Hello!  I'm writing this in-between gigs while on a UK tour that is a Roots musicians dream ... the gig celebrates the music of Johnny Cash and June Carter and is a great opportunity to lay down a whole selection train beats, rockabilly grooves and of course, some fine country shuffles!  I'm playing my usual basic 4 piece drum set and my cymbal selection for this tour was a  no brainer - my trusty 22" 50's Nostalgia ride, 20" 70's Nostalgia ride and my old faithful 15" Nostalgia Hi Hats.  These cymbals give me all the vintage warmth and control I need alongside a full dynamic range, from playing brushes on a June Carter ballad to crashing my way through the chorus of Ring of Fire! It's all about feel ... I keep using the term 'Roots' music and this gig got me thinking that I should probably explain a little of what I mean by that.  I'm using the term to broadly refer to the varying musical styles that form the bedrock or seeds if you will, of just about all popular music we hear today.  I'm talking about the earliest forms of Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Blues, Country, various forms of New Orleans music ... you get the idea!  I've always been fascinated by the sound on early Blues, R&B and Rock & Roll records and I love the grooves played by the drummers on them.  It's probably fair to say that I have been trying, both unconsciously and consciously, to incorporate and adapt what I have learned and am still learning from those records into my own playing, ever since I could hold a pair of sticks ... I hope I have succeeded at least a few times!  One of the things that fascinates me most is the feel achieved on those recordings - the feel of certain grooves, the feel of certain records, the feel of certain bands or rhythm sections and the feel of certain drummers; it's as much about the space between the notes as it is about the notes that are played.  It's all there in the not-quite-straight-not-quite-swung feel of Earl Palmer (perfectly described by Stanton Moore as 'playing between the cracks') or when you find the swing fighting the straight, adding some roll to the rock ... all part of the DNA of modern rock & pop music.  Check out how Freddy Below plays a swing behind Chuck Berry's straight chugging chords on Sweet Little Sixteen , or how New Orleans great George Recile plays 'between the cracks' on Bob Dylan's Thunder On The Mountain & you'll see what I mean ... Train Keeps a Rollin' ... Playing Johnny Cash's catalogue on this tour covers quite a lot of ground in roots grooves.  His original rhythm section was just guitar and double bass and in the absence of a drummer, Cash was known to slide a sheet of folded paper in-between his guitar strings to give a snare drum effect instead of strumming open chords - check out the train beat he creates this way on I Walk The Line  from 1955!  By 1959, W.S. 'Fluke' Holland had joined the band on drums and remained right up to Johnny Cash's death in 2003.  Playing Fluke's parts comes with a challenge in that he has a very distinctive style dictated by his unorthodox set up.  He plays open handed, leading with the right hand on a kit that is set up left handed leading with his left foot ... still with me?!  I haven't taken it this far and am sticking with my regular set up but I am attempting to play with the appropriate feel and vocabulary!  There is loads of footage of Fluke playing his unique set up with Johnny Cash on YouTube - some of the best clips are from TV shows in the 60's and definitely worth checking out! Some of my favourite parts of the set to play are the songs about trains ... of which there seem to be many!  Fluke was a master at playing train beats and I'm really enjoying playing around with variations based on his own takes.  Instead of thinking of a train beat as a hand to hand groove played on the snare drum, I get to play it with tight hats and cross stick on John Henry's Hammer, as fast 16ths on closed hats on Wreck of the Old 97, as straight paradiddles on Tribute To Luther Perkins and as inverted paradiddles on snare on the classic Jackson .. all great fun and something to try out if you ever find yourself asked to drive the train on a country gig! Going Up The Country .. I also get to use the classic country groove that is attributed to Buddy Harman on a couple of songs in the set; using a brush to play a straight 8ths ostinato on the snare with a cross-stick backbeat.  For those who don't know, Buddy was a Nashville session ace who employed this groove on countless recordings.  You can hear Steve Jordan use it to great effect on Robbed Blind on the last Keith Richards album too ... I used the same groove in studio myself during the sessions for the recently released Robert Ray single, Love Curse.  Working with producer Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios, the song started with strummed acoustic guitar and a classic country flavour.  The Buddy Harman groove was perfect for the song ... we ended up using the same feel on tight closed hats and cross stick but the vibe is there ... go check it out! I'll leave it there on a country note today and will be back soon with more new release news and my experiences with my Istanbul Mehmet cymbals in the studio ... see you soon! Matt

Good evening people, and welcome to my Istanbul Mehmet Artist Blog Page. I thought I would start my first blog by introducing myself!   My name is Rick Henry and l am a UK independent drummer from Burnley a town near Manchester. I have been playing the drums for around 13 years. After seeing John Miceli on kit for Meat Loaf, I knew it was what I wanted to do. I started having lessons with a jazz drummer called Russell Woods. Russ was a well known drummer in the UK and backed a number of American Jazz Artists when they come to the UK, he was most famous for his 10 minute drum solo in Skin Deep! When Russ passed away I started studying with Dave Hassell. Russ & Dave got me in to drummers like Buddy Rich, Mel Louis, Gene Krupa, Zutty Singleton, Ben Pollack, Shelly Manne & Baby Dodds to name a few! The one thing all these drummers had in common was cymbal time, they could swing like the clappers! Why did I choose lstanbul Mehmet you might be thinking? good question, but a very simple one! The most important thing for me on the drum kit, are the cymbals, their sounds and their tones and I have got Russ to thank for that! I have never once bought a cymbal online, for me its about trying them out, and I do not rush this process! Back in 2012, I received an email from Andy Anderson at Drumshop UK telling me to check out Istanbul Mehmet's cymbals at the London Drum Show. I remember going to the stand and getting a stick out of my bag, the first cymbal I started playing cymbal time on was a 21” Nostalgia 50’s Ride Cymbal straight away I said to Andy, where do I sign, I want to be an artist! What I love is all the cymbal ranges Istanbul Mehmet have to offer, which is brilliant for me as I work with a number of different artists playing different genres of music! I love using the Session Series when I am playing live with Manning, when working with JK as Robbie Williams & Patti Russo I mix the cymbals up with Radiants and Nostalgias they compliment each over very well! My stand out cymbals are my Tony Williams cymbal set, my word, I can not describe how they sound! The first time I heard them I was speechless! There you have it, a little bit about me and  my cymbals, I will keep you updated on here on upcoming sessions and shows! Rick  

Hi guys and welcome to my Istanbul Mehmet Artist blog page!

I will be updating the page regularly with articles, performance videos and video lessons, so please stay tuned! At this moment in time, I am preparing to embark on a 50 Video Lesson project for leading online Music Education provider DIMEONLINE and will be giving my lovely Istanbul Mehmet cymbals a bit of a workout! I'll keep you updated on how things are going with that! I am also working towards creating my own online membership site, time permitting, doing remote recording sessions and busy gigging with the UK Rock Legends! That's all for now and thanks for visiting Istanbul Mehmet - wonderful cymbals and wonderful people! See you soon! Best Wishes, Paul PS If you wish to receive FREE material/product downloads, simply subscribe to my email list at www.paulelliottdrums.com Thank you!

The Alexander Technique

Devised by Frederick Matthias Alexander, an Australian actor who suffered from voice and breathing problems, the Alexander Technique operates on the principle of re-educating the body to achieve postural harmony and well-being. Essentially a self-help programme, the Alexander Technique teaches us how to become more aware of bad postural habits – often the cause of restrictive physical tension – and helps us to use our body in a more balanced, efficient and co-ordinated way. Although the Alexander Technique has long been helping classical musicians to cope with problems such as RSI, tendonitis, backache, tennis elbow, incorrect breathing, tension and even stage fright, it’s likely that the majority of non- classical musicians are unfamiliar with the method. Well, time to remedy that right now, by beginning with the important relationship between the head, the neck and the back.

Heads you win

Do you know how much your head weighs? Go on, hazard a guess… Well, it weighs a whopping 10 pounds (10 bags of sugar! Or, to be more ‘metrically correct’, approximately five kilos). It’s hard to believe but true! So, that means if your head isn’t balanced correctly on the top of your spine, it’s putting 10 pounds of unwanted pressure (or sugar) on your neck muscles! This helps us to understand why the relationship between the head, neck and back is so important. First off, let’s talk about the muscles of the neck. It’s the big muscles at the back of the neck that hold your head up on your spine. If you hold too much tension in these muscles, they will shorten and pull your head backwards and off balance, as you can see in Pic 1. Apart from an obvious extreme pulling back of the head, it may be difficult to know whether you’re holding excess tension in your neck, because the difference between the anatomically correct and incorrect position is subtle. Try the following exercise to check the position of your head: sit in front of a mirror and check if you’re looking straight ahead, and that your eyes are level. Does this feel like where your head normally is? Now try this: allow the muscles at the back of the neck to release very slowly, until your chin is resting on your chest. Now slowly bring the head back up, using the minimum amount of neck muscle tension, and until you can see that you’re looking straight ahead in the mirror. This may feel quite strange to begin with, because chances are that you probably normally hold your head too far back, and it may now feel as though you’re looking down, but check the mirror – it never lies! Pic 2 shows the correct alignment of the head, balanced on the spine, with Pic 3 showing the front view. Alexander Technique practitioners place great emphasis on this, referring to it as ‘freeing’ of the neck (more on this subject next month). Of course, during the throes of musical passion, it may seem difficult to maintain such a balance of the head, given the physical nature of the instrument. However, as usual, awareness is the key consideration. With due care and attention, you can still play with passion and emotion, while allowing your head to rest in the most balanced and physically efficient position. You know it makes sense.

Bottoms up

As drummers, we can appreciate the physical and mechanical (ergonomic) benefits of adopting a physically efficient sitting position. In respect of this, it’s time to introduce you to some very important anatomical friends – the sitting bones! The sitting bones are the two round bones underneath you when you sit (surprise, surprise!). Pic 4 (as modelled by our small but perfectly formed skeleton), shows the position of the sitting bones, from behind. Try sitting on your hands, on your drum stool (See Pic 5, as modelled by our large but perfectly formed drummer!), then move around a bit, and you’ll feel your sitting bones. Basically, you should be sitting on these bones at all times – that’s what they’re designed for! With this in mind, it’s a good time to mention the relationship between the body and gravity – a key Alexander Technique principle. This is best described by Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, which tells us that “for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction”. In plain English, this means that the ground is coming back up to you and supporting you with a force equal to that of gravity. So, in plain drumming terms, by thinking about your sitting bones getting all that support from your drum stool, you can really let yourself use that upward support to give you a feeling of lightness, all the way up the spine. Basically, the freer your spine is, the more stable your torso will be, allowing for more freedom and balance in your limbs, and providing unrestricted, tension-free movement for the purpose of technical execution. The really important thing to know about your arms is that they’re an extension of your back, and this is a key consideration in Alexander Technique. Physiologically, we have stabilising muscles and mobilising muscles. The stabilising muscles (core muscles) lie deep within, and effectively support, the trunk of the body. They generally attach to the spine, pelvis, and other muscles that support the scapulas (shoulder blades), thereby stabilising these areas to create a firm foundation for co-ordinated movement of the mobilising muscles, which move the arms and legs.

Last words

Without getting into too much physiological detail, it’s important to look at the Latissimus Dorsi muscles (commonly referred to as the ‘Lats’), which effectively play a crucial role in the mobilisation of the upper limbs. Have a look at Pic 6 (please note that no tour t-shirts were harmed in the making of this photograph!) and you’ll see the position of the Latissimus Dorsi muscle, which covers a large area of the back, along both sides of the spine, out and up, to where it inserts into the upper arms. In general, paying attention to the large and powerful muscles of the back can provide more physical efficiency, comfort and endurance when playing drums – take care of the stabilisers with correct postural habits and the mobilisers will take care of themselves. Now that you are aware of this connection, stop thinking about the arms finishing at the shoulder, and instead allow your mental image of your arms to extend around to your back. Another important consideration regarding the arms is that they don’t end at the shoulder in the front of the body either; they actually carry on right up to the collarbone, as you can see in Pic 7. This alone is not as important as harnessing your back power, but an awareness of this will immediately give you a little more freedom of movement in the arms and shoulders. Check it out for yourself: put your left hand firmly into the ‘soap dish’ shape of your right collarbone. Now raise your right arm upwards, as in Pic 8. You will feel the movement in your collarbone. Any rigidity in the collarbone will restrict movement and, again, it pays to be aware of this physical connection when playing drums.