Drum Video of the Day (DVOD)

The first Drum Video Of the Day is going to be Sean Reinert of the progressive metal band Cynic. Cynic is a band like none other, and one of my favorite prog bands. They are usually classified as "technical death metal" and although they have elements of death metal, and are very technical, I prefer to label them just as progressive metal. Much of their sound is a jazz/metal fusion, very dynamic, and with heavy use of vocal effects. In 15 years they only put out two CDs: Focus was released in 1993 and Traced In Air in 2008.

Sean is a huge influence of mine. I particularly like his use of complex tom rhythms over steady double bass and his odd snare back beats. Notice how his kit set up is very symmetrical. This is becoming increasingly popular, particularly with prog drummers. I have modified my set to be more symmetrical, forcing my left hand to do more work thus increasing its dominance.

This is a song off of Traced In Air called "Evolutionary Sleeper"

New Techniques

Often when I am teaching, I will be explaining something and i'll suddenly be hit with a way to express the idea with brevity and precision. This turns into a new teaching technique that I continue to use. Tonight while teaching my students I was hit with this inspiration twice.

The first happened when I was explaining to a kid, of i believe 7 or 8 years, the basic theory of rests. I was introducing him to the eighth note rest by incorporating it into the kick pattern of a drum beat. I had been struggling with expressing this idea, and tonight it just rolled off my tongue in a way that is clear, concise, and simple.

The second happened when I was teaching the kid's father (yes all three of my students tonight are family to each other). We were warming up with single stroke rolls and the kick on all the downbeats, as usual, and I referred to the idea of starting slow and gradually increasing speed as a 'speed gradient.' This gave me a way to refer to a specific exercising technique which I had previously been explaining each time i did it with a student as "start slow and gradually increase speed then gradually decrease speed." Now all I have to do is define speed gradient to my student, and this opens the door to many applications of the speed gradient.

Coming soon will be LiveScribe lessons. I have a pen that records via an infrared camera everything that I write in the notebook. I can use this as a way to record short little lesson blurbs and post them in my blog. I hope to have a couple up in the next 3 days or so.

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Updates

All the wheels are in motion to expand my student base! Yesterday 500 business cards from http://www.vistaprint.com arrived, and so did the verification for my Google business listing. The business cards were free, all I had to pay was shipping. It was a sweet deal, but limited by a few generic designs and the standard card stock with a matte finish. The next step is to actually incorporate myself into an LLC.

Got the drums set up in my house, now that Faethm is done practicing while we record the rest of the instruments for the album. This means that i'll be able to take students in my home as well as teaching at the students home or at the music store. I am still waiting on my DW9000 hihat stand to come back from Drum Workshop. Once that is here my set up will be complete and the instructional videos will begin!

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Tracking Drums

This weekend has been very busy. I knocked out the drum tracks in a day and a half. Seven songs. We recorded three to five takes of each song and then comped them together. Comping is a simple yet powerful editing process where we take the best take and label it as "main" then any mistakes are replaced by that section from a different take. Sometimes it was not a matter of replacing a mistake, but just a section that I liked better from a different take. Maybe it was more solid, or I did something different that I liked better. There was lots of flexibility to make the "main" take just the way I wanted it. Since I played every take very consistently over all, it was an easy process to comp a few sections here or there and make it seemless. The next step, which we started last night and will finish tonight, is to grid edit the drums. This process is tedious, but it allows us to make sure all the main kick, snare, and tom hits are on the grid all the time. Also part of grid editing is to isolate the tom tracks and remove any sections that the toms are not being played to cut out bleed. This cleans up the tom tracks and makes them very clean and crispy.

I am very happy with the drum sounds. Sean Shannon from Redroom Audio has done an amazing job at making the drum tracks sound awesome. Check him out at www.redroomaudio.com.

Within the next week or so I will have pictures up and possibly a performance video from tracking.

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Welcome!

I have been playing drums for 13 years and teaching for 3 years. I teach all ages and skill levels. My curriculum includes: reading and writing music, drum kit styles, technique, creativity, independence, timing, and beat arrangement. I move at the students pace and teach in the style that the student is most receptive to. I teach most styles of music, however I do not teach jazz. I am great with kids also.

I love talking about drums. I love playing drums. I currently have a Gretsch Renown Maple kit in a translucent ebony gloss finish. I play Paiste cymbals, however my hihats are a hybrid consisting of a 15 inch Zildjian Mastersound bottom and a 15 inch Paiste Giant Beat top. I also have a Roland Handsonic that I use for ethnic drums like tablas and congas. In percussion I have a cowbell, Treeworks chimes, and a Wuhan gong. The kit I had before the Renown Maple was an Ayotte custom kit with wood hoops in a satin red finish. I loved that kit because of its uniqueness and it sounded great, but the Gretsch Renown Maple gives me the tone, attack, and versatility I want.

This blog is going to be a place where I can teach, talk about, and play drums. I will be posting instructional materials, videos, promotional stuff for my band Faethm, and other random drum stuff like articles, news, and anything else related to drums.

I have been playing in Faethm for nearly a decade. We have been through some line up fluctuations, and over the years our style has evolved from a raw riff-oriented rock to a harder rock, almost metal, and now we are a nice balance of progressive, hard rock, and metal. Our music now is much more technical than it ever has been in the past, and is exploring the realm of progressive music. I am incorporating more time signature changes, tempo changes, and poly-rhythms into my playing. Currently my top five influences, in no particular order, are: Danny Carey (Tool), Thomas Haake (Meshuggah), Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree), Sean Reinert (Cynic), and Charlie Zeleny (Blotted Science "Machinations of Dementia").

www.faethm.com

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