 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by the legendary teacher Pete Megadini. Pete, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you, Bart. So today's kind of a unique episode because we're going to talk about your career as both a musician and a teacher, which you have very, I mean, you've been a teacher for a long time. So going back to Michael Shrieve from who played with Santana up to the very famous Mike Johnston, who everyone knows and loves from Mike's lessons and modern drummer podcast, formerly, I guess. But so I think a cool way to do this is there's a lot of history involved as we've talked previously and kind of gotten a plan together. But so why don't we start with the beginning of your career and your drumming? And as you go, you can just kind of fill us in on some cool history stuff and drum stuff along the way. Sounds good. I'll try to sort of give you just a brief summary of how I got started and and how I got serious. Cool. I my first drum experience was in the elementary school band in Palm Springs, California. Catherine Finchie elementary school in the fifth grade, and they had a band and a band director. And in the sixth grade, I was still playing. And most of the guys had dropped out by then. But I was still playing and I played in school bands up until high school. And then I went to high school in Arizona and got pretty serious. I was playing in rock bands. I was actually doing some recording. It was some kind of major people already when I was quite young. And I actually did a track with Phil Spector, which was the beginning of kind of his his thing, you know. But I took I so I got a teacher when I got out of high school. I realized that I was getting really serious about drumming and I didn't know a lot of the things I needed to know about it were escaping me. So I I'll just mention this. I got a great teacher when I was 17 just out of high school, Don Boswell in Phoenix. I was only in Phoenix for four years, but I had this terrific teacher and he brought me a long way. So there you go. That's how my teaching started hit his influence. Yeah, that's that's funny how I think a teacher can either make you or break you. And that's so sad. But like you know that a good teacher can make you absolutely love the drums. But a bad teacher can like make you hate an instrument or you think of like piano lessons where you go, oh, I hate piano lessons. Like you have a little old lady who's teaching you or something after school and you don't want to play. But if you have the right teacher who works with you, it can change your whole life. Yeah, he had come around to the high school and he played, took us all into a studio and he played for the drummers in the high school band. And I just couldn't believe the guy was so enamored with him. He was he was everything, a great player. He knew he knew what he was talking about and so forth. But you're absolutely right. I had a few bad teachers and as long as you hang in there, you're going to learn something from bad teachers as well. One thing is if you're going to teach, you don't want to be like them. No, that's a good point. So you don't want to teach and have students feel less than, you know, it's your job, I think as a teacher. If somebody's doing the work, now somebody's like if you're in school and you're teaching a course to somebody in drums and they're slacking off and they're trying to just get a credit, that's one thing. But if somebody's coming to you for lessons and they're working hard at it, some guys are going to be more talented than others, you know. But you know what? Some of the guys who just do the work and work the hardest, they'll get a lot further, they'll get a lot more out of it and go a lot further than some of the guys who have the pure talent. Yeah. And I always kind of in my mind, I find that when I'm doing the show, I equate things. So I went to school for like video and like audio engineering stuff. And a lot of the drum stuff in my life corresponds with that, where you'd be in class and there'd be people who'd be slacking off and who wouldn't be paying attention in like a recording studio class. And I'm like, isn't this what you want to do? But it doesn't like, it's the same with drumming where, and those people, a lot of them have literally nothing to do with like media for their career. And it's the same with drumming. It's like, okay, if it's a class, whatever, but the people who thrive are obviously the people who like are obsessed with it and love it, like all of us. Yeah. And maybe they're not obsessed with it at first, you know. Maybe it's up to you to show them some things. Maybe you recognize something in them that they're not even seeing in themselves, you know? Absolutely. And you say, hey, listen, you got something here. I'm ready to work with you, but you're going to have to work with me too. Otherwise, let's not fool ourselves. I don't get too many students anymore who aren't real serious. If they study with me, generally, they know why they're studying with me. And they spend the time and they do the work. And, you know, we take it as far as it can go and as far as they want to go. And I've had some fabulous students who are doing really great in the business. The two that you mentioned, Michael is a great example of a perfect student who was enjoying some success. He was with Carlos Santana when he was studying with me. But Carlos hadn't hit yet. The band hadn't. I was asking him questions like, how's the band doing? And he'd say, oh, pretty good. You know, we played this gig or that gig. And then he said, you know, ask him, how's the band? He said, oh, yeah, we made a record. And then three weeks later, I said, how's the record doing? Hey, it's doing pretty good. They got it racked out in front of Tower Records in San Francisco. I said to my wife, you know, Michael Shreve's band, they got the record racked out in front. And I said, that's pretty serious. You know, let's go out and check it out, you know. And of course, that album went platinum and the band went platinum and Michael went platinum. With that great solo he played on Woodstock, the Woodstock Documentary. There's that 10 minute drum solo by Michael Shreve. And you'll see all that great hand work and all that stuff he worked on so hard. And it's still today. I mean, Michael's still playing at a high level. I mean, he doesn't play any less. He plays stronger now than he probably even played then, you know. Because those things, you know, if you learn correctly, especially technique, which I always work with my students with technique just because we immediately assume that we have to have good technique. It's not going to be some magical formulas. And here your stick's going to be three inches high and then four inches high. And then, you know, we just work on it. I studied with the best technicians and I know what I'm talking about. So we get that out of the way as we're going, you know. We don't just concentrate on that. We work on everything. So, you know, the guys are always playing. It's not like, okay, I'm going to break you down and we're going to start all over again. I never do that. No. And you hear about those kind of teachers and it's a little bit drill sergeant-ish. Like, I know that we, I did an episode about Max Abrams, the teacher in England. And he had a very, it sounded like he had a very drill sergeant kind of attitude of, you know, this is what you're going to do and you're going to practice. And it's just very different. But let me ask you, so because you had both teaching career and obviously as a performer, but like, when did you start teaching? Like, how old were you when you started teaching? Okay, so I was taking lessons with Don at the Leaderman's Music Store in Phoenix. And then he got busy with students and other things. So he gave me, he said, would you like to teach my beginning students? And I said, yeah, sure, that sounds great. So I started with students he couldn't handle. I started taking them, you know, and that's how I got started. And, you know, I've always done both. I've always taught, but I've always played. I'm a serious player. I mean, it's all about playing to me. As a matter of fact, I always tell guys, you know, check out a teacher. If he doesn't really have good playing credentials, I don't know, man. To me, that's a red flag for a lot of them. Yeah. I mean, I see both sides of that. There's people who are just, they love to just teach and like, for me, I mean, I'm in Cincinnati, which isn't the biggest like music hub. So it's harder to get the big credits, but it's like, but it does definitely help when you see that like, oh, they've done this and this. I'm not talking about big time credits. I'm just talking about knowing what it is to go out and play professionally at a drum set. You know, I'm not talking about percussionists and orchestras and stuff. Yeah. And that's really important too. I mean, I studied percussion at the conservatory with a wonderful percussionist who became the tympanist with the New York Philharmonic for 31 years before he passed away a few years ago. And so I had that background and I admired a great deal. But for drum set playing, you got to hear your teacher play a little bit and like it, I think. You know, if he says, you got to do this, but I can't play it. I don't know. I think that anyway, if I can't play it, I usually don't teach it. So that's probably smart. Probably a smart thing to not do. But all right. So then simultaneously, you're teaching, but you're also performing out. And you've got some big credits. So why don't we talk about that? About, you know, your background as a performer, like the big, you know, obviously I'm sure you played locally as you grew up and everything. But what was your big kind of breakthrough moment? Actually, maybe my first gig as a country and Western drummer in Arizona, just playing a club with these really seasoned professional country musicians every night for a year and a half. It gave me a real good taste of, you know, journeymen. Even though I was really young, I was only 16 when I started. But so when I got to playing, I got interested in jazz through my teacher. And once I got interested in jazz, I spent an awful lot of time working on that part of my playing. So I went to New York City and I studied with Roy Burns. And I played in New York City at a club all the time I was there, two Italian guys and me. And we played from nine to four in the morning or something. But I was in New York and it felt great. And when I moved from New York to San Francisco to go to school, I went to the conservatory and I met George Duke at the conservatory. And George and I cooked up and we formed the Georgia Duke Trial. And so then I spent five years with George, four or five years with George. And we wound up playing in a club in San Francisco, a black club four nights a week. And it was a real popular place. And a lot of musicians and athletes and so forth. But mainly it was a black club, not that it everybody was welcome, but it was that's just the way it was. And then Al Jerobe sat in one night and then he got the gig and then he was with us for two years. That's awesome. Well, you got to be there. I think the key thing that I mean, it's so obvious, but a lot of times people don't force themselves to think about it as like, for things to happen, you have to be there or you have to be doing it. Things rarely just happen to you, you know what I mean? So the fact that you were there doing it, that's how you meet people. Well, we all moved to LA, George and I and the bass player John Hurd and Al. Everybody moved to LA at a different time. The gig kind of ended and we went there and George took off right away and then John got really busy and then I got busy in LA and to your point, if I wasn't in LA, I wouldn't have gotten those calls. People weren't going to call me up in San Francisco and say, oh, I heard you play with George Duke at a little club and we want you to come down and work with Diana Ross. That I got the Diana Ross gig because I happened to be in the right place at the right time to go to an audition that she was holding and she picked the rhythm section and I happened to be the drummer she picked. So that was because I was in LA and I was ready to do that audition and it happened. That's awesome. What year was that? What year was Diana Ross? That was when she first started as a single performer. I had been with Bobby Gentry and then I moved over to Diana Ross in 1970 and 71. Was it a pretty technical gig? I mean, you know what I mean? Was it it seems a little more like your background you're playing the album? Yeah, they needed some because this was we were playing all big rooms, big showrooms, is that Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Canada, and we'd stay there for two weeks or three weeks in the same room playing six nights in Las Vegas seven nights. And so that was that kind of showroom with a big band. And so we'd have some numbers that we'd have to play. We'd have to read. We had to be good readers, but we also had to play Motown. We had to know how to play Motown. And but, you know, I had played going back to my country days and my rock days. I was I always felt I was and still do feel I'm a pretty good backbeat drummer. And so she heard that in my playing because a big part of that show, you know, ain't no mountain high enough is a whole lot different than, you know, don't rain on my parade, which was the opening number, which is a big band swing number. And then ain't no mountain high enough is a straight ahead backbeat Motown, get it down. You know, cool thing. So, yeah. So that show was fun because it had everything in it, you know. How old were you at that point, just to kind of keep the timeline? 28. Maybe 26. Yeah, I'm not 26, 28, something like that. You think of like, like I was watching recently a thing about Levon Helm. And it was a it was like a newer documentary about the band. Like we were brothers. I forget the name of it. But it was like talking about playing them with the Hawks where it was like, they were like, oh, yeah, we were I was 14 years old or something. And it's like, yeah. So you started when you were 16 playing out and stuff. I mean, that's just that you got an early start, which I think is great. And it's obviously a different world now than there's no where there's there's no social media then. There's no it's all kind of, you know, like we keep saying, having your face out there and everything. Well, you know, I think it's exciting now. I mean, it's it's always been exciting. It's always been different from decade to decade with me. And it's exciting now. You know, I'm I'm doing stuff online and I'm getting better at doing some some of the stuff that I play that people maybe haven't heard me do. Some of my polyrhythm books. Yeah, to demonstrate some of that stuff. And I'm finally getting it getting a chance to get it out there. And is that some very complex stuff written in some some of my books? And now I'm going to chance to play it a little bit and talk about it and put it on YouTube. And it doesn't cost me a dime. It's just a matter of, you know, spending the time to learn to learn how to do it technically. Yeah, really? You know, and so I find it exciting. And man, if I want to hear somebody play, I guess I can hear anybody I want any time of the day. Yeah, you just search it and there they are. And there they are. Yeah. And your books are pretty, you know, you have very famous books. And like we talked last week about kind of the polyrhythm stuff, which I want to get into that about into more like, you know, maybe you give me and the listeners some like, you know, lesson type stuff that we can we can take and work on. But pushing forward with your career a little bit and then we can just kind of, you know, hit on some some big moments there. But so obviously you're still teaching your, do you do clinics and things? I mean, as a 28 year old, I'm sure you're just trying to gig with Diana Ross. And what came after that? Well, after Diana Ross, I got a few calls to do some more road gigs. But I was living in LA and had had two kids and we had played Toronto. And my wife at the time was Canadian. And I decided to move to Toronto because they had a I like the musicians up there. They were they were very good. And they had a vibrant studio scene. And I wanted to place more studio work. So to make a long story short, I enrolled in at the University of Toronto to do a master's degree in percussion. And I thought, well, I'm up there. If it didn't work out, at least I would have done something, you know. So that worked out great. I had some great teachers there. And they it was there's a percussion group called Nexus. And those guys were teaching there. The two guys had found that group Nexus that they won. They've won a Grammy and they they still tour and cool. And so I studied with them. And I got busy in the studios in Toronto. And and then I started teaching there. And I've had some great students up there in Canada. But I lived I lived in Canada for about 17 years before I came back to the States. And I wound up in Montreal and teaching at McGill and Concordia universities. And and playing around. But in Canada, I played with some great people. I played with Chet Baker. I played with Sonny Stitt twice. You know, some really big name jazz artists who are coming up to play in the city. I got to I got to play with some of them. So that that was, you know, that I don't know where else I could live where I could have played with. Yeah, big names from the West Coast and big names from the East Coast who are all coming up to Canada to play a couple of these jazz rooms. Where I was a house drummer. Some of the time, you know, I mean, Canada's I've only been to Vancouver, but it is just so awesome. I mean, there like it was such a it felt like when I was in Vancouver, it felt like New York and San Francisco were like combined. And it was like city with like the, you know, the water and everything. It was really cool. But I need to go and explore more of Canada when that's where we're physically able to do that after this is all done. Yeah, it's a different place. Yeah, it's really quite different. A small population, 35 million, maybe 40 million people in the entire country. The entire country is bigger than the USA. So I wound up giving clinics all over the all over the country for Pearl. I was with Pearl drums at the time. And the clinics took off and everybody was, you know, anxious to have me come and give a clinic at their drum shop. And boy, I had it all to myself for a few years of just doing clinics. And I went all over the country. And yeah, it was it was it was interesting being up there. But you know, like you say, logistics sometimes is is the most important part of this gig. It used to be, I don't know if it's it's that way anymore. But you know, guys are making good careers now living in smaller places, which is nice to see, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And the clinic thing and just what you said kind of made me think of like, like I know Joe Morello did a ton of clinics where you can and a lot of guys now, let's say Mike, Mike Johnston, a lot of people, he does a ton of stuff. But there's there's a bunch of drummers who, which is great, they become clinicians. And you almost get this reputation as being a clinician where like it kind of, I feel like it takes your teaching and this is just the perspective of like an outsider. Seems like it takes your teaching to the next level because everyone kind of goes like, oh, that's Pete Magadini, you know, the clinician, he's doing these clinics. He must know everything. It seems like it doing the clinics really helps to solidify you as more of like a quote unquote famous teacher. And I guess what I'm getting at is did that lead to you getting like, I know on your like the people you've you've taught there's like, let's say like Chad Wackerman and stuff. Did it lead to other drummers who are gigging professional drummers coming to you because you're a clinician? You know, it's hard to say exactly why people contact me to study privately. But usually they've heard about me one way or another either through one of my students or they read maybe a biography about me and some of the people I've taught. But I don't know, you know, when I when I give drum clinics, I try to, you know, I try to pick a certain area that that might appeal to that audience because, you know, if I do polyrhythms and I have somebody who just wants to know about playing basic drums, then we're not going to communicate too well, you know, because that's that's a pretty advanced stuff. But anyway, you know, I just I just want people to come to a clinic and and leave with something and feel that, you know, that they've learned something. Some guys give clinics, they're not really used to it. They just do a lot of playing and then they go, are there any questions? You know, so yeah, but there's both. I've seen both different. Like you go to pay sick or you go to them at your local drum shop and you see both kinds and you go, you leave sometimes inspired from someone playing a bunch. But you got to speak to everyone a little bit. Yeah, right. And you know, I don't get me wrong. I admire those guys who just sit sit. I saw Cindy Blackman at the drum fest in Quebec, Montreal one year. And she just got out and she just sat down with the drums and she just played a solo for 20 minutes. And it was like incredible. You know, she's an incredible player. Awesome. Yeah. And a perfect technique. Her technique is so beautiful to watch. You know, she weighs like 90 pounds. I mean, she's not big. And she hits the drums like a truck, you know, if she wants to. And that's all from this great technique that she has. And, you know, I met her once after one of her concerts that I didn't know she knew me. And I said, hi, Cindy, I just love the way you play. I'm Pete Megan. She said, oh, Pete, wow. Yeah, I want to talk to you. Go in the dressing room, you know, and I got to get I got to get the money for the guys and then go in the dressing room. So I went in the dressing room and I'm there with the guys and the guys are kind of splitting. And then I'm left there with Robbie Coltrane and the two of us. I'm there with John Coltrane's son and he was on the gig. Wow. And I'm going, oh, yeah. I said, you know, I heard your dad play live quite a few times. And I figured, well, that might be something to talk to him about because he never heard his dad play live. He was his dad was gone by the time he was sure, you know, a youngster. So we talked about that. And then she came back and I didn't know how she knew me, but she had gone through my book, Polyrhythms for the Drum Set. And when I hear her play, I hear this loose feeling that she gets with her time. And when you go through that book, that's what that book does. It opens you up. It widens your playing. It takes your headlights from down the middle of the highway and expands them all over the road. Yeah. Well, why don't we do that right now? Maybe because we talked about having a little polyrhythm section of this, why don't you kind of give us your general like, you know, overview of polyrhythms that can help to do exactly what you just said, where you can kind of like broaden your horizons. And I'm going to say before that that I have, as my foot has been in a cast for three months, my right foot, I'm a little out of practice. So bear with me if my mind is not quite there with you because, but everyone else is probably way more practiced than me at the moment. So give us your kind of spiel on polyrhythms. Okay. Well, basically, I studied Indian music one summer in San Francisco at Berkeley, at University of California. Ali Akbar Khan came with his musicians to teach. And so there was about 40 of us in the polyrhythm class, which lasted eight weeks every day. And when we were finished, there was only four of us left because it's so demanding, you know, even just to play the tabla, just to get a sound out of that instrument takes forever. Sure. I've heard. And, but he used to let me hang back after class with my drum pad. And we used to kind of improvise back and forth. And he showed me, the teacher showed me, he says, I'm going to teach you about rhythmic ratios. Oh, rhythmic ratios. What's that? You know, and so he showed me like if you're in four, four, and you take all those notes and you divide them into triplets and sixteenths, eighths, triplets and sixteenths and all those combinations, you're still in four, four. Yeah. But you can also go in six over four and then take all those notes, eighths, triplets and sixteenths and drive, divide them in the same combinations. And then you're in a ratio of, you have two ratios going one to one, which is the four, four and one and a half times faster, which is the six. So six, so one and a half to one, I said, oh, one and a half to one. Never thought about it. I knew I could play in six. I played enough Latin and some African beats and I knew that. But, but then it goes, you know, four, five, six, seven, eight. And then half note triplets, three. So three, four, five, six, seven, eight are the basic polyrhythmic ratios. Once you get those down, then you just subdivide notes in the middle. And, but you need how to, you need to know how to feel both rhythms at the same time. And that's, that's the trick to it. Because most people want to just hang on to the four, four. They want to play some pattern that comes out as a polyrhythm, but it only so happens to come out as a polyrhythm. You're not hearing it as a polyrhythm. Sure. You're just saying, oh, look at that, that, that quarter note triplet just seems to float out of this exercise I'm playing. Yeah. So he taught me and, and here's a simple thing to try. If you want to try something that is the basic, basic thing you need to do when you talk, do polyrhythms. If you have four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, and then you have six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. I'm going to have to tap on something here. Sure, go, go for it. And so we have six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Now count the four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four. Now you're using both sides of the front lobes and you're beginning to experience mental, rhythmic independence. Yes. I feel like it's one of those things where you hear words talking about it and it's just, but to hear someone actually do that and split it is just really helpful because polyrhythms are always something for me where I've, like you've said, I've played many different things, but I'm not actually feeling it. You know what I mean? Like I'm not actually comfortable where that helped just to hear that. Yeah, exactly because that is really the basis of all of it. If you start there and the book that you need if you want to start with polyrhythms is my first one. It's called Polyrhythms The Musician's Guide and it's published by Hal Leonard. It's available everywhere. Cool. And the drum set version of that is polyrhythms for the drum set and that has to do with coordinating polyrhythms between hands and feet. So everything's in a polyrhythm, you know. Gotcha. Wow. And now if you want to focus that all back to four four and just play bap bap bap bap bap, you know, some just good backbeat stuff, your backbeat and your funk playing is going to be so much stronger than it was before because now all those notes are educated, you know, you can feel the space around them and people are going to say things like, wow, it sure feels good to play with you, man. You know, yeah. And that's the kind of things you want to hear when you're a drummer. Yeah, you want to hear it's not it's hard and, man, you keep slowing down or you keep speeding. Oh yeah, that's great. So I'll put a link to the book and you're probably your website, which I'm sure has everything on it. But yeah, that's really cool polyrhythms. Honestly, there's certain things with drumming that are like, maybe it's just, I think everyone knows what I'm talking about, where you kind of like learn and you find it like, I guess scary is the wrong word for it, but it's daunting and it doesn't need to be, you know, you just got to practice. Exactly. I mean, you know, the Indian musicians have been playing these for a thousand years and Africans too, you know, they play polyrhythmically and we've all seen an African ensemble with dancers and we're going, oh, that's so great. Look at all the drums that are all doing something different and but the dancers are pulling it all together and what are they doing? You know, yeah, now my books aren't African or Indian or anything, it just gives you the ability to hear that. And if you, if you start at the beginning and just take a few pages, you'll know more in three pages, you'll know more about polyrhythms than most people in the world. Yeah, you know, you just got to do it. But I'm speaking to myself. You like, you just got to do it where you just got to practice it and sit down, which is that's just the the thing in general is practice actually practicing, sitting down and having educated practicing, which, you know, and maybe we talk, I think we should talk about him because one of your very esteemed students, Mike Johnston, who he has been very helpful to me. And if you're listening to this, hey, Mike, thanks very much. But he, he made me his pick of the week one week on the modern drummer podcast when he was on it with Mike Dawson. And it just, it I don't think he I'm sure he does realize, but it quadrupled my listenership. It introduced me to a whole bunch of people who had never heard the show and it just has grown since then. So I owe him a big thank you for that. But how did your relationship start with with Mike? Oh, well, Mike called me. He said, my name is Mike Johnston. No, you know, he was unknown. I mean, I mean, I never heard of him. He had lessons with Mike and all that. That was that was to come, you know. And he called me and he and the thing that impressed me about Mike was, first of all, when he came to me, he was already playing really well. He was playing with a group called Simon Says. I thought they sounded really great. He was really up on the band himself. And I think we're going to go places. And we have some good sponsorship and something to do with Disney. And and so, but that was cool. That that he still just came every week. He had to drive two hours to a lesson or hour and a half anyway, because I was in Northern California in a little town called Navado outside of San Francisco and he was driving down from Sacramento area. So that's quite a drive. And he'd be all prepared. And he and, you know, I introduced him to the polyrhythm stuff fairly soon because he was quite advanced already. And he just did the work. He kept doing the work. And we talk about the band and it looked like things were going. He's always exuberant, you know, very exuberant. And but the exuberance never got in the way of the lesson. The lessons were always practiced flawlessly. And then he'd add something to him. He said, look what else I did with this. And here's what I did with that. Steve Smith studied with me for a little while out of the polyrhythm book, Polyrhythms for the Drum Set. And he kept giving me exercises back that he invented himself. And now I'd have to go home and practice to to get him down. You know, I felt like I was taking the lessons after a while. Yeah, that's a pretty big. That's a big name. And so Mike just kept doing it. And so I introduced him to Yamaha guys. And I said, you know, I'm with Yamaha now. I've been with for quite a while. And and this was in the 90s. And he came to the drum fest same drum festival in Canada. And I said, if you can make it, I'm going to want to introduce you to these guys. I think the band's going to hit and you're going to and you're impressing me a lot. So they gave him an endorsement, you know. And then the next thing, you know, the band, something happened. The band collapsed. It didn't go. He went back to Sacramento. He was kind of down to just start teaching himself at the at one of the stores up there. I can't remember the name of it, but fairly well known music store. And I said, Mike, how's it going? I said, oh, you know, band didn't happen, but I'm giving lessons in that. And the next thing, you know, he started doing the lessons online and. Yeah. And look what happened. I know he took off. I should tell you, he's been on the show. So at that point, it's kind of where he picked up his episode because he basically was kind of like, you know, I'm sure. Someone else on the show said someone's always first or so. You can't say someone was first. But Mike was probably one of the first people to do online drum lessons. And he kind of gave us that whole story. And he mentioned you a little bit in his episode, too. But obviously it was more about just the starting the lessons. I was just glad to see him, you know, all this hard work pay off, you know. And he's got this talent, you know, to talk to people. And he's a hard worker, you know, he not only has the online lessons, but he has people flying in to go to the school and now the thing about Mike is that he played with Simon says, and maybe a few other bands. But you know, he plays really well. He is a hell of a player. And that's because he just works so hard at it, you know. He knows polyrhythms. You hear it in his playing. And I teach my drummers a lot about Latin playing, too. And you notice when he does lessons with Mike, he'll do a segment on Brazilian drumming or the influence of Latin on his own playing. And then he'll play some outlandish thing that incorporates some of those grooves, you know. Yeah, definitely. And I see I see guys like Mike and a lot of other drummers and even talking to you and like just people where like it just motivates you to A, practice the drums, but B, for me, it's like, I'll see, let's stick with Mike. Johnston, you'll say, oh, man, he's posting a video every day. Like I need to keep doing an episode of the podcast every week. You know, it kind of pulls you and you see other people doing very clean, crisp video. It's just it's people like that, I think, who inspire people to do whatever it is they want to do. It might be like like he's talking about like, you know, tea all the time. So it's like, you know, and he takes cool pictures of it. It's like, it might inspire you to get into something new. So I think that's a part of what being a teacher is. It's just like you said, your first teacher is just a cool guy who makes you want to do it, right? I mean, that's a huge part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I've had four great teachers. Don Bothwell, Roy Burns, Roland Koloff, the percussionist I mentioned before, and then the Nexus guys at the University of Toronto, and then Mahaprush Misra, my Indian guru teacher. And then I studied some African drumming, too, with some guys from Wesleyan University, also with Nexus, mainly Russell Hardenberger. And African, if you look at some of my videos, you'll see me play some of these basic African grooves. And from all from some of these basic African A-way grooves, all our all our drumming in this in this continent came from, including Brazil and also including the Caribbean islands. So salsa and Brazilian and jazz and straight ahead funk drumming up, you know, has these African roots. And I think it's important to learn a little bit about African drumming as well, which Mike did. You know, everybody who studies with me gets gets this one African pattern, because out of that comes almost everything we do, so one way or another. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it all goes back. That's kind of the basis of this show is just kind of going and digging in and finding the the origin of everything. And in reality, it all goes back to like Africa and that that kind of stuff, which I've done some episodes that touch on it, but I really need to do I need to find the like the the the absolute expert on African, you know, rhythms, which I imagine will be someone from Africa that seems fitting. But oh, yeah, there's some good experts out there to the. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. But before we end, I just want to give credit to some of the my favorite drummers from the past that had a great influence on me. Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, Shelley Mann, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, and Paul Motion with the Leavins. Yeah, I'm not familiar with him. I was going to say everyone before I'll check him out. Obviously, I'm always on the hunt for for great drummers, but everyone you just listed has just become like, I honestly think if there's like a Mount Rushmore of drummers most, I mean, and then obviously there's a there's a long list more of like, you know, many greats. But those guys, I mean, the the the Joneses and Max Roach and I mean, all these guys are in Shelley Mann. I really like Shelley Mann. I feel like he's he's well known. He is obviously a well known drummer, but he's not quite as well known to the the outer circle as like your buddies and your genes. But Shelley Mann is just unbelievable. And he seems like a really nice guy, obviously. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful person. Yeah, I got to know him a little bit. And you know, and John Bonham had a big effect on me, although the way he plays drums and all the guys who play with Frank Zappa, all those guys are terrific drummers. You know, I thought about doing an episode which I have enjoyed a lot of Zappa music, but I need to go far further in. But like the I was thinking an episode will be cool about the drummers of Zappa and the another one about the drummers of Weather Report. Because there's like those two, you know, bands have so many great drummers. It's kind of one of those things where it's like a it just churned out great drummers. You know what I mean? There's something special about it. Yeah. Yeah. Before Weather Report, Joe Zawinol played with Cannonball Adderley's Quintet. Yeah. And that drummer was Louis Hayes. Yes. Also another terrific drummer, mostly known for playing with that band. But yeah, I've posted some videos of him online and I'm thinking so I don't get mixed up with another one. But I believe that there are a couple good solo videos of him, which I'll have to check and re and repost them. But yeah, it's when I started, I think I told you, but every day I post a cool old drum video that I find of like, you know, from the 20, I just posted one from 1928 up to like, you know, cool modern ones. But someone said to me once like, you know, what happens when you run out of drum videos and you run out of drummers? And two years later, I've never had one day where I've had an issue finding a different drummer. It's like, I was gonna say, I don't think that's gonna happen. Ever. And that was a non drummer who said that. But like, there's, so how do you, maybe this is a little bit of an out there question, but like, all right, so for young drummers, new drummers, I should say, how do you draw inspiration from a drummer when you're watching it? Like when you watch Billy Joe Jones, or when you're watching John Bonham, how are you kind of doing your homework and pulling things from him? What's what do you typically do? Typically, I just listen and love it. You know, I really don't, I don't, I don't generally try to analyze, at least not, not at that moment, you know, maybe if I listen to him a lot, and then I'm trying to pull out, I know with Elvin, I really, really analyzed the way he played a lot. And I have some things that I've worked out that, you know, are Elvin-ish. And I think they get you into that space. Yeah. But he sounds like two drummers to me. And that once asked his brother, his older brother, Hank, who piano player, Hank Jones, who was well known in his own right, I saw him at a concert or at a club one night. And I said, what is it with your brother, Elvin? I said, you know, I try to figure out some of the things he's playing. And it sounds like two people sometimes. He says, well, a lot of people don't know this. I don't know. Maybe he was putting me on, but he said a lot of people don't know this. But Elvin had a twin when he died. The twin died. When Elvin was born, there was a twin. Oh, man. And he says, don't ask me about it, but our brother, Sad, has a theory about your question. And that, and he left me with that. So I went, oh, Elvin and his twin are playing at the same time. That's crazy. That's it. Yeah, that was crazy, because sometimes it's, sometimes he sounds like two people at once. That's so, that's just like, it makes you just think so hard. I mean, that's so sad that that happened, obviously, to his twin. But man, I'm sure he internalized that. For me, when you hear a drummer, you just sort of let it, it's sort of subliminally, you start to be like, oh, that's cool. And then later on, you're like, it just comes out at these little moments where you're like, oh, that kind of sounded like, I hope that sounded like something that Louis Belson did or something like that. Oh, and yeah, another friend of mine and a wonderful drummer, Louis Belson, for sure. I want to mention a studio drummer that I saw play with Steely Dan on YouTube, Ricky Lawson. Ricky Lawson, I got to check him out. Ricky Lawson is playing with Steely Dan, and that groove he plays is so badass. And, you know, how do you analyze that? I don't know. It just feels so good, you know? And he's a deep cat. He must have played a lot of spiritual stuff, maybe worked on polyrhythms, I don't know, but maybe worked gospel, but the groove, the way he plays, but he's also reading some very, very difficult parts. And he's playing them without losing any of the groove and any of the flavor of what he's doing to make this band sound so, you know, down home and danceable, if for lack of a better word. Yeah. And he's playing in the, I just Googled him, he's playing Remo drums, which is sort of like, Louis played those, Louis Belson played those for a while, which that's, we talked about those drums in the Remo episode on the show, but just cool to see another guy playing that kind of short-lived line of drums. Off-brand. Yeah. I played those for a little while. They're good drums. They are good. Louis owned part of the company, though. Oh, that's, yeah. Well, and I remember when I talked to Herbie from Remo, he was telling me that, like, he was like, the main point of those drums was to sell pre-tuned heads. Like, they were like, the heads were pre-tuned and it was like a whole new technology and the drums were kind of secondary, which I wasn't sure if that, I was like, well, I don't think these huge drummers would be playing them. I mean, obviously he's the expert because he works for Remo, but I don't know. Not the drums I played anyway. They weren't, they were regular drums that tuned the heads. But they sounded really good. I have to say, they were, they were quite good drums, but they never took off because the shells were, I think, a little bit different enough that drummers didn't quite get it, you know? Yeah, sure. Now, are you a collector of vintage drums? Are you like a vintage drum guy? No. I have a couple of vintage drums in my studio and, yeah, I just don't have time to, I appreciate that and I love looking at them when, and the guys who do it are so knowledgeable about it and, but they're great to look at and I love them when I see them, but yeah, I don't have much room to put any vintage stuff around in my studio anyway. So, sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Now, I think now is a good time to tell people the classic where they can find you, what you're up to. Obviously, it's COVID, but maybe, you know, in the future. And if people can take lessons with you online, how they go about doing that? Sure. Well, I give Skype lessons and I have about 20 students I'm teaching on Skype. And I'm at www.petermagadini.com. And I can be reached through my website. Oh, I want to give a shout out to Brett Bellis, one of my students. And I think Brett mentioned my name to you at some point. So. Thank you so much for doing that. I always try and do it and sometimes try and give the shout out. So, thank you to Brett again. And people who listen to the show know that I mean, it's kind of cool that like most of the episodes now, for the most part, have turned into ones that people have recommended, which makes my life easier. I just need to find the right people, which for you, when he recommends talk to Pete Magadini, it was easy to find Pete Magadini. But some of them are like pretty out there and I have to find an expert. But yeah, big thank you to Brett. That's very cool. He recommended you. And I love that you're so eclectic with your show and you have so many different facets going at the same time. It's that's really terrific. I can see why Brett likes it so much. He said, Pete, you got to check this out, man. I've been listening to all these podcasts. They're really happening. So. Oh, that's awesome. I appreciate that a lot that and I've tried to keep it eclectic and I added it up. So this probably when this comes out, it'll be like episode 82 or three or something. And if you I mean, if you do the math they're each about an hour. So you can listen for if you listen straight, you have a couple days like three or four days of straight drum history. Yeah, I can see it. I don't recommend doing that. But but yeah, no, that's that's great. So so peter magadini.com. Correct. Yeah, www.petermagadini.com. Okay, Peter and then MAGADINI.com. People can find you there. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Pete, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here. And I'm going to link in the show notes to where obviously your website, but I'll put a specific link for that. The Polyrhythm book, because I think a lot of people will like that. And a lot of listeners, which I love actually buy the books that we talk about, which is really cool. Well, I should mention my my my drum set book, because that's really important book. That's what I teach more than anything. It's called Learn to Play the Drum Set All in One. Used to be two books. They combined it into one. It just was re re-released about three years ago. And it's published by Hal Leonard. And it's 75 pages. And it takes you from the beginning, if you're just starting out with drums. And it gets you playing right away. And then it gets into the more complex stuff and the linear drumming, which we didn't talk about much, but it's important. And yeah, so that's another book, the two Polyrhythm books and then Learn to Play the Drum Set All in One. A lot of teachers use that book. And a lot of students have gone through it with me and maybe some other teachers, but it's kind of proven itself. And it's it's hung in there. So if you're if you're interested in anything that I do and some of the concepts that I have, my all my things aren't about polyrhythm. So it's a small part of it. So sure, of course. Yeah, you're not just the polyrhythm guy, you're you're multi trying not to trying to escape that being just that. So I know. But hey, that's it's good to have something that people know you for. But yeah, awesome. Well, Pete, thank you for coming on the show. And I look forward to hopefully catching a clinic of yours or seeing you live when we get through all of the 2020 craziness. Yeah, actually, the idea is clinic here in Chicago a couple years ago is called the Chicago Polyrhythm Clinic. It's up on YouTube. Cool. You might you might want to check that out. Absolutely. Cool. I'll link to that as well. Awesome. Thank you, Pete. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. 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 in the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwynn Sound podcast.