Dying From Exposure and a Wise Old Hooker

It has already started, and it was of course inevitable.
Facebook posts and tweets from venue owners .looking for acts to do unpaid performances in the name, sometimes a tad spuriously, of charity.

Be warned, my fellow performers, if Covid 19 doesn't get you, there's always the risk of dying from exposure, and whilst the self employment grant is a vital lifeline, for which I feel I'd like to do something in return, I'm not going to allow myself to be exploited, and neitner should you.

Here's what I wrote on the subject a few years back.


This post touches on a deeply controversial subject. 
Money. 
It's an old problem that simply is not getting better.
Specifically money for playing music and I'm editing and reposting having been made aware of an absolutely outrageous 'opportunity' to work, unpaid, at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo for the best part of a month.
Don't apply here...

Sadly this has an all-too-familiar ring about it. Remember when the Olympic games came to London in 2012, and there were all sorts of performance 'opportunities' (ahem!) being offered for that oh-so-precious commodity. 'exposure'. I can't help but wonder exactly how many participants in the Olympic free gig marathon are now internationally known and independently wealthy as a direct consequence.

Photo by Mario Pietrangeli

This original post was prompted by a question recently as to why my big band rarely appears in public these days. We had a fantastic time and so much great feedback over the recent World's Greatest Drummer Concert featuring Ian Palmer, Steve White and Keith Carlock and the question I have been asked the most is when is the band doing another gig?

Soon I hope.

I'll let you know.



On a show like WGD the band is a big expense. Just like every other time we play. I long since gave up the door split gigs.  I did that once a month for a year in the mid 90s when I was developing the band, it served its purpose and those days have gone. On a bad day I used to go to the cash machine in the interval to ensure I had enough to give the musicians some decent expenses at least. These days though it's all different, and the musicians I employ are paid an appropriate, professional fee. Paying musicians well to play great repertoire inspires loyalty and great performances.


Whenever an inquiry comes in for the band there is sometimes a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone. Two years ago an arts festival in Buckinghamshire offered me a fee roughly sixty percent below what I asked for so I declined. He then engaged the services of a peripatetic secondary school drum tutor (nothing wrong with that of course) and a pick up band to play similar repertoire at less than half price. I have always believed that you should tailor your budget according to the band you want, not the other way around.

Cheaper bands are available.
Fact of life.

Don't forget that the cheapest car on the second hand car lot is the most likely to be the least reliable and in the poorest condition.

Musicians and bands, we're luxury items. The higher the quality and the bigger the name, the higher the price.


Arts funding and crowdfunding can often bring works and performances into being that otherwise would not exist. Occasionally though there is no alternative other than to take a deep breath, put your hand in your pocket and bankroll your own career. One or two of my more comfortably off friends are endlessly getting approached by people looking for support for their projects. 
Don't invite other people to invest in your work if you won't put your own money on the line. This I have done myself sometimes at significant personal expense. I once sold my home in order to fund performing activities, but that's just a measure of how much it means. That apartment would be worth half as much again as I sold it for, but arguably I wouldn't have the career, so money, whilst better to have than not, is by no means the be-all and end-all of existence, and if it's just sitting in the bank generating a tiny amount of interest rather than a whole lot of energy then what's the point?

There are certain gigs that fall into the 'under the radar' category. Those low key, low profile performances which take place away from the glare of publicity and without a carefully orchestrated PR campaign (attention seeking, as it is also known).

I did such a show the other day with two close musical comrades with whom I have been happily associated for many years. The degree of freedom afforded by this kind of performance is unequaled, and it's a great opportunity to work up new repertoire as well as honing techniques and concepts on the drums. 'Paid practice' as I am fond of saying.

The gig in question paid me the princely sum of sixty five pounds.

Sixty five pounds.

I know. It probably doesn't seem like a huge return on the years of investment of time in developing my skills as a musician, but there was no admission charge, it was a tiny venue, we had complete autonomy over the repertoire, we chose to be there and nobody was raking in money on the back of our efforts. (That happens rarely in the jazz world it won't surprise you to know). 

Where no one is making money I don't have a problem. Exploitation is a different matter altogether.

Supply and demand. London is the most exciting, vibrant and diverse music city anywhere on the planet by quite some distance. Musicians from all over the world want to come to London and who can blame them? 
The economic effect of this of course is that now in 2016 musicians' wages are at an all-time low. 
I often describe the London jazz scene as tens of thousands of musicians chasing a few dozen gigs and this has never been more true. We all want to play, we all want to be heard and we all have bills to pay.
This makes me think of a fabulous young jazz musician who recently announced on Facebook that due to lack of opportunities to play he was calling it a day. Luckily he has other talents and does not depend on music for his living.
That's what I call integrity.
He could have said he would play for less money to be out there more frequently, or be less discriminating about what he plays and with whom. 

In one of my posts on the subject of practice I stressed the importance of continuity. There is nothing better for a musician than to play regularly in environments that stretch you to the peak of your ability, and this reminds me of a purple patch, musically, professionally and financially some twenty years ago.


The mid 90's was a very busy and exciting time for me. It brought me to a life changing fork in the road careerwise which will be the subject of a future post. As a result of a regular Thursday night jazz quartet residency at the glamorous Willesden Green Library Centre, I got offered a regular road gig playing mainstream jazz with the late Keith Smith. Smith, (whose January 2008 obituary in the Telegraph began 'Keith Smith was a powerful trumpeter, an astute businessman and a deeply unattractve man') pretty much single handedly invented the jazz tribute package show. He would recruit a name who would pull a crowd (Georgie Fame, Paul Jones and during my tenure with his organisation the wonderful vocalist Elaine Delmar) and put together a themed show more often than not based around one of the great American popular composers, Gershwin, Porter, Hoagy Carmichael etc. This approach to marketing jazz feels done to death now but back then in the pre-post modern era (if I can get away with that) it was fresh and new, often attracting sponsorship from brands like Southern Comfort. So tenacious was Smith that the diary was full. There would be occasional moments of strangeness with fees, where you'd go on a six date tour to discover that two of the dates were on a profit share basis but for the most part he was paying the guys in the band £150 per show. 

Bear in mind that this was 20 years ago when petrol was 44p a litre and you could buy a two bed flat in zone 5 for under £60,000, this then begins to feel like a tidy sum of money. 
Not only that but the exposure was pivotal to me. Having not moved to London until age 29 I had a lot of catching up to do, and this opportunity was the perfect vehicle as it made me recognisable to jazz audiences the length and breadth of the UK. This occurred at exactly the same time as the launch of the Pete Cater Big Band so all in all I was making good money and getting plenty of the right kind of exposure.

Since when did those things become mutually exclusive?

Sadly it is now a daily occurrence on social media to see posts highlighting downright exploitation of musicians in the grubbiest ways imaginable.
As I was writing this post my attention was drawn to the activities of an organisation named Hauser Wirth, who  had been casting around for gullible musicians to stage 'voluntary' performances at their summer party. Here's the poster should you be in any doubt. Thankfully the democratic power of social media has forced them to reconsider. By the way, they're not a hedge fund, law firm or accountancy practice; they're an art gallery! Supporting artists on the one hand and on the other asking musicians to give their services free. How much further beyond irony can you get? A few weeks ago we had the Sainsbury's artist in residence scandal where local artists were invited to redesign the staff canteen of the Camden branch of the supermarket again free of charge. Social media pressure won the day again and the 'incentive' was withdrawn.


So far so good, but what about when the solidarity breaks down?


It came to my attention that a three day festival in the Midlands was offering minor support slots and beer tent gigs to local bands and sadly they had no shortage of mugs who were happy to sign on the dotted line. When challenged festival organisers will almost always trot out the 'insufficient budget' line. Perhaps if your budget is insufficient you should re-evaluate your whole business strategy or tell me what you do for a living and let me see if I can find somebody who pursues the same activity as a hobby and get them to do it unpaid. Worst of all is the false promise of the benefits of 'exposure'.

People die from exposure.

Also whether you are putting out a live band, making records or promoting concerts, everything you pay to musicians can be offset against tax liabilities. This is your opportunity to fund the arts directly at source. Just have a think about that for a moment. 

Companies employ accountants to reduce their tax liabilities. What I fail to understand is why they then make these outrageous offers in the name of 'exposure' when they could actually do the arts world a little bit of good by supporting live performances and new works rather than paying HMRC to support DFID's ludicrous foreign aid strategy.


One of my students told me of a recent gig where he and his band mates had played a door split show with two other bands and came out of it with just about enough to go to McDonald's. Heartbreaking, but will it lead to the big break? Can you add it to your 10,000 hours? For more on this see my earlier post entitled You've Got Time To Practise (Part 2). I know about paying your dues in this industry but again, someone is doing nicely out of this sort of event so it's exploitation, pure and simple.

Another area in which I have professional interests is the film and television industry, and I think this cult of unpaid work has to some extent migrated from there. Movies and TV production are brim full of interns and runners doing unpaid work in the hope of gaining some experience, making a few useful contacts and ascending the greasy pole. The key difference is the skill set, you can blag a gig as a runner just as soon as you've figured out how to work a walkie talkie, but have a go at depping a sight reading gig a week after you bought your first set of drums and let's see how you get on.

If a musician is good enough to perform at your event then they are good enough to paid appropriately.

End of.


The fee you receive for your performance in so many ways says a great deal about what you are perceived to be worth. Your perception as the recipient of the fee as well as the perception of whoever is paying you.
Think about that one too.

The days when there were significant sums of money to be made from playing a musical instrument are now in the past. This is not to say that there isn't still money to be made from the industry but you stand a far greater chance of accumulating wealth as a rapper, DJ, accountant or lawyer. Again I stress that for many highly skilled professionals the actual playing of music will frequently not generate an annual top line income much in excess of £14,400, equivalent to working a 40 hour week on national minimum wage for 50 weeks per year. Most professional musicians of my acquaintance do a certain amount of teaching, or writing. More and more players are running studios and diversifying in other ways to stay afloat in a shrinking and over-populated sector.

I can remember the feeling of elation when doing my first gig which paid a 'professional' fee. It was 1977 and I received £14 for a Saturday night function gig at the Manor Hotel, Meriden.  Back then jobs tended to pay between eight and fifteen pounds, and with my school friends getting a pound for a five day a week paper round I was in relative terms a plutocrat. The highest earner in my school, a year or so later Central Television's  Johnny Patrick contracted me for the house band of a four week international circus at the NEC. I was earning £220 a week in 1979 and missing school in order to do so. The headmaster very nearly had a seizure when it came to light I was earning more than he was.
I'm fairly sure that was the last time I was the highest earner in the class of '81.

The rest of the world thinks we are all millionaires living in mansions. Not quite, and added to which since the original post Sadiq Khan now charges me £36.50 just for the privilege of using London's roads to do gigs where there's an early set up and a post midnight finish.

Every unpaid gig is a potential lost earning opportunity as well as acquiescence/complicity in the race to the bottom. More than once recently I have seen Facebook posts by musicians on the horns of a moral dilemma, concerned that by not taking part in the unpaid gig they are somehow 'letting the band down'. If you agree to play for nothing you personally are letting down an entire profession.

And another thing; people who pay other people 50p a day to wash cars end up in jail. 

Remember the words of a wise old hooker who once said,

"You'll struggle to get paid for it once people know you'll give it away for free".

And as a Covid 19 postscript, we are in a temporary and unique situation.
In response to those with the temerity to ask you to perform for little or no money, remember this response for future use:

"No thanks, I'm busy staying at home that night. It pays better".




For more information about clinics, masterclasses, personal tuition, guest appearances or any of my bands click here

You've Got Time To Practise (part 2)

Practice is an investment. An investment of time.
Time invested improves your time, hopefully.

Personally I like to get the maximum return on the minimum investment.

Just like with money.

On the investment of time one of the most interesting responses came from a particularly talented and driven student who had made it his aim to complete 10,000 hours of practice in order to achieve his desired level of expertise. My student was not alone in adopting this ever more popular theory of attainment of expertise through extraordinary focus and commitment.

This 10,000 hour rule is generally ascribed to writer Malcolm Gladwell and it is the key tenet of his 2008 book 'Outliers', which profiles a cross section of studies in extraordinary achievement. The most often repeated quote in the context of the 10,000 hour rule is as follows;

“In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours” (John Lennon)

Gladwell then goes on the make the connection between the Beatles' marathon stage sets in Germany to their maturity and success.

Uh oh. 
Problem.

10,000 hours didn't work for Pete Best.

As everyone knows, Best was unceremoniously dumped from the Beatles just as they were on the cusp of fame as producer George Martin felt that his playing was not of an appropriate standard for the newly signed band. Best's successor Ringo Starr had just a single two hour rehearsal with the band prior to his debut performance in the late Summer of 1962.

You know the rest.

A lot of good 10,000 hours did for poor old Pete, and the case can absolutely be made that the Beatles' initial  success probably hinged more on a couple of afternoons spent under the scrutiny of George Martin than any amount of hours spent playing the night spots of the Reeperbhan.

So the 10,000 hour rule although appealing and headline grabbing falls at an early fence. Whatever it was about Best's playing that George Martin disliked, all those hours of playing had made him really, really good at it.

It's worth bearing in mind that if you travel 6,000 miles from London you will get to Hollywood, but only if you head in the right direction.

You could just as easily travel 6,000 miles around the M25 and end up exactly where you started, just older and the worse for wear.

This shattering conclusion raises a number of important points which hark back to part 1 of this post.
What to practice, when to do it and perhaps most importantly of all, why? Time Well Spent?

I get asked questions all the time by my students, at clinics, drum shows and similar industry events and via social media. I'll always endeavour to take the time to answer, and to do so as truthfully as possible. Thankfully this kind of attitude is bordering on universally prevalent among my industry colleagues.

It wasn't always like this however. I remember my late father telling me of a meeting with a popular British modern jazz drummer of the late 1940's called Norman Burns. Eager to know how the visiting big shot had developed certain areas of his playing my Dad was fobbed off with

"Practice, man, practice".

Consequently I have always felt it is incumbent upon us to help and inspire our fellow musicians. Put your insecurity to one side. 

A drummer I admired a great deal, the great Buddy Rich could be notoriously obtuse about his extraordinary musical gifts, but in the short lived British publication Musicians Only he did talk briefly about his 'whole hand' approach to stick technique, which makes an awful lot of sense if you read and then watch some classic video of his playing with this additional insight in mind.

One of the most frequently occurring questions is how do you warm up before a gig. The short answer is I don't. I arrive at the venue in shape and ready to play. You won't find me sitting in the wings with a practice pad. Continuity is far more important. In a perfect world my warm up for tonight's gig is yesterday's gig, and tonight is the warm up for tomorrow. Given the unpredictability of the industry it's not as easy as that though, but playing with records, drum-less backing tracks and such can keep you on top of your game.

A noted USA drum star cut an innocent questioner to pieces at a UK clinic some years ago when he responded to a question something along these lines;

"If you don't put in a least six hours every day you're never going to make it!!".

Absolute complete and utter nonsense.

Also you need to be wise to what motivates much of this in the first place.

Money.

Specifically, your money.

Beware the free webinar about succeeding in the music industry, sooner or later there will be a 'limited offer for the first hundred subscribers'.

The motivational statement to guilt trip you into practising more stuff, and more worryingly raising false levels of expectation will sooner or later steer you in the direction of a book/DVD package and that oh-so tempting, shiny 'buy now' button.

More than ever we are bombarded by epigram and aphorism from the upper echelons of drummer world, guilt tripping us into being diligent, hard working players. 

Let's face it, there have never been more drum tutor books on the market. Next week there will be several more. Very few of them are saying a whole lot that hasn't been said before. In this day and age no one writes drum books to make the world a better place.

That said, there are a great many books out there that are worth every penny. Here's a by no means definitive list:

Stick Control for the Snare Drummer (George Lawrence Stone)
Progressive Steps to Syncopation (Ted Reed)
The Complete Drummer's Vocabulary as Taught by Alan Dawson (John Ramsay)
The Art of Bop Drumming (John Riley)
Brazilian Co ordination for Drumset (Maria Martinez)
Afro Cuban Co ordination for Drumset (Maria Martinez)
Patterns Volume 3, Time Functioning (Gary Chaffee)
Groove Essentials 1.0 The Play Along (Tommy Igoe)
Advanced Funk Studies (Rick Latham)
Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer (Jim Chapin). 

There. That ought to keep you busy for the time being.

Also high ranking is not knowing what to practise.

If in doubt just put the metronome on; a different tempo every day, and keep time in different styles, improvise or whatever. That's a great way of coming back to the instrument after a break and way more valuable than playing slow double strokes and gradually accelerating.

Remember also to practise spontaneity, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but it's a skill we all need on stage, in the rehearsal room and the studio.

The best thing of all that you can practice is thinking for yourself and developing the quiet confidence of a master. Listen to everything and everybody but be your own arbiter and don't merely follow the crowd. Case in point when a well known drummer said in a couple of interviews in the mid 80's the he practised at 40 bpm, drummers all over the world suddenly turned their metronome down to super slow, irrespective of whether this approach had any relevance to their specific needs as players.  Beware the wisdom of crowds, try to avoid slavish, unquestioning adherence to popular trends.


As for Pete Best  is he better than you? Truthfully probably not. He had a relatively undistinguished, minor music career entirely predicated upon having being dumped by the fab four. A career which would not have been afforded him had it not been for his brief association with arguably the most important band in the history of popular music. You could be forgiven for thinking that he is the unluckiest man in the history of showbusiness-right place, right time, wrong guy. 

Alternatively maybe he actually made the best of his talent and saw the advantage which is hidden in adversity, and as someone who made very little impact in the industry of any description until well past age 40 I'll be going into more detail on this subject in a future post.


For more information about clinics, masterclasses, personal tuition, guest appearances or any of my bands click here

You've Got Time To Practise (part 1)

Greatness may not be conferred upon every drummer who picks up a pair of sticks, far better to be the 'best you' with the talent that you have. That's not to say you shouldn't aim high, absolutely you should but be sure you know what it is you are aiming for. Quite a while ago I gave up on scoring the winning goal in the FA cup final, or being formula one champion. I'll probably never play the O2 arena either, but the point is I'm happy where I am. Equally importantly I know where I'm going and have strategies in place to make that happen insofar as I am able.


The key to successful dreaming is to target things you believe you are potentially capable of achieving, which reminds me of a very funny moment from The Sopranos.  Ambition needs to be thought through and ruthlessly planned. A friend of mine is determined to win an academy award and whilst the odds are long I can't help but admire the conviction, because without that you might as well go and do something else. 

So the job in hand is to get as good as you possibly can, as efficiently as possible. To grow as a player you need to have targets and a practice routine in order to hit those targets.

The first thing I ask a new student is what they practise. How much time is spent and what sort of content . I get some quite interesting answers to these two questions you won't be surprised to learn. 
The question that more often than not leaves a student stumped is 

'Why are you practising that?"

An hour of doubles and singles is a popular answer, but could that hour be better spent? Without a doubt it could, about which more later.
I have given this a great deal of thought and I believe that the type of practice we do falls into three categories.

Type 1

Maintaining the skill set.

Match fitness in other words. Taking a broad view of all the different areas of playing you might be called upon to cover in terms of tempo, feel, style, dynamics and such. You never know what the next phone call is going to bring.

This is a particular area where drum books that deal with specific music genres can be highly valuable. You'll find a couple on the list in part 2 of this post. Don't play much latin? Lacking in the jazz department? Give it a try. You are adding to your range as a musician as well as enhancing your usefulness to potential employers.


Type 2

Creative Development

This I find endlessly fascinating. I'm always on the lookout for new and different approaches, be it specifics of technique, co-ordination, motion, improvisation; you name it I can't get enough.
Some players will self criticise and deem this to be mere 'messing about'. Never underestimate the value of messing about. Virtually every valuable, original idea I have ever had on the instrument started life as messing about.
Most importantly whenever you have a good idea, write it down. You might not need it today or tomorrow, or even have time to fully develop it, but who knows how much use it might be in years to come.
I've been doing this for decades and have a personal collection of notebooks containing every half way decent idea that has ever occurred to me. Bob Monkhouse would have been proud.
Remember it is your original thoughts and musical concepts that will mark you out as an individual, just like in any field of endeavour.

A direct consequence of our information age is that there are more very good players than ever before, but a great many of them are playing similar sounding ideas, but buying auxiliary snare drums or remote bass drums in an attempt to be different. It's when I hear and see something completely new, or a fresh take on something that has been around a while that I really sit up and take notice. So, learn by copying, but look beyond the lick, reverse engineer it, take other players' ideas apart and remodel them in your own image .

This brings us on to the third and final type of practice.

Type 3. Time wasting. 

Let me make it clear that I am not one of those drummers who advocates that you should never spend practice time on things you can already do. That's completely absurd. Things you can already do are a key part of type 1 practice. You need to make sure that you can still do them and improve upon them if possible.

Time wasting is spending hours and hours working on material with no outcome in mind. 
Practice needs to have a purpose otherwise you are merely running the clock down in order to self-validate. You might have spent four hours playing rudiments with the only achievement being to have ingrained bad habits still further. 

One of the drummer buzzwords du nos jours is 'muscle memory'. Muscle memory is frequently offered up as an excuse for endless, mindless repetitive practice.

Here's where muscle memory will let you down.
Just the other day I was prepping some college drum students for end of year exams. Part of which involved reading and playing some intermediate level 8th and 16th note funk grooves. The students would make silly mistakes on relatively easy phrases and the reason they did was that they were being asked to read something slightly different from a pattern in their muscle memory. The muscle memory would take over and cause them to play something they had previously internalised rather than what was actually required.

This is a widespread problem which is relatively easily cured. More about that in a future post.

Also there can be a fine line between attainment and time wasting. Many of us have spent many hours applying pages 38-45 of the Syncopation book, playing each page from end to end usually in the context of an independence study. The likelihood of a professional situation arising where you would have to execute a 32 bar 'melody' in this way is infinitesimally small, so be honest, how good a use of time is it? Better to spend 15 minutes on a couple of 4 bar or 8 patterns, the kind of stuff you might actually use, and then move on to something else. We're not practicing a concerto for snare drum! (If you are get yourself a copy of Portraits in Rhythm by Anthony J Cirone).

I remember the late, great Kenny Clare talking about practice. This was back in 1977 and he was of the opinion that 15 minutes well spent was better than two non-productive hours. Smart guy. Great drummer. Even then he was on to something.

(To be continued)


For more information about clinics, masterclasses, personal tuition, guest appearances or any of my bands click here

Uber Drumming

Some years ago now there emerged a fashion for what was occasionally (and somewhat bizarrely) referred to as 'Extreme Sport Drumming'. It was mostly to do with speed and endurance rather than music and necessitated the investment of many hours of polyrhythmic double pedal practice and so on.

After a while this became known as 'Uber Drumming', because the vast majority of its exponents are now driving cabs.

I'm here all week.

Try the veal.

The Time Is Ten-to-Ten

This post originally appeared in Not So Modern Drummer and is reproduced by permission. Thanks to David Barsalou for inviting me to contribute.

Spang a lang, ten to ten, call it what you will.

The jazz ride pattern is part of the drummer’s DNA. 

We all do it, but I often wonder if any two of us truly do it quite the same. Like a fingerprint or an iris pattern your ride beat is as individual as you are. Give five jazz drummers the same ride cymbal or hi hats to play and you will get five contrasting results.

But is it difficult? Well the somewhat ambiguous answer to that is yes and no. In physical terms the playing of the ride beat is simplicity itself, but once you factor in considerations such as placement, feel, sound and touch it becomes a whole new ball game. Case in point; in May 2015 I had the good fortune to share a stage with Steve Gadd, and to watch him play quarter notes on the ride cymbal (with no embellishments) on a slow tempo blues was an object lesson in combining simplicity and mastery.

Even at its most subtle the ride cymbal should retain that special swaggering authority which is the mark of a true master. Whether it is explicit or implicit, straight down the line or broken up, the underlying placement of pulse and internal dynamic balance between the drummer’s four limbs creates that all-important rhythmic connective tissue which brings not just jazz but all music to life.

Just like laying down a backbeat on 2 and 4 the technical demands are minimal. 

Logically it therefore follows that there is no excuse not to do it well. Even tempos in the 320 bpm plus range need not be daunting, about which more later. I am firmly of the belief that 90 plus percent of what we do as drummers is about motor skills, with the physical aspects being very much subservient to our mental acuity, and over obsessing about muscle memory imposes a limit on our creative capacities. 

I drew this conclusion empirically when a few years ago I found myself frustrated with certain aspects of my own playing. I had a tendency to repeat certain ideas; they were perfectly good ideas but I was playing them very much by rote, and the context in which I was playing called for a far greater creative connection. To address this I stripped my playing back and actually re-trained myself to be able to play ‘in the moment’. The old licks are still there as a safety net if required, but having the ability to harness creativity virtually at will totally liberated me as a musician. To put it another way, it’s not the drummers who can play the fastest who I hold in the highest of esteem, it’s guys who can think the fastest.

As musicians our aesthetic sense grows exponentially with a lifetime of listening, learning and creating. Consequently the perception of the ride pattern will be different for the player with five decades of experience than it is for the drummer who is taking his or her first steps towards putting that off beat eighth note in just the right place for the very first time. 

I can remember vividly as the feeling of confidence and swing began to present itself in my playing, when my ride playing went from being merely a pre-learned ‘beat’ to something I could control and nuance in order to reflect each musical circumstance. 

Music is the boss. 

Music informs us what the drums need to do. Learn that lesson early and learn it well. 

I learned this aged about 19 and it had a lot to do with the opportunities I had to work regularly with much older jazz musicians: musicians with in some instances upwards of three decades of experience at laying down walking quarters and swinging eighths. 

There was positive growth off the stand as well, since these players dug all sorts of drummers I had heard of but had not heard. This emphasises the point that players of other instruments and indeed non-playing listeners will have their own frequently differing opinions of what constitutes swing. For me this is what makes this whole topic so endlessly fascinating. Because swing is so gloriously impossible to quantify it forces us to form opinions, or sometimes to be swayed by prevailing popular opinion. 

It’s possible to calculate the number of single strokes played per minute using a computer, but swing is measured by the heart and requires us to take a subjective point of view. 

Whereas technical facility, time keeping, playing in tune with good intonation, sight reading ability and improvisational skill can all be measured to a certain extent the quality of swing is a way more individual judgement. Who has ‘got it’ and who lacks it has been a source of never ending debate since the beginning of (jazz) time.

More than any other single aspect of our playing the ride pattern marks us out as a specific style of player. 

Fellow musicians, audiences and critics are often quick to typecast the jazz drummer; whether you’re a considered to be a swing, hard bop, post bop, fusion drummer or whatever, people will invariably categorise you because of how you play the ride pattern. 

Like a painter we can be super realistic, impressionistic or downright abstract. Sometimes if we are fortunate a single evening of music making with kindred spirits can take us to all three destinations. Conversely if the environment presents challenges like poor acoustics, indifferent audiences or worse still a lack of empathy between players then we simply can’t do our best work nor express ourselves freely.

Okay, time to get technical. I mentioned earlier the question of the upper tempo range, nominally anything north of 300 bpm. It was a run of gigs with the virtuoso trumpet genius Arturo Sandoval that prompted me to find a failsafe approach to extreme jazz ride playing. Arturo would call such fast tempos that I couldn’t include every skip note comfortably and would drop into four quarters per bar. 

Not good enough. 

I had picked up a couple of ‘cheats’ from fellow drummers; Martin Drew (leave out 1 and 3) and Jake Hanna  (leave out 2 and 4) but the holy grail remained to play the complete ride pattern and have the freedom and control to vary it ad lib. A lot of guys I heard would use an approach where they would make a down stroke on 2 and 4 with two rebound strokes thereafter. I felt this lacked clarity and made the 2 and 4 sound over-emphasised. 

After much influence and experimentation I found a solution of my own. 

A lot of guys do something very similar either knowingly or not but I arrived at it my own way. What I ended up with was a very loose, open fulcrum in the right hand. In fact the second and third fingers really do the majority of the work. In the interests of economy of motion I dispensed with the ‘four quarter note motions per bar’ method and cut it back to two: half the effort, good news. Initially it was a bit of a challenge to get dynamic uniformity between the up and down strokes, but a very small amount of woodshedding sorted that out.  Utilising the 2^nd and 3^rd fingers creates resistance to the down strokes and a very small closing motion at the beginning of the up stroke will create the skip note.  

More good news, you can use the same method for left hand comping as well: fast tempos all night long, no tension, no tiredness. 

You’re welcome.

As I am very fond of saying, there has never been more information available to help us develop as players. Sometimes though, I like to adopt what I call the ‘blank sheet of paper’ approach where I start with nothing but an outcome in mind. If you have ever found a solution to a drumming challenge by starting from scratch and working out an approach of your own you will know just how satisfying and meaningful that feels.

If you'd like to know more about private lessons, clinics and master classes you can email me at this address.

Those Who Can, Teach.

We're all students.

Irrespective of the number of playing years clocked up (I was regularly picking up the sticks by age 2 so I can now justifiably claim to have been playing for 51 years) or the amount of experience we have gained every serious drummer is at some stage of the lifelong quest for self-improvement. Just two weeks ago I stumbled across a better solution to certain functions of the traditional left hand grip (preview here). Still working at it, still looking for ways to improve and broaden my range as a musician.

I was fortunate that I grew up in a household where drums and music (especially but not exclusively jazz) were part of everyday life, and from a very early age I could not help but become aware of the then contemporary achievements of some of the greatest drummers ever to walk the earth. Before or since.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have that kind of a head start and within a very few years I had taught myself to teach myself, and I remain very much the autodidact to this day. I was able to do this because of having my Dad on hand to answer my questions, show me things from time to time, and take me out on gigs where I could sit in with musicians in their 30's 40's and 50's, which helped me to develop a relatively mature sound and approach for someone in his early teens. Some people grow up around wealth and privilege or in families with impeccable music industry connections. I wouldn't swap my start in life for either of the above.


Back then resources were limited by today's standards. Most of the drum tutor books we had at home (and thank goodness for them) had been written in the 40's and 50's, some earlier still.  Amongst them were a couple of classics such as Stick Control and the Jim Chapin independence book together with a lot of very old school instruction methods aimed at the 'dance band' drummer. Ironically a great deal of this material feels more relevant today than it did in the 70's, but as far as good study material dealing with the contemporary music trends of the time was concerned there wasn't a whole lot of choice and such as there was could be very difficult to source. I can remember my Dad trying for ages to get hold of a copy of Charlie Dowd's 'Funky Primer' without success.

The raising of the standard of playing of the 'average' drummer makes him or her unrecognisable from when I was starting out several decades ago. The explosion of the internet with its easy access to tutorial videos (some good, some not so) and the expansion of music colleges, drum camps, festivals, clinics, masterclasses plus the availability of good, knowledgeable and experienced private teachers means there has never been a better time to learn to play.

So the big question is should the aspiring player take lessons? The simple answer is yes, and you don't need to look very far in order to find yourself a teacher. Ask your local music dealer, or find out who the instrumental teachers are in nearby schools. That way you have a reasonable guarantee of sourcing a tutor with the right kind of skill and experience.

Recently I participated in a nationwide event coordinated by the charity Music for All. Learn to Play Day was rolled out across the entire UK and provided an opportunity for the Great British Public to get hands on with musical instruments, in many cases for the first time. Greater access to developing musical talent, even if only for one's own pleasure, with friends, family or the local community would make us a more civilised and enlightened society.

How I started teaching.

A simple fact of life is that if you are demonstrably good at something, someone is going to want to know how you do it, and if can you help them to do it too.

Simple as that.

By my late teens, mostly due to a rainy summer and a copy of the Stick Control book I had developed a formidable and impressive facility on the drums. Complete maturity and all-round musicality were still a way off but nevertheless I was gathering a good deal of favourable attention which led to inevitable requests for guidance. A number of young and not so young local players were my first students and though I had limited knowledge as compared to today I was able to identify areas of weakness and suggest improvements.
That was followed in by a stint in a comprehensive school in Atherstone, Warwickshire, covering for a fellow player who was on a national tour. This was my first taste of organised class tuition and in 1995 I branched out into higher education with Musicians Institute, London E1 later followed by 10 years at the renowned Drumtech school in Acton.


Why I teach now.

A little over a year ago I returned to private teaching for the first time in a number of years. There is such a buzz from seeing somebody really progressing and feeling inspired about self-development. Part of the year I teach at the London Centre of Contemporary Music, but following on from an extremely well-received series of videos for Rhythm Magazine I found myself inundated with requests for lessons, so I set up regular slots at Bell Percussion in Acton, West London.

Teaching should not be a consolation prize, just occasionally it is mistaken for an alternative career path for those who never quite got the performing career they were after. If you aspire to teach be honest with yourself and make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

What a good drum teacher could and should do for you:

Inspire

Correct ingrained bad habits.

Direct you towards genres of music and playing styles of which you were not previously aware.

Be available in between lessons to answer questions and clarify any issues arising from lesson content. Do be patient and reasonable though as we have lives too!!

Encourage you to set your standards as high as possible and stimulate a creative approach to musical development.

Most of all a good teacher will be honest. A good teacher will help you set realistic goals and give you constructive feedback on your progress. (This may be slightly painful from time to time!) We all learn new material at a different rate; we have different aptitudes and talents and we all have different calls upon our time and money, all of which are pivotal to pursuing a course of study.

What a good drum tutor will not do;

Tell you that there is 'only one way' to do anything. There are almost as many approaches as there are teachers! There are no absolutes in any of this, only alternatives. Some approaches work better for some people than others. That's just the way it is. Even if your best drum buddy achieved massive improvement with a particular teacher that does not guarantee that said teacher will have the same effect upon you.

Crticise his fellow musicians/teachers.

Give you 'four beats to learn for next time' lessons unless you are an absolute beginner, and even then you should be moving away from that within a relatively short space of time.

Give you an 'off the shelf' drum lesson that does not in any way reflect your specific needs.

Set you a practice assignment without explaining what its purpose is.

Spend an entire lesson making you repeat the same exercise. You don't need to pay somebody to watch you practice. Do that at home. Don't take another lesson until you are ready otherwise you are wasting the tutor's time and your money.

What no drum tutor can do for you;

Work miracles. Although a pair of sticks in the right hands can have the power of magic wands we cannot do the impossible. There are no quick fixes. Irrespective of how big the teacher's profile and how expensive the lesson no tutor can do the work for you. They have done the work for themselves, that is how they got to where they are and they will point you in the right direction. That said it's important to retain realistic expectations and don't expect to improve just by osmosis alone. Undeniably being in the presence of an expert player has its benefits but the bottom line is the work has to come from you.

Also, it's important to be prepared for taking a lesson. Have a wish list of points you would like to cover. Why are you studying? What are your goals? Where do you want to be this time next year? How will your lessons help you achieve these goals? Just occasionally I have seen that crestfallen look on a student's face when they have realised that I am not a mind reader. You wouldn't go to the doctor and expect them to guess what's wrong with you would you?

Also, just because someone is a great player or used to be in a famous band does not guarantee that will have the necessary patience and communication skills to work with aspiring and improving players.

Get you gigs. Don't seek out a leading tutor as a means of an 'open sesame' into the upper echelons of the music business. If you are hardworking, conscientious and committed it's always a possibility that in the right circumstances your tutor might recommend you for a gig. A good tutor will vouch for you however; whether it be for a playing situation, a college application or a teaching post. References are a pleasure, but the days when Max Abrams had a hotline to Geraldo's Navy (Google it!!) are long gone.

This is by no means a self advertisement but I do recommend that any ambitious player has a little formal tuition. An hour in the company of an expert can correct years of bad habits or send you on the road to improvement by the shortest possible route. Take a trial lesson with a couple of different tutors and see who best meets your needs. We all have different approaches and what suits one student may not be quite the right thing for another.

If you'd like to know more about private lessons, clinics and master classes you can email me at this address.


Incidentally before anyone mentions it, the Charlie Dowd book is available on Amazon from as little as £1.08 at the time of writing.