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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