 Welcome to the drum history podcast, I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by my friend Steven Taylor of Steven's drum shed Steven. How are you? I'm great, man. I'm really excited to be here. I'm really excited. I'm really excited to geek out about this I am too I am too we we recently met and hung out at Pacek with you and Tim Buell and we got dinner and everything and Yeah, I must and I still I apologize to you there That was like after a day of like nine hours of filming content I was completely shot. I was like the world's worst hang. I just know you're great You were great Tim and I just talked about Pro Tools the whole time and geeked out on audio it But you know we got some onion rings and had some beers. It was great, man. It was great. Yeah, so yeah today You're here though to talk about the history of learning and practicing the drum set because you are a guy who is like very very well spoken and and well learned when it comes to Teaching the right way to practice correct cool, so I Think we should just per usual with this podcast just go back to the beginning of practice because it's kind of like a I Mean honestly, it's something I never would have thought about like you it's hard to to to really think about people practicing that long ago My guess is it's kind of military stuff, but I'm excited to hear what what you came up with Yeah, so, you know and one of the reasons why this you know This whole topic excited me years ago. I've got a whole chorus on this. It's like 20 hours long I can be as nerdy as you want on practice in the drum set But I found that Most of my teaching nowadays is done online through my membership program and and what I was finding was I was having a lot of people hit walls and not move and the problem was not that they weren't motivated The problem wasn't that they didn't have the time The problem was that they didn't have access to the materials The problem was they didn't have a game planner. They didn't understand how to go through a practice session And learn this instrument, you know, and so that really set me on you know A chase for a while Reading and studying on the brain and on practice and historically how it's done and how it's done in other fields and So yes, I've become, you know, that's become one of my passions is actually, you know, practice And how do we learn this thing so and it's definitely changed, you know I'm glad we're doing this because it's changed over the past hundred or so years With all the technological age that we've gone through There's been so many advances so quick and it's all happened Right at the inception of the drum set if you really think about that the drum set really started to come in together In a concrete fashion in the 1920s in the vaudeville area before then you had some some Players that were making like their own homemade, you know Pedals so that they could play this in the pit while the show was going on or whatever But there was no one that had was mass producing these things and the drum set wasn't set up in any organized sort of a way And we've got gene krupa to think about that and you know, and and so Right around the time that sound recording really started to become popular Was when the drum set was born And so not only do we have an instrument that was made For improvisation, it's really the only instrument I can think of that was made strictly from an improvisational standpoint You know before that snare drumming pit drumming. It was all very notated And you've got you know, baby Dodds is one of the first drummers that was that was recorded improvising Um, it's it's kind of a to us. It's not a revolutionary thing But back then they're like wait, he's not he's not playing the page. Hold on, you know Yeah So that that changes how you practice that changes how you approach that and it's a new instrument Our instrument is very new, you know, the drums are not new the drums are the oldest instrument, right? But as far as the drum set, it's one of the newer instruments on the scene. So Um And how we approach it how we learn it how we practice it has changed with technology and with all those advancements So yeah, I would imagine that like, uh, but at the beginning there, let's say in the 1920s There had to be some crossover of guys who would be coming up in more Like rudimental practicing, you know doing that stuff then saying, okay Well, now I have a drum set now. I need to change a little bit of how I'm doing it. Yeah so everything that I you know pull up and read about is Is all about You know up until that time, you know, we had some texts that were standardized for drumming We had the rudiments those types of things They had organized this stuff because marching and playing in a concert setting that type of a thing It was very popular, you know in the classical world Um, so really with the early days whenever, you know jazz started coming around whenever you have guys like baby Dodds assimilating a drum set whenever you've got him, you know innovating with this, you know The shimmy beat that he would play and elongating these press roles And that's way different than the than the than the typical You know, he's he's putting more he's putting more sauce on it. He's you know, and all of a sudden you have drummers Whenever he's out on the road or you know, obviously the the uh boats on the mississippi and other Travelways, that's why you see cities like chicago st. Louis You know new orleans all these port cities That's the reason why they became known as music mechas because these guys were traveling these steam boats up and down You know and so you have guys coming to see Baby Dodds play to try to figure out what he's doing because remember there's there's no real recording at that time Yeah, you can't get a recording. You can't get a book of like, oh this new instrument The drum set they just put on a method book on it. Let me go grab that and then learn it You know, that wasn't happening and then baby Dodds knows he's got something special, right? And he knows guys can't play it So they're coming to check him out to find out what he's doing and they're going back home And they're trying to practice that so really from a historical standpoint That's really how music has been taught over the years It's been taught as a as a as a language you you one person to another showing the other person as an art. That's why You have the apprentice system was such was such a successful system for teaching someone Whether that be art or teaching them carpentry or whatever that is We have a lot of examples of an apprentice type system that I can point to Well, let's say we can point to chick web who was the first big band drum You know really leader at that time and had tuberculosis of the spine. So he was a hunchback really short guy But mentored a lot of people and and actually art Blakey Was I believe his valet. I believe he was his driver Wow And so you have guys like art Blakey pointing back to chick web and the time that chick web put into him That's a mentorship. This is an apprenticeship type of a program He doesn't have a formulaic thing of where they're sitting down doing lesson one lesson two What he's doing is he's showing him how to do it as he's doing he's leading by example Then you have someone like art Blakey go on who runs the jazz messengers for 35 years And it's known as an incubator for all types of talent Uh, he's known as a mentor for drummers everywhere and for 35 years He's running guys through his band and mentoring them the same way that chick web mentored him We also have an example of an apprenticeship type of a deal Whenever it comes to as far as learning this drum set whenever it comes to someone like Tony Williams with Alan Dawson Alan Dawson, you know, everybody goes it's it's amazing that you know, Tony Williams is playing with Miles Davis at age 19 and it's like Yeah, but you had Tony says one of the best drummers in the world Alan Dawson who later taught at Berkeley and is is known for his contribution to to teaching and learning the instrument and formalizing our Our language He was picking Tony up at ages eight and nine Going like 60 90 miles one way out of the way from the gig picking Tony up taking him to the gig with him Let him set up letting him sit in let him and listen and then getting him back home safely You have somebody doing this for out for for Tony at age nine This is a very good example of an apprenticeship model Um, and so if you you know if you're out there and you're listening to this and you have any season musician Whether that be a drummer for me. It was a keyboard player coming up. Uh, that was my Um, a mentor today. He's still a second father to me. I would you know, if he called right now I'd drop everything I'd sell the car and I'd go do whatever he needed me to do to help him out That's how much he helped me in my life. So it doesn't matter what kind of a musician They are if they're willing to give you that kind of time and mentor you in that way Ellis Marsalis in New Orleans has been known for doing that with with all types of musicians And he's a piano player You should take advantage of that because some of the best players come from that mentorship system Stanton Moore in New Orleans, uh, johnny vedakovich. Actually he taught brian blade Stanton Moore came up under vedakovich's tutelage and some people don't keep vedakovich He's he's a free spirit man to say the least But you have him taking the time and letting these guys bring drums in for him Let him then go to the gig with him like that's a mentorship type of thing. That's an apprenticeship thing That's a very common way for a music Musical instrument or any type of skill to have been taught Yeah, really up until modern days in colleges now. That's why you have grad students grad students That's an apprenticeship model. It's a very old model for teaching anything We've assimilated that into this. I'm lucky because uh, not even on a drumming standpoint But as an audio engineer, I had a mentor. I have a mentor I'm lucky enough to work with him now His name is adam pleiman who I interned here where I work and then years later got a job And the amount you can learn from a mentor and it's just you know If anyone's listening to this and you kind of know someone just you're not bugging them Really having a mentor is one of the best things that you can possibly do And you know as a teacher If you have a student or you have someone that comes and says look, I just want to you know Be around hang around help. I want to learn from you. I don't want to be in the way You're gonna pour into that person so much more if I get gigs come through I'm passing him that person because they work with me. I know that they're trustworthy Yeah, so that's why you see players like a tony Williams at age 19 Coming and kicking butt on the scene with miles Davis because he's had guys like that in his life So at the early inception of this instrument, we also you got to keep in mind as we talk through this really four different things We have advancement in the instrument and its development We have the acceptance of the instrument as a valid instrument and that in some ways is still not being accepted on the collegiate level If you go to college, you can major in percussion. That's your instrument Not a ton of universities and colleges will allow you to major as as your instrument is drum set I know I was not allowed. I was a percussion major but with a jazz studies, you know embassies And you know, you don't have a violin player coming in, you know, having to major in strings You know, it's so it's it's taken years for them to accept that as a as an instrument And then advancement in technology has been huge as far as learning the drum set and how we practice And then advancements in the knowledge of the brain within the past 15 or 20 years has been massive So, yeah in the 1920s, you have just really the drum set kind of coming together. You have that apprenticeship model We really don't have any collective body of drum set resources because it's a new instrument And so it's really passed on person to person, right? Yeah So then right about that time, we also have sound recording coming around the reason that early recordings of Gene Krupa, Baby Dodds, early recordings of Chick Webb don't sound great Is because the microphones at the time could not they couldn't handle the dynamic nature of the drum set It was just too much the lows and the crazy highs from the cymbals and all of that So you don't have really great recorded examples from those early times But you do have, you know, online, there's an example of Baby Dodds showing his shimmy beat and explaining how people couldn't do it So this was how he transferred that knowledge And then coming on up, we have sound recording. So then guys start listening. They're like, okay, cool That's like, you know, if you're thinking I don't have a band to play with I'm just sitting here practicing this thing and then all of a sudden you have something that has speakers And you are able to have a band in your room Even if you know, you got to play low so you can hear them. That's a huge game changer in your practice time I don't think people really realized that they went from not being able to play with people to being able to Put on an album and play with the top of the tops This is a massive development. It's comparable to like the youtube generation now to be able to sit and see these guys To be able to watch videos of you Teaching a lesson versus just reading a book Is massive. It's huge. And so then we have the learning pass through to they're sitting there learning from the music As well as going and seeing it live And that's a big game changer, you know, and then we kind of move forward And the drum set is getting old enough that now we have, you know, people writing books for it And we have guys repurposing older texts like syncopation for the modern drummer George Lawrence's stick control. You have guys like Alan Dawson coming along and going, hey, wait a second We can use this on the drum set. We can use the rudiments on the drum set. Let's take this and apply all this So they're kind of just trying to formalize What's happening? You have guys like Jim shape and I've actually had a student send me one of the guy I don't have it sitting here one of the kindest things ever. It was just a gift and it arrived I had no clue it said at the post office for a couple months. They didn't call me and let me know it was there Whenever I finally figured out I was like, oh, I got a package. So I go up there and An online student of mine had sent me an old LP an old vinyl of Jim shape and he made one of the first play along series It was made as a promotional tool for I forget the name of the drum company or the drum store But in the inside it's got, you know, pick up the drums the hottest new instrument like all these really old school ads It's got pictures of all these, you know, small music conventions with the Joe Morelos and and those kind of cats in the pictures Buddy rich and all those guys. It's got, you know, old advertisements But inside of it, it's got with the drums or without the drums So you can play it either way as well. It's got charts inside of there So it's got lead charts, but it also has drum charts. So a transcription of basically what he was playing That's huge. Yeah, that's ahead of its time. Oh big time big time. So now we're going from, okay Now I can play along with this to oh man, somebody made a drumless track for me to play with There's a huge change whenever it comes to your practice time and And how you go through that how you go about learning the instrument because now you have You know, you have a method for the matter now you can you can practice to that music One thing I've heard you talk a lot about which I really like is focused practice time Instead of just sitting down and messing around and just playing Which is great, which you need to do from time to time But actually focusing and and and doing something important and that kind of those books and that early play along gives you Something to do. I mean, you can't really just pull it off the top of your head. You need some guidance It's like a that's your remote. It really does. It gives you structure to your practice time now You know, oh, I'm trying to practice this beat that you know, baby dad's was doing or whatever that may be I know I'm bringing him up a lot. He's he's on my mind And and and then, you know, you have this recording. Oh cool Now I can learn this whole set and then you you take the time to break down. Wait, what was that thing? He was doing in measure three. Oh, wait a second. Let me see if I can work that out So that's kind of the evolution, you know up from 1920s You got person to person you got the music to the person then you have a book to person Which is a big deal and then you start having some of the classic texts start coming out Gosh, you can have Gary Chester's new breed. You can have Shafie's pattern series You can have Alan Dawson starts teaching his system for going through syncopation organizing the language of jazz drumming Future sounds by Garibaldi. All of these become landmark What's it funk studies by Rick? Is it Rick Latham? All these become landmark books in the collection of Learning the drums and they become standardized on the collegiate level Now as well around the 40s and 50s time you have Max Roach coming along and a lot of people don't associate him with teaching Max Roach was one of the first Jazz musicians to teach at a full time at a collegiate level. I don't know that. Yeah And and I forget where it was. So you have him coming around around that time So not only do we now have this new instrument that we're like, okay, we're getting some resources for now It's becoming accepted enough that on the college level they're going Hey, we need to get a teacher for this because this is a deal like apparently this is going to be a thing And that's whenever you start seeing some of the jazz guys come in teaching full time Like Max or you see an Alan Dawson going over at Berkeley. You see an Ed Soph going to UNT So it's the drums is still not considered an instrument to major in but it's a big enough deal that they're like We got to get somebody here that they can teach this. Yeah. Yeah And you have Alan, you know and Alan Dawson coming along and he's putting out players like Vinny Caliuta Terry Lynn Carrington Tony Williams John Robinson like I mean just to have those four on your roster. Holy cow. You know, that's massive Whatever the guy's doing he's doing something right. Yeah So you have a lot of these guys, you know, Gary Chester's another one He was a seasoned session musician touring guy And he devotes the the later part of his life to teaching So you have these guys really trying to give back And really trying to formulate a way for us to learn and practice this, you know instrument. Yeah, and it um I'm gonna do an episode on it. I don't know a ton about him But I know just of him as a teacher of Roy Knapp who was major teacher of I know it's gene krupa Louis Belson baby Dodds He had the the Roy C. Knapp drum school, which I've had Rob Cook of the Chicago drum show and an author of a ton of books reach out and say We should do an episode on him Which I want to do yeah, and you've got another example there of someone putting out so many great students But it's a real person-to-person type of a teaching thing exactly They obviously have a curriculum that they do but it's not codified. It's not put into a book It's not mass produced. I mean when we became when we had the ability to make a plastic widget that contained music That's whenever things changed on so many levels. Yeah, and but it's the uh, like I remember hearing on another podcast Brendan Buckley the great drummer who we saw at PASIC. I heard him talking about getting taught by a sunny Igo Tommy Igo's dad and it would be a thing where he would drive 45 minutes and he would get there and you'd learn and it's I don't know. This might sound bad, but I guess there's more And I've never taken a lot of online drum lessons via Skype or anything like that but When you have I remember growing up taking drum lessons if you miss the lesson you're kind of like Wow, I'm gonna get yelled at next week Yeah, why did you miss there's more? I can't what's the word I'm looking for there's more like Um, uh that you're held more accountable. Yeah, there's more accountability Yeah, um, that's you know, that was me coming up the internet That's a good day We never you say like the internet wasn't a thing you sound like this ancient guy. I'm only 38 I'm not that old But the internet was not a deal until I was in high school, man Yeah, um, I remember sitting at dial up and being like what in the world is happening, right? Yeah, why isn't making this noise? You know So the internet came around I remember I had to drive 30 35 minutes one way. I took from, uh, Henryk Dale Mada. He was Doing his graduate studies at usm under dr. John Wooten Henryk had actually taken from Alan Dawson and Henryk actually now teaches up at Berkley College of Music So I love to look back at the lineage of my drum teachers Yeah, and see, you know recently you're talking about online. I recently Did a couple lessons with claus hessler. I'm a teacher, but I'm a student too Klaus took from jim shaping jim shaping took from molar. So you have this lineage of teachers Up through the years. Yeah, so, you know after that sound recording You know you then start to have this video and video was a new deal And then you have these guys coming along, uh, jim shaping and several others that are like, hey, let's jump on this Let's get instructionals made So you have the vhs and the dvd and that was really kind of came at the tail end of vhs I was more of a dvd, but That was a huge deal. Oh, wow. Now I can see steve smith break apart Whatever he does, you know, now I can see, you know, carter bowford or whoever it may be That's a that's a big change. You you don't have video and then you do have video Yeah, even just the ability to see those drummers on tv and you don't have to go see them live anymore This is a big deal, you know as far as how we're developing what you practice in your practice room Those types of things and a lot of session players during that time Well, I had scott williamson here. He's a nashville heavyweight. He came in to talk to my students not too long ago and Um, that's you know, he said I was a horrible drum student because I was busy trying to learn from the recordings He said I would spend the whole week learning recordings And so you have you know a formalized method and an unformalized method Kind of working together to produce some, you know, fantastic players Yeah, man, um, this makes me think this is gonna sound crazy bear with me here So last night I watched on netflix there was a movie about like the history of like kung fu And how it progressed and the a big thing they talked about was the advent of vhs And when people could bring the tapes home And then people it set a bunch of like young martial artists would sit there and watch it like in slo-mo and rewind To learn exactly the moves they were doing Which is 100 parallel to watching a drum tape and you can actually now see what they're doing Versus seeing it live seeing it one time in the theater. You can slow it down. I mean my drum lessons. I still remember Um taping them. He said if you bring a tape, I'll tape it for you. He had a cassette recorder Yeah, and so henry could put that tape and I still have some of those tapes in a box somewhere And that's how I remember would remember the lesson. I would go back and go wait. What was that? Oh, okay. I remember you know, then I go back to the shapey book or whatever we were working through and I You know do it after I listen to him play it. Um, so that's a that's a big advancements We have a completely new instrument and along with that instrument I don't know of any other instrument like this along with that instrument the development of sound recording the development of of a worldwide publishing Network the development of video the development of the internet which is kind of where we're kind of coming up to And um and don't worry. There's lots more we can talk about with all this This is just this is just the technological changes, you know Absolutely, and so you have the the internet coming along and there's a big difference. So tim works with me, you know tim buell Um, he works with me and he came up just a couple of years after me I don't believe it's even 10 years after me. I mean seven or eight years But drummer world was available for him. Yes drummer world wasn't available for me Five six years before that so I came up not knowing anything about drummer world tim came up living on drummer world Right watching the videos doing the transcript like digging into that I knew nothing about that till past college and it was a thing I just it was not part of my learning experience So when he and I talk about A learning experience and how we learned those types of things drummer world doesn't even play into My learning experience what does is written You know those classic text shapey and chester and you know future sounds and all that as well as something like modern drummer Where I just consumed these magazines, you know in the 70s the 60s and 70s you have these magazines starting to come out That are fantastic because they're giving us a view of these drummers on the road What their exercises are all of this stuff, but it really is just a time of trying to assimilate What's going on? How can we make this a language? And that's why teachers like an Alan Dawson a Jim shape and a Gary Chester that's why they were so revolutionary Gary shapey because they put these things into systems You know and you learn the Alan Dawson rudimental ritual You learn Alan Dawson's method for going through syncopation in all the different ways so that you can learn to Come within jazz before that there was no method for learning the vocabulary of jazz He developed that method and so lots of advancements Within that time and I think also uh all of this just you saying like modern drummer It just it makes you not be on an island learning an instrument It makes it so we're all together and you can go like oh, man My setup is similar to his setup and oh, I could move my ride over here and he's got one tom instead of two It's like the world is getting smaller I was outside of hattiesburg mississippi closer to a place called summer all mississippi And I felt isolated. You know, I remember getting in the mail these signs from like, you know These small record companies with all like the new Releases and I would order them by mail and get this new band or a new compilation that had like 10 different bands And I'd be like oh that band I got to listen to them. Yeah, you know So it really did it started bringing things in and made me as a young kid not feel like okay I'm you know, I was in the middle of nowhere mississippi, but I love punk rock You know, I was I was connected with all these drummers like, you know, it wasn't the internet But it definitely wasn't far away from it And so and then you've got you know the advent of the internet But then we have the advent of social media And once social media came around that really took the middleman down because I can actually get on to You know, peter urskine's instagram page if he has one, I don't know if he does and I don't just listen to Um, I don't just listen to him play. I don't just watch a clinic I don't just you know, see a performance or listen to an album I actually now can hear from peter every day and if he has a thought that's worth something and puts it there I could be like, man, I wondered how he did that or I wonder what he thought about that or It's amazing to me that that middleman is gone and we have such access and for those that are kind enough to Kind of let people into that and mentor them through that. I think it's a it's a fantastic Yeah tool it humanizes them. Yeah, it definitely does. You know, imagine if if uh, you know Jean Grupa, we've mentioned him imagine if he would have had an instagram profile where you could get on and hear from Jean at his gig. I mean, it's it's unfathomable, right? Imagine if tony williams would have had a had a A phone he could carry and be like, hey playing here tonight. I'd be like, what is happening? You know So it's it's really exciting to see all of the All of the technological changes the changes within our instrument Then becoming more accepting of it on a collegiate level. Now, what this also has done to us is we have obviously advances in the instrument we have advances uh in uh In the technology, uh, but there's also advancements in the knowledge of of how the brain works and how we learn And so one of the things back in the day Uh, well even up till recently was they assumed that you were born with sets of Skills, you know, uh, that was a natural talent, you know, you he's naturally talented or it's so and so Talent wasn't seen as something that is a skill acquisition Talent wasn't seen as something that oh no, that person had early exposure to that, you know thing These are new concepts within the last 15 or 20 years and understanding Of all the white matter in the brain. They they used to think that was just like padding or something for the brain Oh come to find out it's myelin and that's actually how we learn like that stuff's super important um, and so once they start really understanding how the brain learns it really breaks down the barrier of You can you can learn anything that anyone else can and we have scientific studies to prove it You know the reason tony williams was so great at such an early age was because he had an alan dawson He had early exposure He had an early mentor the reason buddy rich was so great Uh, and i'm gonna you know anytime you talk about buddy you get people that are gonna start throwing stones But he was born into a vaudeville family. Yeah, both of his parents by age two He was on the stage performing at some at one point He was I believe one of the highest paid child actors of that time. Yes, I believe jackey cooper was maybe more Yeah more highly paid But uh, and I know that just because I posted a jackey cooper video and someone said that Somebody informed you To me i'm thinking if he wouldn't have been good, I'd have been pretty disappointed like you're set up to hit a home run there Yeah, um, this is like someone you know saying, uh, you know Your your two-year-old is good at using a spoon. Well, of course she's good at using a spoon She said two parents three or four times a day You go like no, you don't pour it down your pants. You put it in your mouth, you know No, don't you know your brother doesn't want any. He's got his food. You put it in your mouth Like yeah for two years We've just been ingraining how to use a spoon the early exposure to a spoon means she can if you think about eating That's a fantastic thing to be able to take these utensils and get the food on there like that's a big talent for a kid Yeah, uh, it's the same way with drumming, you know, and so the same way we would never say Oh, that person's just naturally talented at driving Oh, that person's just naturally talented at eating food A person is not naturally talented at a musical instrument Now there are people who Are they excel faster? They may so this is where this is where the study is really showing It's hard to it's hard to measure this is the interest of a child in a subject So whereas I may expose one of my sons to music at a very early age They may have zero interest in it. They may be very interested in building Legos and taking things apart So a very mechanical type of a thing Whereas I have friends and you have early composers who from the time they can hear they're just interested in those sounds How can they recreate those sounds? I have a nephew. He's interested in Acting he's interested in writing. I don't he's interested in drawing. I don't have to beg him to do it He just comes and he's like, hey, I wrote this play. He thinks that's play for him Writing a stage play is his idea of having a good time playing So what you can't measure is a child's interest in a subject and how far they'll go So buddy rich wouldn't have been buddy rich if he wouldn't have latched onto the drums and been so interested into it Same thing with tony williams. He wouldn't have been tony williams if he wouldn't have latched onto it and had that natural Curiosity about the instrument. So I'll agree some people are Wired to like different things, but none of us are talented. It's an incredible waste of natural ability For you know nature to say, oh, this person's going to be incredibly talented at being a blacksmith What happens if you're a computer programmer and nature, you know, you're born in the 1600s But you're you're dispositioned to be a computer programmer. Well, it's a it's a huge waste of resources on Mother nature's part, you know i'm saying what makes a lot more sense is that we have the The meat computers within our heads that can actually take the information and we can become great At whatever we have an interest in and whatever we put that focused practice time into So really the last 15 to 20 years has and I've had many conversations with people Debunking this old historical thinking of you're born naturally talented at something. You're just not you're just not No, the exposure is so important though because I think to myself like huge like I've never Skied I don't live anywhere in a nearer place where I can ski and I'm like, I think about that sometimes I'm like, maybe I'd be good at it or like surfing. It's like that seems fun I've never really done it because I don't live. Yeah, I live in Cincinnati. It's like, yeah Surf on the Ohio River But exactly if you'd have been exposed to it at an early age and you know, all of this gets into people are real big At putting labels on people. So we have something like The spectrum which would be autism so you on the spectrum you have a very functional end where that person Just becomes obsessed with things like they're totally normal But if he gets obsessed with this thing you should just get out of his way So we're running the length the ranks of like a steve jobs Who becomes just incredibly obsessed with an idea? I had people like that coming up in school now They would label them as on the spectrum to me. They were just predispositioned to focus in on a certain thing And so my wife used to work with autistic children She had one that was incredibly interested in albums and who played on the albums So he could tell you the album the name of the album the band the year It was released where they recorded it the players on it what song everything about the album He knew everything. He was intensely interested in albums So, yeah, that's something that you can't measure is a child's interest in a certain In a certain thing as well. One of the things that they can't account for these days is Your physical disposition. So if you're born, you know, six foot eleven You're naturally going to be better at basketball than somebody that's four foot, you know, four foot nine You're naturally going to come into that game stronger than anybody else because that game is built around height Is a huge corelet to success and something like basketball And so a physical characteristics are something that they can't measure either That's one thing that is a tale tale when it comes to mainly physical things Yeah, like ambidextrous being ambidextrous with the drums. I guess that could be seen as a benefit Sure. Yeah, but you know, you have the old thinking back in the 1920s 1930s 1940s They did not understand how the brain worked. They did not understand You know, all of those things now that we understand it it makes the practice time A much better experience because I can prove to you about, you know, how we learn and why we learn And that really comes down to advancements in the brain, you know, and we can, you know Let's talk about myelin. Myelin is the you know, the the white matter in the brain And and before they didn't really understand the way we can image brains now We can really see what's going on and what's firing and what's not Originally, they just thought that was Padding in the brain or they really know what it did. It was there, but maybe it's not important or maybe it is important or You know, the same thing they didn't understand what the prefrontal cortex did that has all of our administrative capabilities are Focus task management, all of those things come from the prefrontal cortex Well, they used to do partial lobotomies through the eye And they would blight out Part of the prefrontal cortex and then they started wondering why do these people act like animals? They can't clean their house. They can't, you know, organize tasks. They seem, you know, they don't clean Like they lost their humanity their ability to Because they were blighting out the prefrontal cortex. Yeah, you stuck something in their eye into their brain That's why they can't yeah, it's exactly, you know, they don't understand why that How it worked now we do and so um with myelin There's some great books on this if anybody listening is interested in reading about a little bit about the brain about practice and about how this work Some good ones are the talent code by Daniel Coyle Practice perfect would be another great one. The distracted mind has another one That's some great studies on the brain as well as the leading study that they did It's the the role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance You can download that one for free. It's professional studies about 40 pages long That's where the 10,000 hour rule came from all of those And so what they found out about myelin is It's actually helps in skill acquisition. So skill acquisition There's three important things, you know So every emotion skill feeling thought is a precisely tuned electrical signal that's traveling through a chain of neurons a circuit of nerve fibers Right, that's that skill in its rawest form Myelin is the substance that wraps and insulates the nerve fiber and increases the signal speed strength and accuracy So as You know, let's say you're trying to learn something new on the drums and you're like, okay, here's this new thing And you start into it and all of a sudden the brain is scrambling going what the heck guys We're supposed to learn this new thing. So what happens is their supporter cells called and i'm going to mispronounce this but the it's it's Oh, uh oligo dendrocytes I believe is what it is in astrocytes So they sense the nerve firing and what they this is getting way nerdy or probably nerded up Yeah, uh, so they were the nerves firing and they respond by wrapping more myelin Uh Around the fiber that fires. So what it's doing is in turn. It's making this insulated high speed cable Essentially is what it's doing. What my brain goes to is an audio cable where you have a It's it's got a bend. It's got a break. You start introducing noise into the cable and you start the cable's compromised It's not a nice exact height well made cable Right and it results in increasing velocities up to which the crazy thing increasing velocities of speed as far as skill Uh skill acquisition skill development skill execution of up to a hundred times An uninsulated nerve fiber. That's crazy that we can go a hundred times faster just by insulating that So you've got that uh, the everything is is is as traveling along a set of neurons Myelin's the substance that wraps it and the more we fire a particular circuit the more myelin optimizes it So the more times we're correctly repeating something and going through it The more the brains go and hey those supporter cells are firing it and they they that myelin Starts to grow around that nerve fiber and it starts to insulate it So it can fire quicker. It can we can we can communicate and we can improve the computer in our head But they didn't know this 20 30 years ago. This is something that they didn't know So skill acquisition has zero to do with talent skill acquisition is all about myelin Firing the correct neurons and getting it to wrap around there so that you can do that skill Faster, you know, can I create more myelin or can I am I stuck with what I've got or no Enhanced it or how's that work? Yeah, so the myelin grows as you know as those as it's triggered to grow in other words It's like, oh, we're doing this skill. Let's start insulating that so it it grows, you know within there So you can you know where you weren't Insulating something now you are we have these great studies that have come about, you know There's a great book called why we sleep and it's the importance of sleep for the brain and what it does to the brain How the brain functions while we're sleeping there's a reason why you can't play something one day You go to sleep wake up the next day you go sit down on the kit and you can all of a sudden play it Isn't it like it's it's like a dishwasher where it cleans I forget what I was just listening to where you go to sleep at night and it runs like a dishwasher that cleans out All this gunk in your brain. Yeah, so what happens is our brain doesn't go to sleep Our brain different different areas of it start firing and and it's really It's really fascinating to watch the brain as we sleep the brain's not sleeping the brain is busy firing Trying to make sense of what was happening during the day Trying to get that myelin in place trying to so that the next time you sit down It's able to perform the task that you are asking it to do So the brain understands and it just needs time. That's why I tell all my students I say if you'll just give the brain time to do what the brain does best It's really a fascinating thing. So instead of my practice time. I was just learning a David Garibaldi groove I'm I'm teaching a lesson on him And lots of notes, right? And at first it's frustrating But what I what I tell myself is no, you just need to repeat it successfully Slowly over and over in small chunks. And if we do that and create those feedback loops eventually Start catching on and they get smoother and all of a sudden you're able to play this thing So just knowing how the brain functions helps me in my practice time go, you know what I just I have to give it physically more time for myelin to grow And insulate that fiber so it can fire faster so that I can play this thing that I want to play Is that why sometimes if you play something and you struggle with it And you're like, I just can't get it and you come back a day later and you're like, wow, I got it now One of the big things and you know us talking about the the cognitive abilities are talking about, you know The prefrontal cortex and task management all that stuff. We we didn't understand And one of the things that the study I mentioned earlier the the role of deliberate practice and the acquisition of expert performance One of the things they found out was that just as important as The practice time even more so is your time away from the instrument So they found that you know, these these players who were top of the tops elite in their field Were sleeping three and four times as much as they were practicing their recreational activity was two and three times the amount Of time they spent practicing on the weekends Their their recreational activity and sleep may may flip a little bit, but they're still maintaining these ratios So what that tells us is the amount of deliberate practice we're able to do on our instrument Is not really related to How much time we have And and and the elite in field in any field how much time they spend practicing is not related to how much time they have to practice What it's related to is how long it took them to recover from their last deliberate practice session So what this does for us is drummers and what you know used to growing up when I didn't understand this I would get very frustrated and I'd be like I got eight hours. I'm just going to muscle this out Well, that's not really the best way to go about learning this instrument You go through phases where you're practicing, you know, five six seven hours a day But you can't sustain that long term and so what is good to know is I put in my two hours Now I'm going to go and it's great for me to understand that spending time with my wife is actually helping me get better at the drums It's actually helping my brain recover Sleeping is helping my brain recover eating is helping my brain recover and that helps my next practice session So knowing that takes a lot of stress off of our practice time as drummers And there are times when I go, you know what I'm done for today I'm putting it down and and then I just walk away and I'm cool with it You know another thing we didn't understand that was that focus was a finite focus We don't have endless amounts of focus during the day. It is very much Like a muscle it is limited. We only have a certain amount of it during the day And so I actually organized my work day According to how much focus I feel like I have and I and I have a list of physical tasks I can do that take zero brain activity and a list of those more intense. I really need to think through these So really these advancements and how the brain works Give us a better view of how to learn an instrument. When did they come around? Like when did all of this stuff come into play? I mean, is this in the last 10 years? Is this uh So so the advancements in the brain and understanding of it really in the past 20 years It's just been a slew of things and you got to think all the advancements that have come up to this time within drumming within technology Um now that we have better imaging now that we can like all those advancements and technologies What's allowing us to be able to see all these things that in flip help us to Learn something like an instrument better. There's a great book called the first 20 hours Where he goes through kind of that initial learning phase of those first 20 30 hours Um and how to do that. So um cool It's it's really a crazy thing how the how the brain works Now another advancement with drumming that has allowed us to become more efficient with practicing Is this kind of is this kind of going where you wanted to I just want to make sure Oh, no, no, I love this. I mean, I would just say my the takeaway that I'm getting for that As a you know, it's it's modern stuff But as a drummer would just be to to not drive yourself nuts feeling like you didn't practice for eight hours It's it's it's beneficial to let your brain rest and all that stuff Which we can learn from the history of people not doing that not knowing this Exactly and you know, it's beneficial to have a balanced life. You know, it's not okay to burn yourself out Just doing this one thing My marriage is happier when I practice and my practice is happier whenever I spend time on my marriage My practice time is better whenever I spend time with my kids My practice time is better whenever I get enough sleep whenever I'm going to movies with friends It increases my practice time and the productivity in there. So knowing that allows me to actually schedule events For my practice, you know, no, I'm taking time off. I'm going to go for a walk That's going to help me be a better drummer, you know Seems it seems counter-tuitive, but that it really is that so another one of the advancements that we've had is is advancements in How we're able to practice as far as the physical instrument. So E kits coming around so many for many years drummers were not able to practice in apartments That wasn't an issue for a guitar player. They could just kind of grab the acoustic and practice in an apartment Whereas we as drummers this no one wants to hear you play in an apartment. It's not pleasing at all No And so when you have something like an e-kit come around and some of the more recent advancements We've started seeing like silent stroke heads from remo aquariums got their super pads that you can play on Yep, quiet symbols. Yes. Yeah, they'll be making lad symbols Many people who couldn't practice at one time now can whether that be they couldn't practice because of their physical location I've lived in apartments. I couldn't practice because of a town home I drove across town to a practice unit that I've rented To practice every morning at 5 a.m. I get it So, you know that allows them to practice or whether that be because you have a family member that hates your drumming And that's totally cool. You know, that's an issue y'all should probably talk about but Probably should bring that to the table sometime. Yeah Now you can practice quietly before oh the only time I have to practice before work Cool, grab some lad symbols some silent stroke heads. You're now able to practice before work It's a crazy thing. So what I've seen as a teacher in the online Space is I've seen a massive movement of 40 45 and over coming to the instrument They have the time they have the money to grab the stuff and now oh, I can get this e-kit Oh, I can get this, you know, silent strokes or I had the option to do both Yeah, et cetera and so forth. So Advancements on on the side of of the instrument itself. Yeah allows us to now practice An instrument that's abrasive and loud At times when before we were unable to practice now and I find it kind of interesting with that about Like e-kits been around for a long time. I'm gonna say They're I feel like we can do a whole episode on e-kits and Simmons and the lindrum machine and all that But so I'm just gonna throw this out there without knowing that I'm correct. But um I feel like e-drums were originally Created to be a part of someone else's to be a part of a bigger drum set You know the big octagon pads like the Simmons. I forget what it is. It's the sdx or something like that That to me wasn't created from from what I can put together to be in someone's apartment You're not gonna have because I think they were super expensive Like a lot of you know v drums and stuff are now But it went from being this kind of 80s flock of seagulls kind of huge octopads set to a smaller This is made for apartments Kind of thing so that seems like more of a a recent kind of You know going from these big electronic drum sets to oh wait people want to do this to be quiet not to be for sure For sure 80s new wave band Yeah, so it's you know, it's amazing be a number of advancements that have come along and that have affected Our our instrument as we go now. We've talked about all the positive things. Yeah So I'll I'll be I'll be Debbie Downer. Let's get the apologies to anybody that's named Debbie out there I'll I'll be Debbie Downer here and be that you know, I'm like that old guy railing against social media I'm really not I post there all the time if you don't follow my youtube channel I post four lessons a month there some of them are 30 45 minutes like I'm all about it But what has happened is we've had social media come along so before whenever I saw my favorite players play So let's just take a Dave Weckel I went and saw Dave Weckel play in clinic. I learned from his rock drumming play along book I saw him play with chick korea Recently, um, I mean like I love watching Dave Weckel play with music now Take social media nowadays And the 60 second glimpse we get of this person or the two or three minute curated view we get of this person And you you have the ability of separating the drums from the Music. Mm-hmm. And what this has done is it's It's almost It's almost given everyone a wrongs an incorrect starting point And if we start from the wrong point if we start away from the music and we start from I'm just learning this because that guy can do these licks Um, this is where we start to have a disconnect from the music and this is where you see a lot of older players Kind of kicking back against social media Now this is not just me saying that so I've talked to teachers from Berkeley I've talked to teachers from different universities. I've talked to private teachers They're all saying the same thing and that is There's a disconnect between what this person knows and what is actually needed on the gig Yeah, there's a disconnect between what this student can play. They can play this fantastical 30 second note, you know linear Whatever on the drums, but they can't keep a beat for two minutes, you know, they can't play You know Billy Jean correctly. Yeah, so what that leads to in the practice room It's a real discontentment with where you're headed Because instead of the goal being to create music the goal has now been to one up or to learn this crazy lick And when you can't pull that off Or what I see a lot of times when you can pull it off But you don't understand the musical application for it to me It's a very empty goal To me it's a very empty place to wind up at a place where I can play this crazy lick But I have no example of it ever being used in music. Yeah, I have no way to ever know if it could be in used in music I just know this crazy lick So for me whenever we have a disconnect like that that is brought about by technology that historically they did not have to deal with um Now we have a problem in the practice room Not only that, uh, you know, we can go as deep as you want. There's a great book called deep work Another one called the distracted mind. I mentioned earlier where it goes really in depth on Um discussing the amount of the population now that is displaying signs of OCD Um, so they are self interrupting themselves. They are checking Phones tablets for the sake of checking them and for all of you that want to test on this the next time you're standing in line It's your favorite coffee place time. How long it takes you before you interrupt yourself standing in line and say I need to check whatever it may be. Yeah, maybe it's your email. Maybe it's your cell phone. Maybe it's whatever, you know We're self interrupting ourselves The book deep work goes into how workers in modern day knowledge work, which is what many of us do Are losing the ability to go deep because they're always skating on the surface of checking email checking social media Let me, you know respond to this message from my co-worker. Oh, they just interrupted me here open working spaces Blah blah blah blah blah all of this bleeds over into the practice room and I can give you a really good um kind of We'll go back historically, you know, let's go back to when I was like 22 23 So I played on bourbon street. I got I began gigging when I was 16 I got my first full-time gig on bourbon street at john wainters famous store on the corner of kantai in bourbon when I was 19 And I did that gig for three years and kind of had proved to myself. I can make a living as a musician This is a dead end road, uh as far as Um, just staying on the street there on bourbon street. There were guys there that were 55 I was playing with that had coke habits They, you know, I was go keeping their family while their wives were going to try to find them behind grocery stores all crack down like it's a real life experiences of of you know, I had a One keyboard player that was on heroin and just could not shake it like real life situations alcoholics all these things of a life lived on that street and not Going any further. So I said, you know, I think I've learned what I can learn here I want to go ahead and move on and go back and get my jazz studies degree So that's what I did when I was about 22 23. I quit the gig. I had The full-time gig I had working six or seven days a week playing What I always thought I wanted to do and I went back to school and paid to do that and um During that time was right around the time the cell phone was starting to come And I resisted getting one for a long time because I saw it as a distraction And then, you know, finally got one because I was missing work Well, then texting came along, you know, and I remember Distinctly the first time texting entered my practice space. So I'm sitting there practicing and my practice time was like my time, you know My wife, I actually met my and I didn't meet her. She saw me for the first time at my very first gig I was playing percussion In a Christmas show and I stood up and had to play jingle bells You know, I was like the percussion guy and they had a Rudolph nose on me with antlers And that's the first time my wife saw me and she's like, you know, sold whoever that Yeah, gotta marry that. I'm sure it went way different than that. But um, so I always tell people I'm like, yeah I found my career my wife in the same night. So Um, and that was when I was 16 and so she's been moving this whole time She understands that I have to practice all this stuff. So it was kind of an understanding I am practicing and um, I remember right before I sat down to practice a text came through Well, I'd never Received text. I had not pre-program myself. I need to check that. I'm like, I'm sure it's not important I just put the phone down plugged it in Uh started practicing at 30 45 minutes later I pick up the phone and I've got like 12 missed text messages. Um, you know I've got like three or four missed phone calls and I'm like, whoa, what's going on? You know, is she okay? So I called her and I said, hey, is everything okay? And she said, yeah, why aren't you answering your phone? I said, well, I was you know, I was practicing I told her I was going to practice. She said, yeah, but I've been messaging you know, I said, yeah, but I was It's not like computing with me. I was like, yeah, but I was practicing I'm not sure if you heard me say that or not but and uh, and she said, yeah, I just thought something was wrong Because you weren't answering your text And I remember hanging up the phone and sitting I was living in my grandmother's old house She had passed away and we were taking care of it when I was in college And I remember thinking this is a this is a problem This is a problem for this to be able to interrupt my day like this. Yeah So we have a lot of people trying to practice the drums with They don't have a solid plan because they're grabbing this youtube video. They're working on this lick whatever that is The plan is not centered around music So there's no real end goal of this is the reason we're learning this You know, everything I learned coming up was for a gig I started gigging at 16 like everything I was learning was on the gig like you got to learn this for a gig Gene Krupa sing sing sing. Henry taught me that on the back on a on an upside down cardboard box Because I had to learn it for a gig. I was playing And so there's a disconnect between why we're learning what we're learning and then inner All of the interruptions that happen whether that be email social media All the self-interrupting behavior checking social media during our breaks all of that stuff and our focus is out the window So this doesn't seem like a big deal to do with drums But it actually has everything to do with drums And one of the biggest things you could do during your drum practice time Is to in a inform everyone that you're practicing the drums Don't interrupt me and b eliminate the distractions something that people don't understand They think to get better at focus you have to try to focus harder When really to get better at focus we have to become better at ignoring outside inputs And so to focus harder. I don't I don't try to focus harder To focus harder on our conversation right now. I'm ignoring anything I may have to do tonight I'm ignoring anything I may have to do in five minutes because this is what's important to me right now And so we have to become better at ignoring. I see it as Like with anything you do like you can spend twice as much time doing it kind of half as focused Or focus a hundred percent and get it done In half the time. Yeah, just focusing a hundred percent Versus just splitting your time and saying like oh, man, I've got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this It's just just focus do it. Yep. Get it over with And you'll just do it better Yeah, and and you know, I'll have people say, you know, oh, hold on I'm just checking my email before we start this lesson And I said, well, why would you do that? You know, well, I'm not going to respond And so I'm going why why are you checking man? All that's going to do is whether you respond or not in your head You're writing that email to your boss in your head You're aggravated about that customer that needs a refund in your head You need to give your friend that link that they wanted to buy the sweater that you got in your head You're already fulfilling it. So you might as well stop what you're doing and go do it Yeah, because in your head, it's going to constantly remind you it's kind of the lizard brain part of our of our brain. Yeah, so As well technology has brought a lot of positive things But there's also a lot of of not so great things that it's brought with it in the in the form of distraction Which is what I spend a lot of my time dealing with and it's and it's you know confounded because I teach online Yeah, and so I spend a lot of my time Trying to limit how much my students interface with Tablets and phones that are connected to the internet or anything or py-fi You know, put it on airplane mode tell people, you know, you're not there You know turn your email auto responder on whatever you have to do to let them know that you're busy Um, and for me it's come down to getting very serious about things like email I batch check email. I batch response to email. So two or three times a week I reserve three and four hours and I go I get a lot of email So I go through it and I respond to everyone during that time And so you're getting a response in about the same amount of time you would get from me But it's not interrupting Your time Man another negative that I think of is you kind of talked about it earlier of like could imagine seeing like Tony williams on um instagram or gene krupa Now I almost think that wouldn't be as cool I think that sometimes when you can see everyone you can be like, oh, this is this famous drummer's dog It's like and here's him hanging out at the beach with his wife It takes away a little bit of that kind of mystique and coolness. I think so too Where where legend it's it's hard to be quite as much of a legend When everyone can see what you're doing all the time So I think the social media aspect is like, you know, sometimes it's like like you meet your heroes And then you realize they're just people sometimes you can meet your hero by searching their name on instagram and finding them Um, if they're if they're living where I think there's there's a little bit of that like, you know Oh my god, it's the coolest guy in the world Elvin jones, what if he was on Instagram it'd be different It'd be just and he probably wouldn't be as good at his craft if we're being honest here because he's spending time on Exactly, you know, there's nothing that instagram helps you do on the drums as far as in your practice time Yeah, another another discussion. I've gotten in with people is Kind of that behind the scenes which you were just referring to what we used to never see And that is, you know, I've had this discussion of the gospel chop scene or whatever that is And so they see these drummers that are playing an ariata grande gig or something that have the ability to have these monster chops And they think that's called for to get that level of a gig because there's three or four Examples of players playing at a very high level that can shred like crazy Here's the deal that a lot of them don't understand for every player you have that is and please mad respect I love I love all drummers and all players. I'm not talking bad about anyone person or style But I can point to for every player you point out. I can give you five or six right off the top of my head That do not have the capability to play those insane chops But they'll go into a session and they'll cut a number one record in no time. Like it's nobody's business. Yeah So what we're seeing is we're seeing kind of the fantastic side of drumming. Whereas the real working nuts and bolts drummers You know, I talked to them a lot and they're like, I don't know why anyone would find what I do interesting on instagram You know making a number one album is not exactly You know, I played, you know, the money beat or I played For three minutes. Yeah, why would they want to see me do that? They don't kind of comprehend now obviously that takes an intense level of focus and Precision to be able to play like that. But they just don't see it translating on they say there's nothing fantastical about this This is just our job. This is what we do. This is how I you know make my living There's always going to be buddy riches. There's always going to be Showman and the absolutely and there's a place for that. But as far as just drummers in general our job is time and interacting with the music and making music And it's not so much worried about chops. So the negative side of this all these advancements we've made is It's got that down kind of dark side where we lose focus. We don't have a plan We're looking at the wrong end goal And so when we do learn these Really hard things There's they're not very satisfying because they're You know that being able to play complicated on things on the drums is is not an end goal within itself The music is that end goal. Yeah, so when we take that end goal away It really becomes an empty pursuit to in my in my mind Yeah, exactly. You see some of the guys who are iconic drummers where they like They may be a huge drummer in and played on huge albums, but they have they don't do anything with social media And they've got 200 followers And it's like that doesn't mean that doesn't take anything away from what they've done But then you look at someone who's just an instagram drummer, which I mean Obviously, we are both guys who have instagram accounts and focus on it and it's huge for our podcast and your business and everything but um, that doesn't mean that It's just different to have a number one smash hit album playing drums on it You know what? I mean, it's just it's just an interesting well And and it's the difference, you know, whenever if you were to take tony williams away from the miles davis You know group or any other group that he played in there was tiny tons of them and isolate his drum tracks They don't really make a lot of sense by themselves Yeah, exactly But once you put the music in there and then you hear what he was playing to and who he was responding to All of a sudden it's like oh, wow. So that lick really wasn't just a lick. He was responding to whatever, you know They did or like fill in a cdc kind of thing. It's like I mean very appropriate drummers for who they're playing with Sure, sure. It's all about what job are you doing and what's your goal for learning this instrument? Yeah, so it we're we live to we're in a very blessed time We have all of these resources you have the ability to take from, you know people you would never be able to take from Take advantage of that but as as well just understand that they're just tools Yeah, you know and uh, not everything's a nail. You don't need a hammer for everything Not everything's a screw so you don't need a screwdriver for everything You need different tools for different things and when that tool has exhausted its use put it down, you know and and go back to um To doing things the way we've done them and learning the way we learn very well put um So steven if people wanted to learn from you because you are obviously as they've learned a very well-spoken and Thoughtful guy when it comes to drums Why don't you tell them a little bit about you or where they can find you and what you do as we kind of wrap up here Sure. So, um, I Grew up a pastor's kid in south mississippi and my parents both dabbled in music My mom was the minister of music and so I had kind of that early exposure to music and song and in that setting early on started playing when I was uh 14 And played on stage my first time that first week. I had my drum set. That's where that mentor I talked about earlier He said, you know, your mom told me that you're a drummer and I said well, my mom's wrong I have a drum set Definitely not a drummer and he said cool. I need you this weekend and I'm like, I don't I'm not sure you heard me joes If it's uh, I have a drum set. He's like, yeah, don't worry. Just watch. Yeah, he said just watch my hands So I played three times that week for three different groups of people and services and Um, so all through my high school. I had two to three rehearsals a week Two to three shows gigs a week within the church and then I started gigging when I was 16 With cover bands stage shows. I did a ton of stage shows and pit drumming And then when I was 19 got my first full-time gig Did that in New Orleans then moved back on my degree in jazz studies Then we came up here to Nashville and I kind of started doing the Nashville Thing and played with some, you know Some some major label artists and kind of proved to myself that I could do that I was playing some sessions with players that I really respected and kind of proved to myself I could do that I got scientific universal records with my own group and um and proved to myself I could do that I'm not really a competitive person when it comes with other people I'm very self competitive, but once I've kind of proved something to myself I really have to step back and go Does this make sense for me and my family and how I want my life to look and the touring musician life It wasn't looking too appealing to me The studio work was drying up a lot of it. It's very, you know And so I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do and how to do it So I got completely out of music for Uh, a few years took a personal training and my wife said are you ever going to get back in music? And I said well if I do I'll be able to say where I work how I work who I work with how much I get paid all that stuff And I told her I said maybe someone would want lessons online. I don't know youtube had just come around nobody had There wasn't anything monetized. Um, I think Mike Johnston This was his early days when he had just posted a couple lessons on youtube Nobody it was just kind of a new thing. Yeah, and uh, I just bought a computer and I told her I said well, maybe You know, maybe that'll be something I can do. So anyway fast forward I started, you know posted videos on youtube and um 2011 I opened up my website stephensdrumshed.com and um That was when I started taking online students and I've been doing it full time since the middle of 2015 Now I have a couple people that work with me and uh, we just bought a place for the studio We're renovating that right now. We're really excited about that. We're going to start offering some in-person drum camps and So we have a membership program on the website the drum better daily program And you can get in there a great community of drummers. We have Kind of what would I guess would set me apart is I'm very focused on goal driven Success driven lessons. So you get in there. We get you a plan together And then you execute on that plan and you work through the lessons that you need to and ignore the rest And then we have live stream q and a's and we have the forums and we have you know, um, we have tech talk And we have all kinds of stuff in there that are resources But the core of it is we this is your plan. This is what you're working on And then we have that ability for them to send in things to get reviewed and email me and talk to me in chat So that's there if you want some free stuff. We got the drum, uh, the drum show podcast. That's a newer thing. I think we're uh, eight nine ten episodes in and um, I've been answering emails since 2009 Um, and I started at some point answering with voice messages because uh, I get so many so many emails And I've answered the same questions over and over for the years. So I've developed a very thorough answer for Hey, what if I feel unbalanced on my drum throne? I actually have a very thorough answer for you on that I have a very thorough answer for um, you know, hey, what's going on with my hand technique I have very thorough answers for for some very common, you know, uh, my wife hates my drumming What do I do? You know that I actually have a thought out thorough answer for that. So, um, that's the focus of the Drum show is it's just a q&a format. It's it's Drummers questions from around the world. I pull directly from them and then I answer them. It's all about You guys and so um, that format really excites me and it's just and it's and it's we're getting good feedback And I'm having a lot of fun doing it. So every every Every episode it's about uh, three or four questions long and um, We really get into the nitty gritty of drumming and our jobs as drummers and you know My goal is that you take three or four things away from it every time you listen. Oh, I didn't think of it that way or Oh, I'll try that. Uh, that's the goal for that youtube. You can catch a free lesson weekly Saturdays is whenever I drop those at the moment And uh, so yeah always tons of free stuff. There's you know, some some some paid stuff if you want that as well, but Um, if you want to check me out and then I'm obviously on all the socials as well Instagram and all that I just yeah, you're you're a great guy and you're very uh, it's it's kind of uh, it gets you all jazzed up to Practice when you hear someone else who's really passionate about it. So, um, I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and again, so everyone knows that's stevens drum shed dot com um The drum show podcast, which is awesome. I'm a fan of it I listen to it regularly and hear other people's questions and and I think it's cool because sometimes you um I like to think that maybe I do this with this podcast is sometimes people are afraid to ask questions because it looks Makes you look dumb or it makes you look like you're not professional and um I try to do that on this show where I say man, I don't know what that is. I I don't know what the heck my along is or Myelin So uh now I know but um Awesome. Yeah, and thank you for you know this this I think is something that's needed in the drum In the drum spaces that historical look at what we're doing and and why we do it I think we can learn so much by looking uh at the past and looking at how people did it before And we really can't become a unique creative until we have Emulated uh the greats and emulated our our our idols and heroes and so I think something that supports the history of our instrument Is is really important and really sorely needed. Yeah in our in our niche So I really appreciate you bringing that to the table man. Cool. Thank you. Well, I'm glad to have you on the show and um I will uh, I will see you around and I want to give a quick shout out to uh, tim from queen city drums who is currently in nashville your neck of the woods. He's picking up a uh drum set for me from uh maddie meyer who is a former guest It's a little gold sparkle apollo MIJ Stencil kit that i'm getting to put in my uh, my wife said why don't you get a little drum set? So I have a three month old baby so the baby can grow up around drums and I'm like, yeah, it's done Done. I done. I already ordered it. I already bought it So um again, thank you to tim from queen city drums Made here in simpson adi ohio Very cool guy and he really helped me out on that one. So Cool, man. Well, I'm excited to start using your uh, your lessons I'm going to start with the saturday ones and uh and go from there on my new Gold sparkle apollo drum set. I know man. I'm jealous. Thanks for having me bar to really do appreciate it. See you, steven 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 gwin sound podcast