I often wondered, when I was a young man going to concert, what it took for the huge bands I saw to get the crowd going. Everything seemed magic: the music was great, the performance was energetic, the sound was impeccable and the crowd, oh Man! the crowd was with them heart andRead More

There are some cousins sounds on the drums, some sound sources that are exactly from the same family. Of course, the 2 crashes hanging from their stand on a regular drum set, would be a good example. But the toms, whether you have 2, 3, 4 or more, are also close cousins of eachRead More

In live situation, when the drums are not miked, here’s is what usually happens. We hear the bass drum and snare clear and loud as well as the hi hat if it is played with the shoulder of the stick on the side of the cymbal, or half open in a “whooshy” soundRead More

I am now at the third part of a blog on orchestration. And I want to talk about the idea of developing a beat. I have put as an example a single song sung by Stephan Eicher called “Est it alles”. The drummer for the song is Manu Katche. The whole tune is nothing elseRead More

The drummer is in charge of time keeping. That is the accepted version of the drummer’s role in a band. But the successful drummers understand something else: colors, taste and tone attached to feelings. Orchestration is directly related to that. And tuning the drums is oneRead More

This is a video we did last summer. I already published the promo video and the video of Obladi-Oblada that my son Louis was singing. This one features my daughter Emmi in a fairly modern song that our family has been singing for the last 5 years.Read More

When we look at a drum set we are looking at an orchestra. A percussion orchestra. This blog in several part will be talking about orchestration. The orchestra of the drum set. Let’s start with the snare drum. It is, for the drummer the beginning of everything. We developRead More

Steve Gadd, says composer extraorinaire Paul Simon, has a particularity: while he improvises he can recall a pattern that he just played and play it again exactly the same. It sounds like an obvious thing to do, but when you have the technique that he has, it becomes a veryRead More

We don’t want the teacher to get annoyed. But if the student has been told to slow down and he doesn’t: what to do? Well, I can explain it to you on the blog, or you can take lessons with me and I can show you in real time the solution to that sticky problem. MovingRead More

While the student is trying to do a difficult exercise on the instrument, music teacher will often fall back on this advice: Slow down. And, while the advice is great and most of the time exactly what is needed, it is not sometimes possible for the student to follow it. For oneRead More