- Istanbul Mehmet Cymbals

28-03-2024

Hello and welcome to another lesson blog. In this one, I am going going over a few of the patterns I used in the song “Lucky Break” with Mechanical Monkey recorded for a live session. The video can be seen here: - https://youtu.be/8ww-OE8WslQ

1) This is a cool little groove based of groupings of 5. The sticking is just RLRLL where the left hand is ghosted and the right is accented. As it is in 5/4 and the back beat alternates every other grouping of 5 it could be felt as quintuplets through 4/4. However as it is just in 16ths, take your time when practicing with a metronome as the accents and specifically the back beats are in an unusual place (the “e” of 2 and the “a” of 4) 2) This is a cool pattern that goes over the beat and bar lines. We have a phrase that is 3 beats long and it doesn't resolve mathematically after the two bar phrase, but it does finish in a natural/music way. It can be tough to keep the timing when you switch to a 1/4 pulse instead of an 1/8 one so take your time, count and play along with a metronome. 3) This is majoritively a grouping of 5 notes so can feel similar to exercise 1. However, it also has a grouping of 3 notes to allow it to resolve in 9/8. The phrasing is 5,5,5,3 and as we keep an 8th pulse on the hats (or stack), it gives a really good driving feel to it. If you struggle to play it all together, start with the snare and bass pattern and add the hats, paying attention to how every other grouping is flipped to the off beat. I also recommend going back and checking out part 3 of playing odd groupings on this blog as it will help give you the tools to play this. I hope you all got something out of that. I am going to do a few song/groove dissections in the future as hopefully it will put some of these odd groupings into a context, albeit a “math-rock” one. As always, have fun and keep on drumming!

Busy busy work work collapse...

28-03-2024

Australia, Uk, Recording....and the Mehmets stand tall!!

Hello again.Sorry its been so long since my last blog, but it has been manic with touring and planning a wedding.Its June 26th and The Searchers have just started 4 week holiday! In the last month we have done 17 shows. A few of those were re-scheduled ones due to John McNallys illness. More on that later. The last 2 weeks have seen us playing every night from Tuesdays to Sundays. Shortly after our last Australian tour where we crammed 31 shows in 6 weeks, due to a greedy promoter, we returned home on 14th March. All exhausted and we were soon back on the road again ploughing on giving our all. Sadly, we had all picked up illnesses due to being run down and John was hit the hardest. He was coughing and spluttering through shows, but after his wife stepped in (men hate doctors) he was diagnosed with pneumonia and instructed to rest. This meant cancelling show, something the band has not done for over 23 years. Mary, John’s wife, took over and he was ordered to his bed. His laptop, phone and tablet were confiscated and he was confined to his room with just a tv and only a few channels. We cancelled 5 shows in total and all had to be re-scheduled. Only 1 is left to do and that will be in February next year. In between all this, I was also recording with several artists, The Pocket Gods and playing live with The Pocket Gods for NUB in the pub and was house drummer for jam nights at The White Swan, Aylesbuy. The NUB in the pub gig is streamed live on the internet and features up and coming acoustic artists. For this show The Pocket Gods played 20 minutes of our own songs, then we backed John Altman (Nasty Nick from Eastenders, Chicago) With Nick singing some Rolling Stones songs and Rock n roll classics. The Pocket Gods have a new album out now, called ‘Jesus and the Mary chain’ and the single ‘perfect blue’ is also out now and can be downloaded. The album is also out on Vinyl, if like me, you still prefer that format. For the live Pocket Gods sessions, as it was an acoustic gig (ok I know we have a keyboard player) I used my Istanbul Mehmet 12’ traditional splash and 13’ El Negro hihats. For the Pocket Gods and Kyle Michael sessions it was my full rig with Istanbul Mehmet Sultan cymbals and for the jam nights I used my Sultan ride with 15” and 16” traditional crash, 14” Sultan hats. Even though The Searchers are on holiday till our next show on July 22nd, I have 1 more show on Tuesday 27th with The Pocket Gods for a NUB in the pub Summer special. We once again get to play for 20 minutes and I will be using the same set up. On July 7th I then marry the very sexy fiancée Sam and then on 9th July we fly off on our honeymoon for some very needed down time in the sun. Keep playing and keep enjoying live music! Till next time, goodbye [embed]https://youtu.be/5kHbHPSXJ2Y[/embed]

Exploring Odd Groupings Part 5

28-03-2024

Hello and welcome to the fifth instalment of the odd groupings series. In this lesson we will be looking at a slightly less obvious grouping of either 5 and 4 or 3 depending on how you feel or count it. When it comes to applying these patterns I have used a jazz approach but please do experiment and have some fun!

In the first exercise we have a bar of straight 8th notes through 9/4, the notes are grouped into 5, 4, 5, 4. When you play through this, instead of using a standard count. I’d like you to count the groups (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4). Once you have the pattern slowly, play along with a click making sure you play smoothy, dynamically and accurately. Then add in the left foot on a 1/4 note pulse.
Number two would sound the same as number one if played out of context/without a click/not counting. Please do not just play it once and move on. It is really important to make sure you COUNT this bar accurately. It is in a different time signature and we are playing a different subdivision. When you play along with a click and incorporate the left foot you will feel the difference.
Okay, so this is where this lesson gets a little more difficult to explain so bear with me. In this exercise we are playing the same accent pattern as in the previous exercise but we have removed the middle note from every triplet leaving us with swung 8th notes (still written as triplets). If we play this hand to hand, it resolves in 3/4 so it’s a little easier to count.
Now to add to the confusion. The following exercises are written as 8th notes, please note that these should be played as SWUNG 8th notes (it’s a little more obvious when you look at 5 and 6 due to the jazz ride pattern). Please note that the accents are now in groups of three 8th notes. However, due to them being swung we can also think of them still in groups of 5 and 4. As you play this, keep your count as swung 8ths and as before add the left foot and practice this along to a click. As it’s a grouping of 3, it takes 3 bars to fully resolve.
Application time. Here we have a really simple jazz time pattern for two bars and then the first two bars of our pattern. Obviously it doesn't fully resolve in just two bars but that can make it quite a nice pattern. Please note that we are keeping the standard, 2 and 4, jazz left foot going through the pattern. At higher tempos, you might want to drop the last ride note from bar two to make the transition to the snare a little easier. Once you can comfortably play this, you should think about; adding bass drum feathering, orchestrating the pattern around the kit, taking the second and third or third and first bars from the previous exercise or even extending the pattern to 4 or more bars and finally adding other subdivisions such as 1/4 notes and full triplets. When you do this final stage, for now, keep the accents in the same place until you have fully assimilated this into your playing. You can spend MANY hours on number 5 as there is a lot of millage in this simple concept.
With this final exercise, we have taken our accent pattern and used that rhythm as our left hand comping phrase. Personally, I find this popping up in my playing all the time as it sounds very musical and seems to flow nicely in many situations. As in the previous exercise please experiment with playing a different selection of bars from exercise 4. I really like using bars 2 and 3 as it sounds nice coming in on the up beat of one.

I hope you all got something out of that and find it useful for getting your hands warmed up. To start with it can be a little challenging, but once you have mastered it, you will be left with a quick and effective warm up.

Warming Up The Hands

28-03-2024

Hello and welcome, today I will be sharing with you a really useful hand warm up exercise that I not only teach but also use myself for loosening up my wrists and getting warmed up. Before we actually get into it (are you sitting down?) it’s not another iteration of the standard singles, doubles and paradiddles exercise that everyone knows a version of, although that is a great exercise there are loads of versions already out there. Not sure what I mean, then just watch Joe Morello’s killer exercise here for a great display of the basic idea. Ok so what are we actually going to look at today? Its a simple enough idea, treat the hands evenly. Almost everyone has a dominant hand and therefore a weaker hand. As drummers, we strive to lessen the gap between our hands as much as possible to allow us to fully express our ideas musically. As always, I have written this with a right handed player in mind, if you’re a lefty, just flip the sticking and enjoy.

In the first exercise, we are just playing constant 16ths on the hats with the right hand and 8th notes with left on the snare.
Now we are just flipping it so that our left hand has to play the constant 16ths. This can be surprisingly tough to keep sounding smooth and consistent so stick with it.
This is the main exercise. We are playing the first two patterns back to back, effectively switching between right hand and left hand biassed grooves, we have also added an 8th note bass drum pattern to help hold it all together. Take your time to make this feel and sound smooth and then slowly increase the tempo.
This is can be a little tougher depending on your comfort level with a samba bass drum pattern. It is essentially the same as 3 just with the different foot pattern.
As a bonus, I have put number 5 in as I often like to play this straight after 4. It is just a pataflafla with the samba foot pattern underneath. It’s a great pattern as the flams lock in with the right foot. This really gets my hands loose and ready to play.

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