lady to work with me and she photocopied all of those articles for all of those years from about 90 actually we got one from 1941 the book only shows 46 but I found a couple articles from 1941 and 42 and but from 1946 to about I want to say 1963 or four stone wrote almost on a monthly basis either were a few months missing but about the technique of percussion so we that stuff and we juxtaposed it over the you know the stick control book and Joe and I had weekly conversations about will this fit will that fit because we want and it turned out to be we were looking at sub calling it stick control too but as it turned out it turned out to be lessons with George Stone and we just came across things and he would mention things that he remembered from his life 50 years ago that I couldn't remember from mine and in Joe has has the memory of an elephant I swear he he could remember things that stone had taught him in the 1940s 1948 49 you know wow and I was 10 years after that when I said it was so and so with between Joe's memory and in monitoring me and just helping me along all those years we were able to put together almost you know three quarters of the book at that point unfortunately Joe passed away while we were doing this and so I let the book go for a couple of years I just put on the shelf and then I had from her friends of mine and so forth and my family thought pushing me a little bit so I ended up finishing the book myself thanks to the stone family and they helped me get the contract with Alfred publishing which you know international music book publisher and so now I'm right being sold with stick control and accents and rebounds and I'm sold on Amazon and I'm sold by Alfred and Jay Jeff Pepper and it's just wonderful the book is selling very very well my next issue was going to be that I wanted to take this book on the road so to speak and I wanted my bucket list of art is to go on the road and teach the stone method and this you know the introduction to stone anyway to new you know some of the younger players that are out there and go into the guitar centers and Sam Asher's and the mom and pop type music stores well the pandemic sort of curtailed all of that so now I'm teaching it on Skype and signing up you know quite a few drummers I've had a gentleman from you know Australia call me in the study with me now and a lot of people from all over the place including the students that I had here in the local studio where I teach and quite a few of those have stolen so I've got a pretty much a full time job now just teaching online and I'm hoping that others will join me and they can reach me at Barry James at gmail.com or at 321-297-3042 not be happy to speak with any of them and hopefully you know give them some information that would be helpful to them in building their technique yeah this is the book of technique that's above any other book is this is the stick control book and what we wanted to do is make a companion book to stick control and in it explain narratively how you know stone came to his ideas and what he taught us and the things he said to us and I think we've captured that pretty well I think you have as well and it's just the very end of the book it says why all this groundwork and I just think it's like it's just so important and it goes into detail here but it's just very important that everything builds on the right foundation because you should probably read that conclusion because that stone sort of put it all in perspective there hmm why don't we let's save that for the we'll end this episode with that conclusion I think that'll be that'll be cool and one thing that I think is really neat is you as you go through I marked it the other day when I was reading through this you get little bits of information from like obviously you but the cool thing is is you get to hear basically from people who are no longer with us like George Lauren Stone and Joe Morello and little bits and facts like Joe Morello's thoughts on the use of a metronome we kind of talked about a metronome before it says Joe Morello saying a metronome will help you to rhythmically to be rhythmically accurate it will not teach you to swing the metronome can be used to gauge your development it should not be used as a challenge that's just that goes against kind of what I sometimes think where I think oh man I need to raise the BPM today I need to I need to beat myself and I know a lot of people I don't think there's any wrong way to do it you know what I mean I think you can you can use a metronome to push you whatever gets you playing the drums is the most important thing but just to get bits of information that's a very good point and in my teaching I found this and Joe and I discussed this at length when we were talking about that article on the metronome that Joe put in there for the most part and that's this what happens is and like as I said to you we use the metronome for I said that I guess the first school year that I was there and in the half of the next year and then he sort of weaned me off it you know because what happens is and I found it with my own students if I thought them on a metronome and keep them on a metronome and then all of a sudden I say okay let's play this exercise without a metronome sometimes not always sometimes they haven't built that inner clock and the metronome becomes their crutch and it stops them from feeling the music and I think that's the point that Joe made in his article is it will help you build it in a clock but then you have to maintain that in a clock yourself and it's very very important and you hit on a very good point here and Joe and I discussed it and when he put it in the metronome what he was saying is don't let the metronome be a crutch be able to play with the metronome be able to play without the metronome and still keep good solid time. Yeah absolutely when you look through this it's very attainable I don't know it's if you go page by page and like I said to you that I so personally and I explain this to you on the phone but just so everyone kind of knows I grew up playing in rock bands drumming for my whole life basically got into audio engineering still played the drums but I really didn't get that I stopped going to drum lessons when I was in like 8th grade and but then I started teaching other friends and kids when I was like 17 and I really didn't have the fundamental like right now I would have no confidence in my reading so what my plan is is hopefully to work with you Barry and work on my reading and just being able to go page by page in this book but I do think stick control is pretty easy it's rights and lefts and I say that I should pause it's not easy to do because there's a ton of different stuff it's easy to start with because it's mainly rights and lefts and I love how there's the somewhere in here there's the hourglass where it's left left left left left left right right right and then it just kind of tapers down to the middle and gets bigger very fun exercises and I like how in your book again which is drum lessons with George Lawrence Stone there's photographs to kind of help you of the starting position on the way down open fingers slightly we're doing the rebound strokes there's a little bit of it explains what you would be you know what you'd be doing and it's really nice to have a little bit of that extra some supplement to the original which is very cool sure thank you very much and that's true and you've hit on again a main major point and that is this the stick control book as you say looks simple to start off but as you get into the book as an example what Joe was talking about when we first read that and he said about well how about the lot of pages where Stone teaches the numbered roles singles doubles and buzzes as an exercise well in the back of the book it shows you know in six eight time it'll show or in four four time even a cut time it'll show three notes three eighth notes and then fourteen notes and you say well how do you count that you know and that's that's the main thing that sticks to a lot of drum teachers I've had so many calls over the years not from drummers but from drum teachers and they'll say how do you count that fourteen against three you know and I would explain it to him I'll still encounter it and that's where that's where the rub lies in stick control because you get to a certain part of stick control and it's just about where the flam section starts because the flam section is very important in that book it takes you from one level to another level and that's you know right after the triplets and the roles and so forth however because with the whole idea of writing this book was so they could see in Stone's own words remember this book is not much you know the our book is not much written by us we clarify things during the lessons but it's taken right from Stone right from his own words that he did in the International Musician where he would explain things to drummers who would write him letters and so we just sort of called everything together when he was talking about Ratham Accus and you know whether it be flams or drags or roughs you know drag slash roughs we would explain that but not with us explaining it because we would go through the Stone articles and let Stone explain it just like he explained it to us and if we came up with something well he also said this that he didn't write the articles then we would add that in and Joe as I said had such a great memory that he could remember almost word for word what Stone had said to him 15 years ago it was amazing to me to listen to him but you're absolutely right now the other thing is that both Danny Gottlieb and his article for the Stone family which is great to read if you want to read on the website the Stone LLC and read what the family has put up there and with John Farmer-Glaro and Danny Gottlieb put up there originally when you know Stone was teaching he used to look at the balance point of the stick you'd balance it on your fingers and that's where your thumb and finger would go that's where it would go in the web of the left hand in the right handed case to play the traditional grip and so by the time I get to study with him and of course all the jazz drummers from Buddy Rich to Gene Krupp and so forth they would hold their stick lower to the stick and that's where they would get their technique and their speed in the case of both Cooper and Rich and Louis Belton and all the guys they would get it from the balance point of the stick well by the time I started with Stone rock and roll started happening you know the R&B and then rock and roll would come about and then Stone said well I don't know whether we can use the balance point or the poker point of the stick but we may have to because we got to hit the drum harder now than just playing jazz which is a softer music and now we're going to be fighting electronic instruments electric amplifiers and huge speakers we better change the whole point so he would find the balance point of the stick and that's what I show in the book and we would bring it back towards the butt end by about an inch of the stick so Joe and I talked about that many times and Joe agreed that you know instead of showing the old method in the book we show the method that Stone finally came up with which was just moving the stick back an inch from the balance point on both sticks and therefore you wouldn't be hitting the nail with the hammer by holding the handle of the hammer about halfway up you'd have more clout if you will sure you have more room to play a lot of music there's another way that Stone evolved over the years absolutely you read my mind a lot of guys would I feel like in his position if you're 70 years old would go rock and roll no what the hell's rock and roll we're not changing for that but he sees it as I want my technique to live on forever and that's just so cool he seems like a really great guy in general just a nice guy and also very progressive he was wonderful I think back on him and I say I should have practiced more when I was with him we all should have practiced instead of doing the college social thing you know and digging all over the place you know at that time they'd hire the so many music students between Berkeley and Boston University and the conservatory all over the place all lying for gigs that's so funny let me ask you this one more question and then I want to read this conclusion and we'll read again where people can find you and hopefully sign up for lessons with obviously one of the masters of the stone technique so I have played traditional grip every once in a while I do it with brushes but when I'm actually playing with a drumstick I just feel like I can't get the right power and I'm working on it will I do better if I practice stick control traditional grip versus just using match grip or am I okay doing it either way I think you're fine doing it either way and I think that's what Mr. Stone's point was in not forcing you to do one technique over the other and he said many times you know I want you to play with what's comfortable with you you know if you're playing you know side to side when you roll and you're trying to get a nice smooth buzz roll he used to call it a you know whipping cream or a helicopter you know where you come in from the side and you buzz that way if you want power and you want a pulse you play it up and straight up and down so same thing goes for regardless of the genre of music you're playing if you're playing jazz I would say the traditional grip works best if you're playing you know metal stuff outside in a drum line many many of the drum lines in high school and college still play they have that said rumors play traditional grip and yet you know the rockers the guys that are playing rock they'll play match grip and it's it works just as well the guys that are playing funk music and fusion music oftentimes use match grip and that was Stone's whole thing particularly one the market the marketplace he said no you're going to need more power and you get more power out of you know the match grip then you will get out of traditional grip you get more finesse out of the traditional grip and I think that's the whole student today whatever works but you know depends on the genre of music you're playing yeah no that's that makes sense that again he's a pretty flexible guy so and he was way ahead of his time obviously way ahead of his time I mean he's still probably ahead of his time even now so alright before I read this conclusion because I think it is really neat and I think that's a great way to kind of wrap up this episode so again for everyone out there I highly recommend this book it's called drum lessons with George Lawrence Stone by Barry James with Joe Morello and I think people who listen to this show know that I typically don't do things where I'm like oh someone's got a product and they want to come on the show let's talk about it and spotlight it this is a very special book from a very you know special person who actually has a lot of experience and it's one of the most historical kind of pieces of work that I think in drumming that's out there as far as a book goes so I think if people google it they can probably find it right and then it's sold through Alfred or you can find that at alfred.com and if I'm not mistaken Barry right it says on the back here it's 1499 is that right and it's on amazon.com as well okay boy that's an affordable that's an affordable book so you you're not breaking the bank by buying this and you can actually learn from one of the masters himself so let me read this conclusion here so we can all learn why groundwork is so important and then we'll close it out here Barry so it says conclusion why all this groundwork the question arises is all this groundwork necessary many a young drummer will say I never had to go through this step-by-step preparation I picked up drumming as I went along it came naturally to me and I'm pretty good at it the answer is simple pretty good isn't enough in this era of keen competition and understanding audiences a drumbeat or solo today must be more than a spasmatic conglomeration of bumps and thumps bang down helter-skelter on a set of skins and symbols it must carry a message a message inspired by the player's thoughts and clarified by their knowledge and application of rhythmic structure and this is where the preliminary training comes in quote careful considered and continued practice of such combinations offered here and in my books stick control and accents and rebounds will with precise interpretation aid in the development of a pair of smart hands quote George Lawrence Stone and the back to you we are what we repeatedly do excellence therefore is not an act but a habit there is a growing realization in science that few people are born gifted it takes time and persistence to be world class at anything always remember you can be brilliant you just must stick with whatever it is you want to be brilliant at do what you love and love what you do wishing you a lifetime of happy drumming sincerely Barry James for George Lawrence Stone and Joe Morello very well said there Barry I love that that's a great ending to the book I just ruined the end of the book for everyone thank you but I really appreciate it and kudos to you because what you're doing right now is a great gift to drummers and I hope more and more drummers will listen to your podcast go into your archive you get some fantastic interviews there with some of the best drummers I know of and and I'm sure you've enjoyed you know interviewing them I enjoy Mr. Zildjian interview I've enjoyed Tom McClary interview with you and by the way Don has been very kind and helpful to me in getting this book out there to the public to the drumming public and I'm thankful to him and so many other drummers that have been pushing the book as well and it's my bucket list now just to get it to as many people as I can and since we can't get out to the stores to see everybody and I'm going to do as much as I can for the time I've got left to try to remind everybody about this great man George Stone and just what he's teaching and how great it would be if everybody just got into the technique played it and they'll just play better and you see what the pick first in his introduction said he said get this book buy it play it study it you'll play better easy as that and before we go we both need to give a huge thank you to your friend Tony Smothers for getting us connected he reached out and got all this set up on your behalf and got us connected and I just think that's very cool and like I said we've been talking for months Tony and I and we finally got it all together and so a big thank you to Tony Tony is a great guy very fine drummer as well oh cool great so everyone out there can get in touch with Barry at Barry James drummer at gmail.com and then like you said I'll give out your phone number Barry because you did before so it's area code 321 297 3042 and you can study with the great Barry James Barry thank you for coming on the show my friend thank you so much and thank you for doing what you're doing it's just wonderful and just I hope you just keep it up and I look forward to speaking with you again and maybe going through a lesson or two with you perfect thanks Barry thank you so much Bart thanks for checking out this episode with Barry James Barry mentioned one thing to me after the episode that I think is cool to add on to this that maybe didn't get through in the actual interview this is Joe Morello's last book that he worked on before he passed away so I think that's pretty important and it's just something worth noting also I have talked on the phone with Barry multiple times after we did this interview just for fun about his stories and all kinds of stuff like that so I am going to be doing some lessons with Barry via Skype and I'll report back to you guys how it's going probably on Instagram but I just again I recommend trying to get some lessons with him if you can via Skype at the email address which will be in the description as well so thanks for listening and tune in next week if you like this podcast find me on social media at drum history and please share, rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about the future until next time keep on learning this is a Gwynn Sound podcast