(clapping)
- Wow! - Thank you.
- Unbelievable, thanks everyone for joining.
It's Mr. Gavin Harrison here at Drumeo.
Thank you so much for coming out, buddy.
- Thank you, Dave, it's a pleasure to be here.
- Yeah, yeah, I am a longtime fan of yours.
I've been following you as long as I can remember
and if you guys don't know who Gavin is,
he's the drummer for Porcupine Tree,
currently drumming with King Crimson,
also plays with Pineapple Thief,
and what you just heard there was
from one of his albums that he did, a solo project,
called, Cheating The Polygraph,
which, if you guys are Porcupine Tree fans,
you might have heard Hate Song and Halo in there
and it's a really cool album,
one of my favorite albums you've done
just reimagining some of the songs from Porcupine Tree.
- Yeah.
- So, very cool stuff, and we actually have three copies
of that we're gonna give away during this lesson
once it hits YouTube, actually.
So, if you guys want one of these signed by Gavin,
it's a two-disc set DVD and CD, I believe.
And he's gonna sign them, all you need to do
is write a comment below with
what your favorite part of this lesson was,
and we'll randomly give one away 30 days
after the post date, so make sure you do that.
But again, man, huge thanks for coming
all the way from the UK to Drumeo.
- Yeah, it's a long way from home.
- It is, yeah!
- I'm feeling the burn, the jetlag burn.
- Right, right, right. - But on we go.
- Yeah, well, we spent all day filming some amazing courses
that are gonna be exclusive for Edge members, with Gavin.
So, if you guys like what you see here
and you like Gavin's playing,
be sure to check us out in the members section of Drumeo
where we have a lot more of this.
We're also gonna do a full Q&A and interview
with him tomorrow for the Edge members only.
But before we get into anything,
huge thanks to some of the people
who've helped us get this lesson together,
Sonor being one of them, you guys are great.
Zildjian as well, you've set us up
with some amazing sound and cymbals,
along with Remo with the drumheads,
Vic Firth with the sticks,
you play Tama Speed Cobra pedals,
as well. - That's correct.
- Anyone that I'm missing
that we might not see here? - Yeah, well, I mean this
incredible tactile monitoring system that I'm sitting on--
- Right. - The Porter & Davies system.
I'm also a Gibraltar endorser.
But you know, I couldn't bring the rack with me today.
- [Dave] Right, yeah.
- And a couple of things you don't see,
like Hardcase and NORD electronics that I use,
and AKG mics, so all these guys keep me goin'.
- Keep you goin', yeah.
Well, you guys all did a great job
in helping us make this lesson happen.
So, huge thanks to you.
So, today, we have a big lesson planned.
It's all about rhythmic design,
how to create amazing-sounding drum parts,
and I mean, you have a very unique sound,
not only just in the sound of your drums,
but your creative edge.
Like, how you come up with these cool beats
and just in Porcupine Tree alone,
I remember just thinking, "How the heck"
"did you come up with that kinda stuff?"
Not only that, but this whole album, Cheating The Polygraph,
is re imagining some of the old songs,
so you're even further pushing your creative bone
in that sense, so, who better to do a lesson
on this style than you?
- Thank you. - So, I'm gonna stop talking,
I'm gonna hand it over to you,
and I guess we'll start out by, what is rhythmic design?
- Well, I mean, a rhythmic design is really,
you know, I think about drumming
from an architectural point of view.
I try to build a song, when I'm presented with a song,
sometimes, people give me a song
and they don't even play me their demo drums.
Or sometimes, they just give me a click.
So, it's my decision what the drums are gonna do
and I've always enjoyed drummers
who designed a unique rhythm for the song
or a unique path for the song
that builds architecturally, they build something
more beautiful than the sum of the parts.
You know, when you look at architecture,
and you know, I mean, this is a building.
It's a square with a door, and a window.
It functions as a building,
but you know, when you compare that
to say, The Sydney Opera House,
that's a functional building.
But there's something else, there's beauty in there.
And drumming, you know, the drums,
it's an instrument that it's very easy
to create a lot of excitement
by just playing fast and hitting lots of things.
It's an exciting instrument.
But it's a very dynamic instrument
and you can design something elegant.
You know, you can actually design something
that's got grace and poise
in the notes that you choose,
the sound that you play it with,
and the position that you decide to chop up the bar.
And you know, having a sense of balance.
So, when something, it's like making a nice pasta sauce.
You wanna put just the right amount of spice in.
What is the right amount of spice?
Well, that's subjective, isn't it?
But you can certainly have too much.
If you think you look cool wearing a gold chain,
do you look 10 times more cool
if you're wearing 10 gold chains?
- Right (chuckles) - Right?
So, I think you start to develop, over the years,
an idea of what works,
and what, not only functionality wise,
because the audience need to hear the time
and they need to feel a sense of where the one is.
"Oh, this is in five, okay,
"and he's putting the backbeat on three,
"now I'm starting to understand the time,"
you know, it's functional.
But there's all sorts of other little musical embellishments
and little tricks you can use
to build a nice architecturally beautiful drum part
that works for the song,
and really think outside the box,
don't think like a drummer. - Right.
- Drummers, and I'm including myself
in earlier years in this,
have a habit of playing, thinking in a square.
So, you play time,
ta-ta toon-too-too ta-ta toon-too-too ta,
and then you play the floor,
ta-ga-deu-geu-deu=geu-deu-geu deu.
And then you play time, da-da-da-da diga-diga-diga-da,
you know what I mean?
It's all moving in a little square.
Certain drummers influenced me when I was younger
who wouldn't play like that.
Who played interesting.
You've probably heard this expression before,
that it's everybody's job in the band
to play in time,
but it's the dummer's job to make the time interesting.
- Hm. - Right?
- Right, yeah, yeah.
- So, you don't have to just play.
If, say, the first verse
just needs two and four on the hight hat,
you don't have to just sit there going,
(softly taps cymbals)
right? - [Dave] Right.
- It hasn't gotta be like that.
- [Dave] Right.
- What I would do is listen to the lyrics,
listen to the vocalist and look for spaces
to do small musical embellishments.
You're listening to the vocals.
(soft rhythmic cymbals)
(cymbal softly clashes)
That's a musical embellishment.
And you put it in the right place,
and it's beautiful.
You do it every bar, and it's horrible.
Right? - Yeah.
- So, you start to get an idea,
mainly through experience of trying lots,
and lots, and lots, and lots, of different possibilities.
- Yeah, I practice, and you try to work on these great ideas
and you get these cool concepts in your head
but sometimes when you go to a show
or you go to your practice room
with all your other bandmates
and then sometimes you just freeze,
you know? - Right.
- Deer in the headlights, like, how do you deal with that?
- Well, I've got a kind of theory that,
it's a way of thinking
that has helped me and some bandmates.
I call it my CPU theory, right?
- [Dave] Okay. - I imagine
that this is the CPU.
I don't really think humans are anything like a computer.
But for the sake of this discussion,
let's say this is your central processing unit.
- [Dave] Right. - And to play well,
you can't tax the CPU 100%.
If you tax it 100%, you've got no room left to listen.
Like for instance, when I was six,
somebody showed me how to play a paradiddle,
and this is how I played it, as a six-year-old.
Hey, I made it, right? - Yeah.
- Now, my six-year-old CPU was maxed out
just remembering the hand combination.
I couldn't tell you if I played it in time
'cause I had no room left in my CPU to listen.
Now, what can happen is that you play the drums
and you're not really listening.
And then you listen back to the recording
and think, (gasps) "God, that's awful.
"Why couldn't I hear that when I was playing."
It's because you were just too full,
your CPU was too full. - Yeah.
- Now, you might go on stage
and feel like, "I can't really tell if this is in time,
"I can't tell if the dynamics are correct."
I'm in such a panic by playing something tricky
that I've maxed out in my head,
I've got no room left to listen.
But really good drummers, they can play quite complex things
but only use a very small amount of the CPU.
They've got a lot of room left to listen,
to judge whether you're in time with yourself,
whether you're in time with the click,
if you're playing to a click,
whether you're playing appropriately
for the song dynamically,
if you're playing right with the bass player,
listen to the vocalist, listen to the guitarist,
the keyboard player, and have a much bigger view
of what's going on.
Because you haven't got your head down in the engine room.
You're up on the bridge, steering the ship,
looking where you're going.
When you've just got your head down in the engine room,
you're maxed out on your CPU,
you're thinking about some clever, tricky, sticking thing,
I can't tell if this is even any good.
- Right. - Right,
I remember doing a session once
and I was out in the studio
and I was playing, and I was concentrating,
and at the end of the song, the producer said to me,
"How was that?"
And I said, "I don't know.
"I'll come into the control room and listen."
And he said, "Well, weren't you listening
"when you were playing?"
I thought, "I wasn't."
I wasn't really.
If what you're playing
is filling up your CPU too much,
you need to simplify what you're doing.
It's more important that you're listening
than playing a flam quadruple-quintuplet paradiddle
with-- - Right.
- You know, in five, or something.
- Right. - It's more important
that you're actually listening to what you're doing
and judging it there and then.
It's no point listening to a recording of last night's gig
and think, "Oh, man, that fill really sped up."
That's 12 hours too late
to do anything about it. - [Dave] Right.
- You need to be kind of in the moment.
Now, under pressure,
what used to take up 50% of your CPU
(lightly laughing) is now taking up a lot more.
- Yeah. - Because the pressure,
the adrenaline, the nerves,
will suddenly fill up your CPU unexpectedly.
And I've noticed it so many times in what I do.
Like, I've gone on to play a drum clinic,
and suddenly, I can't play any ghost notes.
My left hands just turned to jelly.
- Yeah. - Because I was trying
to play something quite complicated,
and I didn't have any room left.
When you see great guys playing,
really, really great drummers, they have a fantastic CPU
and they're only using a small amount of it.
They can play in 17/16,
they can be listening to the band,
they can improvise, they can play solos,
they can react, the bass player plays something,
you go, "Yeah, I can play that as well."
You're really totally in there.
And understanding that that's how, at least, my brain works.
I know when I get under pressure
to expect that everything's gonna feel really slow,
press play on here, (gasps) "The click's so slow!"
Because your heart's pumping, your CPU's going up.
And I've done some pretty high-pressure things.
And to be honest with you,
almost every important thing
that ever happened in my career was under pressure,
under massive pressure. - Right.
- So, you need to psychologically try
to find a way to deal with yourself.
- Right. - This isn't necessarily
about getting over stage fright.
This is just dealing with the complexities
of playing the drums and still having room left
to listen and judge.
It's not necessarily about getting nervous or anything.
The good news is you upgrade your CPU on a daily basis.
The more you practice, the better it will get.
I can play a paradiddle now.
It would probably only take 1% of my CPU.
I don't even have to think about it.
- So, you use the rest of that CPU,
if we're gonna go with this analogy,
for the writing process, is to become creative
without having those pressures.
- Exactly, you've got to have room left
on top of your ability.
- If you play at the max, you've got nowhere left,
you know, you can't even think,
your imagination can't even pull out a tasty fill.
You're a rabbit in the headlights, right?
- Right. - Like you said.
- Yeah. - So,
from a musical point of view,
it means that I can concentrate on the song,
listen to the dynamics of the song, listen to the singer.
Put in tasteful, small, musical embellishments,
not too many, you know, just enough.
- Just the right amount, yeah.
- And concentrate on being musical as a drummer.
And I think you need that give up your ego as well.
Stop trying to score points with young drummers
and amateurs by doing big flash fills
that might win you a modern drummer award,
but it's not gonna win you any friends in the band.
You know? - Yeah.
- The other guys in the band,
what they want from the drummer is someone
who plays great time, has got a nice sound,
plays the song without mistakes, and listens.
You can tell when people are listening.
And the bass player might do something,
or you might do something, and then he plays it with you,
it's communication, isn't it?
- Mm-hm, right, so you upgrade your CPU,
now you can listen a lot more when you play.
How do you turn that into amazing grooves?
Like, what are you thinking of
when you're creating rhythms for these songs?
Like, you do a lot of recordings with people
who'll just send you a track, no click,
sometimes no scratch track for the drums, and they just
let you do your thing. - Yeah.
- What's going through your mind?
- Well, the first thing that goes through my mind,
when I play a song that someone has sent me,
usually I wanna hear it without their guide drums,
first of all, 'cause I wanna think,
"What would I really like to hear on this song?"
I remember Pete Erskine saying,
he was giving advice to a student who said,
"What should I play on this song?"
He said, "Well, imagine what you'd really, really like
"to hear on this song, and then play that."
(laughing) And that's what I do,
I don't have to be sitting at the drums, trying everything.
I can just sit there with my eyes closed
and think, "What would I really, really like to hear?
"What would make me think,
"'oh, that's good, that's tasteful.'?
"That's an idea."
It's about ideas, really, more than anything else.
And right from the get-go, I'm thinking about the sound.
So, I listen to the song,
and I'm thinking, "Well, what kind of ride cymbal
"is gonna be right for this song?
"What kind of snare drum's gonna be right?
"Am I gonna use a 12-inch snare, a 14-inch snare?
"What kind of pitch should it be?
"What kind of high hats?"
And I even start thinking about the mix, straight away,
because as I told you before,
I'm lucky in that I play my drums in a control room,
and outside of my control room,
I have this massive, like, village hall.
It's like, it's huge, with a 50-foot ceiling,
and I've got a pair of microphones
out there capturing the live ambiance.
And I've got a pair of overheads,
and I've got all these close mics.
Now, I could mix the song using the live room microphones
as the leading edge.
It's gonna be really big, John Bonham powerful rock sound.
And then, fill in the gaps.
Like, "Oh, the bass drum's a bit thin,
"so I'll just bring the bass drum.
"The toms are a bit thin,
"I'll just bring a little bit of toms in."
And if I know that's the sound I'm gonna use on the song,
that's gonna make me play a certain way.
Another approach would be to start
with the overheads, a more jazzy approach,
and that is your drum sound, the overheads.
And then you use the local mics to just fill in the holes,
or you could go for a more, you know, 70's/80's production
and start with the bass drum mic,
start with the snare drum mic, the high hat mic,
all these local mics, use the overheads for cymbals,
and the ambiance mic for a bit of a reverb.
- So, you're thinking about the overall sound
qualities-- - Absolutely.
- Before you even come up with the patterns and the grooves.
- Well, they're all interlinked.
- Okay, yeah. - The sound and the patterns,
I mean, the sound sometimes is the inspiration.
If I got a really nice ride cymbal,
I'm thinking, "Ah, I like this ride.
"This sounds great when I just play really simple fours."
Let the cymbal speak for itself.
I don't need to play 100 billion notes on it.
And if the toms are sounding good,
maybe I can get away with just a couple of hits
and let the sound of the toms do the work for me
rather than fill it in with lots of notes
because maybe, if the toms sound isn't happening,
well, what can I do?
I could just play a lot of rhythm on it,
a bunch of notes to try to make something of it.
- Right.
- So, the sound is really important.
That might be even the start of the inspiration.
And then, I start thinking about the parts.
And most songs, if they're in 4/4, for instance,
you need to think like, "Where am I gonna put the backbeat?
"Am I gonna put it two and four?
"Am I gonna put it on three?" - Right.
- That's gonna make it feel half time.
- Yeah.
- Am I gonna put it on, you know, the 16th note after two?
Am I gonna put the snare drum on three and?
There's all sorts of places you can stick the backbeat
without it being on two and four.
It doesn't have to have a two and four backbeat to groove.
- Right. - Right?
David Garibaldi, those kinda drummers,
Steve Jensen was a massive influence on me.
He was a drummer in a band called, Japan,
and Steve, he's got no chops at all.
If he was sitting here, he would say,
"Yeah, I can't even play a double stroke roll.
But he had a very beautiful,
artistic vision as a drummer.
He could play amazing drum parts that always caught my ear.
They were never difficult to play,
they never had any technique in them,
but he would just put the backbeat in a weird place,
or he would open the high hat
in an unexpected place for quite a long time,
and you would think, "Oh, that's nice, I like that."
You know, it's not really about the technique.
I'm impressed by technique,
but I'm not moved by it.
And I wanna be moved, I wanna connect to the performer.
I want our souls to have a connection.
- [Dave] Right. - I wanna feel
that person's personality.
I don't want it to be disguised by a sort
of gross display of technique, because that's hiding it.
You know what I mean? - Mm-hm, right.
- That's disguising it. - Right.
- But that's what I'm looking for in a drum part.
Something that I think, "Aw, man, that is just great,
"that's right on the money, it's interesting,
"it's not flash, it's serving the song."
- Now, you have a song, you brought a song
with you. - Yes.
- It's from your Pineapple Thief.
- Yeah. - On there.
You're gonna play a bit of this song
and I want you to tell us
what you were going through afterwards.
- Yeah. - So we can kinda dig
into the brain of Gavin.
- Yeah, this is a band who contacted me last year,
and they send me their songs,
and this might have been the first song I heard
and I immediately started having ideas.
So, you know, when people ask me to play on their songs,
I said, "I'll only do it
"if I can feel a connection to the music."
There's no point in me just going through the motions
and taking the money off you.
I wouldn't be true to myself and I wouldn't
really be doing your music justice.
So, if I can connect to it,
and I can imagine myself on it,
I can imagine things to play,
then I'm gonna be happy.
'cause it's more about the expression
and the quality. - Right, yeah.
- So, I'm gonna play this song for you,
this is a song called "In Exile",
and then we'll go through some
of the sections-- - Love it.
- And I'll show you why I played what I played.
- Perfect. - Right, here we go.
Alright. - Wow, dude, that was amazing!
So, what were you thinking of?
'Cause those were some very creative parts.
- Right. - If I heard that song,
I wouldn't have gone there when I played.
- And that's really the beauty
of every person, they will all do--
- Yeah. - A unique thing.
- Yeah. - That's just what I felt.
I mean, I worked on the parts
for about three days until I was happy.
The beauty of having a studio at home is I can do that.
Sometimes, I work on a song for half an hour
and I think, "I think this is the best part for this song."
Sometimes, with music like this
where there's good opportunities,
I think, yeah, I could, I mean I could have just played
duhng-ch-k-da-duhng ch-k-ch ch-k-da
all the way through the song. - Right, right.
- And it would have functioned.
- Yeah. - It wouldn't have been
a very dynamic way to go,
it certainly wouldn't have been a unique way to go.
So, I listen to the song
and I listen to the guitars
to see what kind of rhythm they were playing.
- [Dave] Ok.
- So, the guitars are kinda going,
Right, like a 3/16,
dinga-de-ga-k-k-duhnga-tka-tk-ki da-ga de-ga
ding-ga-di-gat-tk-tk-ga.
And that would work if I pressed play straight time.
But I thought maybe I could pick up on those beats
and I probably played something like this.
(soft snare drum and cymbals)
But I thought, well, actually,
I'm not hearing that amount of aggression
coming from this track.
This sounds to me like a much more delicate soul,
at least to start with.
So, I thought, "Well, maybe I could
"dinga-di-ga digung-tka kch-kch-kding,
"maybe I can play--
(soft snare drums)
And maybe I will put something on the four.
Or maybe I'll even, I think there's
even a little programmed electronica, chk-chk-chk.
So, there was a thing I've been doing for years
which is when I'm playing a cross stick--
(softly tapping)
(soft snare drums)
I like to play the ghost notes--
(soft snare drums)
With the ends of these two fingers, right?
So, you can find patterns--
(soft snare and cymbals)
There's lots of ghost notey things you can do
even though your hand's down in this position.
And I liked the idea of doing a five stroke roll.
(soft drums and cymbals)
Reminded me of a Jeff Porcaro track
that he played, I think on a Larry Carlton album.
Late 70s, early 80s, I think Jeff's thing was like this.
(soft snare drums)
There was this-- (cymbals softly tap)
There was this nice little five-stroke roll going on.
It was very quiet and very subtle.
But it was the thing that made my ears stand up.
I mean, I love Jeff's groove and drumming anyway.
But I really, that was a special little thing
that he was doing in the song.
- Right. - So, those five-stroke rolls
kind of are the ear candy,
shall we say? - Okay.
- So, one, two, three, four.
(soft drums)
You don't need to wear it out and play.
(soft drums)
You gotta know-- - Right.
- When too much spice is too much spice,
right? - Right, right.
- So, I started to play that pattern
and it made sense I in the verse,
basically, the song is four bar singing, four bars bridge,
four bar singing, four bar bridge, four bar singing.
So, okay, in the verse parts, I'll play,
(soft drums)
And put something on the four
to give it a balance. - Okay.
- And when the guy stops singing,
we've got this little bridge.
(soft techno jazz-rock) (soft drums)
♪ We were aki--
So, I thought, "Well, maybe I'll
"just build the pattern a little bit."
(soft drums)
And then go back to the original verse pattern.
(soft drums)
It's a little bit of an architect's drawing.
We're going up a step,
and then we're coming back down a step.
And this is the way I think about it
as we're playing along.
Now, by the time we get to the second verse,
I wanted to pick it up and introduce the snare drum.
Now we've got distorted guitars in there
that weren't in the first verse.
So, now I can go to the snare drum.
I'm still keeping that
tackha-ti-khat-chk-chk tackha chk-chk ghat chk-chk ta,
that 3/16 feel, but now I chose to play like a,
almost like a reverse snare idea, so.
(soft snare drums)
So, it's still on the-- - [Dave] Right.
- The 4/16, but it's a buzz.
(soft snare drums)
Leading up to the first snare drum note.
- Right.
(soft snare drums)
- And the very first time I played through the song,
you know, I wasn't worried about the arrangement,
I was just looking for ideas
and one time, I accidentally went,
(soft snare drums)
and I really liked that movement on beat four.
One, two, three. (sticks softly knocking)
(soft snare drums)
Daka da da do-do-do-do,
right? - [Dave] Right.
- It just felt slipped.
- So, sometimes the ideas come
from just your own thoughts, your own mind,
just listening to it, and sometimes they come
from you like the feeling of something
that you accidentally did. - Yeah, yup.
- Yeah.
- Always good to start recording right from the beginning
because there might be one thing
that you played the very first time you played it
when your mind was in a different place,
and you did something accidentally,
and think, "Ooh, I like that.
"I'm gonna incorporate that into the song
"and kinda build it."
Now, after we go through the second verse, we reach a part
where the guitars felt like they were going,
♪ One, dao-dao bang-bang, bang bang
They're playing like two and,
four and, two and, and I wanted to pick up on that.
And the pattern I came up with,
and to move the song from a sort of forward,
propelling the song, was a trick I've used a lot, which is,
(soft cymbals)
kinda triangle, dzz-tk-dzz
dzz-tk-dzz. - [Dave] Right.
- If you do it the other way around,
(soft cymbals)
it has a completely different feeling.
Now, you're getting into like a disco feel, right?
But when you put the open high hats on the beat,
in my mind, it feels like you're propelling the song
in a nice, smooth way so that the part
in this section I played,
(soft drums)
and the ghost notes are a very important part,
of any rhythm.
The best way to practice ghost notes,
in the dark.
(laughing)
- There you go. - Nevermind, nice.
I'm here all week.
- (chuckling) You're here all week, I wish you were.
- So, I might, even in post production,
I might choose to turn those ghost notes up a little bit
if they're not coming through the track, right?
There's two right there.
It's not a difficult pattern to play.
But it's making the time interesting,
it's propelling the track.
And I'm starting to get a feel
that the track's moving up, and moving up.
- Yeah. - And by the time
we get to the end of the song,
you'll flat out, playing two and four,
with the guitar solo.
So, if that was the most obvious part to play,
let's put that at the end
and reverse engineer backwards
until we've got right down to something
that includes (soft snare drum notes)
Some little ghost notes, and kinda build it up.
I mean, I didn't play through the song
and come up with this inst--
it took three days. - Sure, yeah.
- And what I always do is I work on it all day
and then I leave it.
First thing in the morning, I press play,
and I immediately know what I like
and what I don't like about it.
The bits I like, 'cause I've got, you know,
I've been asleep for 10 hours or something,
I've forgotten how the song goes.
- Yeah.
- And the same with the mix.
And I press play, I think,
"Right, the bass drum needs to be louder.
"The high hat's too loud,
"we don't need a tom on beat four
"in the first bridge," right?
Or something like that.
And I sit and really, with 100% CPU, right?
I'm really sitting, listening, judging, and working out
what I think is gonna be the best part for the song
from my personality, really. - Right.
- 'Cause that's really what's controlling
the decision making,
is me saying that's good, that's bad.
- Right. - So, you're playing producer.
- Right. - And engineer, and drummer.
- Yeah. - And arranger.
- And I think that's the problem, is a lot of drummers,
they just like the physical aspect of it
and the technical ability,
they don't think about production.
We just heard how you took that song
and listened to these great parts in the song
that you wanted to accent. - Right.
- But what we get, I guess we don't know,
is why and how you decide to accent those.
- Yeah. - And that's,
I guess, experience, just listening,
because you picked up some really good points in that song,
but how are we supposed to know as drummers
what to play over top of that, you know?
That's the million dollar question, I guess.
- Well, that is the million dollar question.
You play what you think is right
and probably based upon things that you've heard in the past
that you like, sometimes I'll play something
and I'll think, "I can really hear a bit
of Jeff Porcaro in that, and I like that."
Or, "This sounds too much like Jeff Porcaro."
Right, so, I'm gonna not do that.
- Right. - And,
it was always interesting to me to learn things
from listening from drummers
but then to not copy exactly what they did.
I never worked out all of Steve Gadd's fills.
I tried to understand why he played the fill
in that place of the song,
and the type of fill he did
and what it did to the song,
whether it was going from the verse to the chorus,
or the chorus to the verse, it was bringing it down.
So, I tried to take notice of the intention
more than the actual lick itself.
- Right.
- I don't really like taking licks out of context.
- Yeah.
- I've seen people on the internet take some
of my drum fills and do lessons on them
and that's fine, but really,
what's much more important is why did I play that fill
at seven minutes 49 into that song?
Not, "Well, there's some tricky stuff in here,
"so why can't we work it out?"
I mean, it's cool to work things out,
that's great. - [Dave] Right.
- But I think it's important that you understand
why the drummer played that fill at that moment, or not.
I mean, when you're young,
you send a play a fill every two bars.
- Yeah. - Right?
- Every one bar if you can, right?
- Or just fill the whole time, right?
- Right, just fill the whole time, right.
- So, then you have to think, "Right, when's the time
"to play a fill, when's the time to open the high hat?
"When's the time to play something on these bells?"
You know, you've got a lot of choices
and you've gotta start thinking, really, about design.
You know, when I walk around a time,
I'm looking at the architecture,
and I'm thinking, "Why did some guy build that?
"Because that's horrible, and it doesn't fit
"with any of the other architecture around here."
Or, you know, you go in a shopping mall
and you see a whole line of watches.
Now, they all do the same thing.
They all do the functionality of telling you the time.
But, some of them really attract your eye.
- Right. - And you think,
"That watch there has got something amazing."
"It's got beauty, the designer of that watch"
"is someone I wanna meet."
- Right. - Right?
- Yeah. - Because that person,
whoever it was, had a beautiful vision.
The best thing you can do,
in my experience, is have a great idea.
Because once you've got a great idea,
then filling the details is easy.
Sometimes, the problem is you start with the details
and hope they add up to something good.
And they rarely do, you just end up
with a bunch of details.
- Right! - You know what I mean?
- Yeah. - Like, you have a jam
with a guy and he says, "Oh, I've got
"this lick on the bass," and you say,
"That's good, I've got this lick on the drums,"
and, "Wow," you know, this isn't a song.
- Yeah. (laughs) - This is just a bunch
of silly licks and fills that you
and a friend have put together.
You haven't really composed anything.
- Right! - You've just put
a load of details together,
which in themselves might be interesting.
But there's no context for them
there's no big idea that you can work on.
- Yeah, brilliant.
So, what advice can you give to young drummers,
starting out on drums, or even beginner drummers
who may not be young, but just
who are getting into writing or recording?
- Yeah.
- When it comes to creating unique drum parts.
- I mean, I would think the first thing
any drummer should work on, including me, is their time.
You can always make it feel better.
And making it feel good is the most important thing.
You could be playing the cleverest thing in the world,
but if it doesn't feel good,
you've lost the point, right?
And timing, sound, work on your sound.
Why does your bass drum sound terrible?
Experiment with beaters, with tension,
with heads, with muffling, you know, all those things,
with microphones.
You need to start, 'cause the sound is so much part
of the creative process.
You need to start thinking about,
"Well, what is this microphone?
"Do I like it, is it in a good place?
"Is it doing the job?"
Find out when you're working on it with engineers.
Try to find out, "Well, why is that snare mic
"that far away from the snare drum?
"What if it was a centimeter away?
"What if it was right back here?
"What effect is that gonna have on the sound?"
So, I would always recommend a young person,
a young musician to do a course in engineering.
- Really?
- Yeah, because that's the way the world's going.
More and more and more sessions are done at home now.
- Yup.
- So, you're gonna have to have a grasp
of some sort of it, not only the software,
but the actual engineering of miking up the drums
and getting a good sound.
- What about even before you record,
you're just in the jam room with your band
and you are trying to create a song with your group,
what kind of steps before you even get
to the recording stage?
- Yeah, well, you need to let your imagination do the work.
You need to be able to imagine a good drum part
before you can play it.
Just throwing your arms and your sticks at the drums,
(chuckles) rarely, rarely comes up with a good part.
- Right.
- And you need to feel comfortable.
- Yeah. - You know,
if you're in a room with a bunch of guys
you feel intimidated, or you feel nervous,
if you're scared, you're not really at your best.
And that's when you start thinking about
the CPU. - CPU, right.
- And trying to find, get comfortable with your sound,
and work on your timing.
I mean, to develop your own sound,
well, really, your own ideas,
I would always say whatever you're shown,
try to make a whole series of variations
of what that guy played.
For instance, I could give you a quick example.
In 1982, unbelievably, the British broadcasting company
suddenly put on national TV a Billy Cobham drum clinic.
- Wow, yeah. - And we went,
"What, what's this?" - Yeah.
- Right? - Yeah.
- So, we all watched, every drummer I knew was watching.
- Yeah.
- And Billy showed us this pattern
and really quickly, it's basically,
you might have seen this before, it's four this way,
three this way. - [Dave] Right.
Beautiful, I never thought
to play the drums like that before.
In 1982, all my fills went,
(soft scaling down drumbeat)
I didn't even play fills going the other way.
- Right.
- It was all about descending fills.
And when I saw Billy do that
and he was,
I thought, "Wow, that sounds like a marimba."
- Right.
- And for the next six to nine months,
every drummer I knew in London was on their gig,
playing this every four bars.
- Right, yeah. (laughing)
- And I thought, "Oh, my God, not someone else
"doing this, this thing." - (laughing) Yeah.
- And I thought,"Well, where could I take this?"
- Yeah.
- "Where could I go from this?"
Because this was the whole subject
of Billy's one-hour drum lesson.
And it was fantastic, it was a new way
to think about playing the drums to do in motion,
and I thought, "Okay, well, maybe I could play doubles."
Or triplets.
Or I could hit.
Okay, I've got five toms.
Maybe I could play a mixture of 16s and triplets.
Maybe I can substitute a tom with a cymbal.
Maybe I could go the other way.
Maybe I could interrupt the rhythm with a bass drum.
Maybe I could play,
You know, more and more variations start
in building on top of each other,
and this was my creative path.
Maybe I can play a group of five.
(gentle rapid drumbeats)
Right, now I'm starting to get further
and further, and further away from Billy's original idea--
- Right. - And I'm starting to sound
more original, but still based on his concept.
- Using that influence. - Right.
- To help build your own creativity.
- Yeah, I mean, I could play,
I recently did a little drum duet
with Steve Smith over the internet.
He recording his part, I recorded my part.
And at one point, I thought of this fill.
It's like a pattern of five.
(upbeat rock drums)
Pattern of six, sorry, ha! - [Dave] Okay.
(upbeat rock drums)
- Using Billy's motion idea,
now I'm getting a long way away
from where his original pattern was.
And you know, so, you take an idea,
you learn an idea, you make variations of it,
you try to turn it into a concept.
When it's a concept,
you can start applying new rules to it.
You can say, "Well, I'll do this,
"but I'll do it in seven."
- Right! - Or, I'll do it in three.
- Right. - And you start creating
a new path for yourself.
But really, what's important is the path you took
to get to there from here.
And these little things about, "Okay, could I play it
"in doubles, could I interrupt it with a bass drum?
"Could I substitute the sounds?"
All these things could be used in any context
as a way of manipulating the path that you're taking.
- [Dave] Yes.
- So, when you're in the middling of creating a drum part,
and you think, "This doesn't work," what are you gonna do?
Just go home?
No, you're gonna start thinking,
"Well, what could I do?
"Rather than use the snare drum, I'll use the floor tom.
"Rather than the high hat, I'll play the ride.
"Maybe I'll do it in a different subdivision."
Maybe it's a textural thing, maybe it's a dynamic thing,
maybe the sounds are wrong.
There's all kinds of creative solutions.
You need to find your own creative solutions
for your problems. - [Dave] Right.
- And when I was studying a lot,
and I would find something I couldn't play,
I really wanted to play it,
the only way I could play it was to back-pedal
and find a creative solution to my own problem,
whatever that may be. - Right.
- So, that's the advice I would give to young players
about playing musically, is you need
to find your own creative solutions for the pieces.
- Brilliant. - Okay.
- There're such great tips in that last segment there.
You guys need to watch it over again.
Especially when you were even breaking down
that Pineapple Thief song. - Yeah.
- That was very cool, just hearing
what you were picking out.
You were really listening, you were picking out
the guitar parts, 3/16 pattern
on the guitar. - Yeah.
- "How do I elevate it?
"Now, there's distortion in the guitar section.
"And then it goes to the chorus," and then you start,
that's the end payoff, then you reverse engineer
how you get there, great tips.
And then even in creating patterns
and becoming creative with rhythms.
We get questions all the time,
"Like, how do I be creative?"
Like, this is a great, great lesson for that.
- Right, good, good. - Yeah.
We're really low on time.
- Should I play another song?
- Play another song for us
and then we'll talk a little bit more,
and then we'll wrap up.
What song do you have for us?
Is this The Start of Something Beautiful?
- I'm gonna play The Start of Something Beautiful.
This is another Porcupine Tree song,
I'm gonna put this 12-inch snare on.
- [Dave] Okay. - Just because, I don't know.
- Why not? - Because, yeah,
'cause it's here. - Yeah.
- And I like playing it.
- Alright, so, whenever you're ready.
- Yeah, okay, so this is The Start of Something Beautiful.
(clapping)
- So good, well done, man, well done, wow!
So, I would love to keep going
and just keep chatting drums,
keep chatting about rhythmic design
and keep watching you play songs.
- Thank you.
- But we're really low on time.
- Okay.
- So, we are gonna wrap it up.
Is there anything you'd wanna add
before we do wrap this up?
- No, I think we've covered-- - Yeah.
- Really, the most important parts to me,
my approach to playing the drums
and trying to be creative with the drums.
And of course, some of the more technical issues
we're gonna cover in the lessons.
- Absolutely, for those who don't know,
when we bring guests like Gavin out,
we always film some exclusive material
for our members area inside of Drumeo,
and this is no different.
We've already filmed two courses,
we're gonna be filming another two tomorrow,
it's gonna be absolutely amazing.
And we do dive a little bit further into this
as well as some great coordination stuff.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening.
We're also gonna be live tomorrow for Edge members
for a live interview and Q&A with Gavin as well.
And if you guys are watching this on YouTube
and it's within 30 days of our post on YouTube
for this lesson, you can win a free copy
of Gavin Harrison's album, Cheating The Polygraph.
It's a two-disc set, 5.1 surround version
of the album's on here on a DVD format,
and the CD as well, and you're gonna sign 'em too.
- Yeah. - Very cool.
If you guys are a Porcupine Tree fan,
regardless if you win this or not,
go and get Cheating The Polygraph.
I am a huge Porcupine Tree fan myself
and I love that album, it's really cool.
You've heard a couple songs in it already.
It's a really cool version, or rendition,
of some of those old Porcupine Tree tunes.
So, again a huge thank you to all you guys watching live,
a huge thank you to Sonor, Remo, Zildjian,
Tama pedals, Porter & Davies thrones--
- Yeah. - Gibraltar rack
who we didn't even use today. - Yup.
- But, huge thanks to everyone for helping make this happen.
Huge thanks to you, Gavin.
- Thank you, yeah, thanks. - No, thank you, man.
- It's been a pleasure.
- Yeah, the information in this lesson is great.
You guys should all watch it again
and that being said, you wanna play us out
with one more song?
- Yeah, I'm gonna play Cheating The Polygraph,
the title track of this piece.
- Beautiful.
- Alright, thank you very much.
- Thanks everyone, I'm gonna leave--
- Yeah.
- So I can watch it from in there.
- Alright. - Cheers.
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