Liberty DeVitto on How to be a Better Drummer

Liberty Devitto on How to be a better drummer 

 

Often times as musicians we can learn as much from people who don’t play the same instrument as we can from those that do. This is because musical concepts are the same on any instrument. So when I saw this video  from Liberty DeVitto (who was Billy Joel's drummer for years) I knew it would  be a valuable resource. Liberty talks about a lot of great points and does it in a very entertaining and understandable way.  

This video is a compilation of excerpts from a live presentation at a drum clinic and the first thing he says (in the video at least) is that “Drums are not a solo instrument” and goes on to  illustrate this point by say how you will never go to a restaurant and see a drummer playing solo in the corner.

Then he goes on to say that the most important thing in a rehearsal is not the drummer or the singer, but the song itself. And asks why you are playing that part in that song? What fits and what doesn’t fit?

He relates playing music to getting ready to go on a date. He says the groove on 2 and 4 is your pants, so after you put your pants on, you open your closet and see 75 shirts. The fills are your shirts. Then he states,”Not every shirt is going to go with those pants”….”Just because you know how to play it, doesn’t necessarily mean you should”  and rounds out that section stating to “Make sure your fills go with the song you are playing.”

He goes on to talk about how the style of playing is going to be dictated by the title of the song. He points out that you are going to play a song titled “I am going to love you forever” differently than the song, ”I hate your guts so badly that I am going to drive your parents car right through your house.”

The next point that the he makes is about how a great drummer knows when to sit out and not play. Then he talks about how drummers play half the time fast and the other half slow, and how it is important to play big in ballads ….but not the whole time….and using Billy Joels “Honesty” demonstrates how to build a part dynamically.

This video is short, but packed with a lot of great information on becoming a better musician, and if you substitute the word drummer for musician, it directly applies to everyone.  Take a look and then comment below.

 

How to play rubato

 Time  is concept  that is often debated among musicians especially, depending on the genre of music. For example, if you ask a classical musician to swing, you typically get the same response as if ask a rock musician to play rubato. Sadly this response can often be confusion and righteous indignation, which never bodes well for accomplishing a moving performance. The frames of reference just don’t line up for either of them. This is really entirely unnecessary and by the end of this two part article hopefully you will have a better idea of the two styles. For this article “time” will be defined as the sense of overall forward motion in a piece of music.

This being the case I would like to offer a definition of two kinds of time.  These terms are not official textbook terms but for purposes of demonstration I think they will help to clarify the meanings.  The two styles are momentum-based time and structure-based time.

In this first article, I will discuss momentum-based time. The style I will refer to as momentum-based time, is most often used in classical music and musical theatre. The idea behind momentum based time is that the sense of time is only relative to itself, and what has come before it.

What this means essentially is that two quarter notes will not necessarily be as long as each other at the same tempo. One may be slightly faster or slower depending on its placement in the phrase (and style of music).

Typically momentum based time is going to be based off of the harmonic progression and the performers interpretation of it. Which means that if you know what the harmonies are you can more easily predict what the pace of the line will be. In regards to how quickly the line will move through some progressions and how much it will slow through other progressions.

The other characteristic is that it can be texture based. What this means is that loud multi-voiced textures physically take longer for the sound to be produced then soft single voiced textures do, so sometimes extra time is allowed for that. Its also known as allowing the music to breathe

The way to follow this style of music is by following the harmony and the shape of the phrase. If you try to count metronomically throughout you will most certainly become confused.

So hopefully the next time you see or hear the word rubato you will have a better idea of what to do with it. This style can often be baffling for non-classical musicians because it seems to be arbitrary. However, when done well,  it makes perfect musical sense, and is very easy to follow,…once you understand the rules behind it. When done wrong though…well then yes…  sadly, it is entirely arbitrary.

How to Always Play with Perfect Time and Never Play a Wrong Note Again

Review of The Music Lesson, A spiritual search for growth through music by Victor Wooten.

Do you find that the quantity of you music you play is growing but you are not sure if whether or not the quality of your music is growing at the same rate?


With music as with anything in life, sometimes we can get so caught up with trying to learn more that we don’t always try to do better. In other words, we perform more music, but the overall quality stays the same.  

Often times we are so focused on trying to beat the deadline of bringing the music up to a certain level, that we don’t have the time to improve the level itself. Another way that this idea shows up is when we work on details so much that we forget to look at the big picture of being a musician, in other words we can’t see the forest through the trees.


Well the antidote to that is “The Music Lesson” by Victor Wooten. This story can help to immediately increase the quality of your “relationship with music”, and it makes no difference what level or style of performer you are. From pop to jazz, and country to classical the information is universal enough that it will dramatically improve your musicianship.


 For those of you unfamiliar with Victor Wooten, he has won four Grammy awards and also won Bass Player magazine’s Player of the Year award 3 times. He is the only bass player to win the award more than once. So needless to say he does have some experience.


This book is written so that it will help you out no matter what level your currently are at, from beginner to advanced to very advanced. The principles and concepts that are shown in this book can help you to grow from whatever level you are at, to whatever levels you would like to get to.


I know what you are thinking…the book probably reads like a textbook. That couldn’t be further than the truth, the best part of the book is that it is in story form. I think that each of the 4 times that I have read this book over the years…I have read the whole book in about 2 days, so it reads really easily, and you will have a hard time putting it down.


The story is about Victor Wooten and his surprise guest Michael who shows him about music and life through talking about the 10 elements of music that are:


1. Notes
2. Articulation/Duration
3. Technique
4. Emotion/Feel
5. Dynamics
6. Rhythm/ Tempo
7. Tone
8. Phrasing
9. Space/Rest
10. Listening


Using these elements, Michael systematically goes through each of these and destroys, builds, and expands Victor’s concept of each. The book goes through all of these concepts reiterating how important each one is in the big picture, and demonstrating how they are all represented in everyday life, and then how they work in music.


They discuss concepts such as the difference between playing an instrument, and playing music using an instrument, to how to play so that people applaud after your solo. It covers an amazing mix of philosophical and practical advice, most of which is not common knowledge.


This is a book that I have read several times, each time I come away from it with a new perspective and having learned something new. The funniest thing about this book is that it will cause you to ask yourself 5 new questions for each one that it answers…but it still answers about 200 of them, so you will certainly not be without


It is probably one of the most informative and entertaining books on music that I have ever read, and is of value to anyone interested in giving themselves a new perspective and bringing their playing and understanding up to the next level.


Read it and feel free to comment on it…








Victor also has a video out called Groove Workshop where he teaches a lot of these concepts in a bass masterclass. The video shows how to practice to improve different aspects of your playing, and covers many of the ideas covered in the book. It is a two DVD set and is worth the price.

The Universal Translator, the best way to handle feedback

Getting feedback is often uncomfortable for many people, especially when its negative. However, in order to improve you have to learn how to effectively take and incorporate suggestions, especially when they don’t match what you want to hear.

Now I cannot take credit for the title The Universal Translator, as a friend of mine mentioned provided it, but I have thought this way for years, and it has helped me to learn a lot of new things. Especially when the lesson itself was presented in a way that was confrontational and or even intended to be demeaning. There are several ways that it works, the first way is:

Separating the message from the emotion

For the sake of this description I am going to break down a statement into two parts….fact/message and emotion. Fact/message is information the person is trying to get across, and emotion is the manner they are trying to do it, and also the importance of it.
This could be best shown in a quick example:

“Could you please turn the TV down”

“Can you turn down the TV I am trying to read here?”

“ARE YOU &*(% DEAF? TURN DOWN THE TV OR I AM GOING TO THROW IT AND YOU ACROSS THE ROOM!!”

Now I think that you can clearly see how the message stayed the same but the emotion behind it changed and amplified it dramatically. Now on the other side of the coin is the person who is receiving these comments. Now if they hear all three in a row then they understand the emotional explosion and it makes sense. However, sometimes the “work-up” happens outside of the situation so this communication is the first one people have. So let look at potential responses on this line of communication from that perspective, (assuming that the other person is not trying to be rude)

“Yeah sure”

“Yeah alright, relax, all you have to do is ask”

“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT YOUR REAL PROBLEM IS…..YOUR JUST A BOSSY JERK WHO ALWAYS HAS TO BE IN CONTROL

Now maybe you can see yourself in one of these situations. You notice that by the third one the message is totally gone. The emotional level is so dominant that message gets washed away, and the other person only responds to the emotion and not the message itself.

I think the best demonstration of this is if you have ever witnessed two people arguing a point they were passionate about for several minutes, to the point that they are almost yelling at each other, and then they realize that they are on the same side of the argument. They get so caught up in the emotional level that the information/message is being completely overlooked.

So in this case The Universal Translator is simply a method of consciously recognizing the difference between the message and the emotion, and then only focusing on the message to solve the problem.


Not adding more meaning than necessary

How this can be helpful in receiving feedback is by making sure that you recognize that the feedback is directed toward a problem, and not the person. This is absolutely critical to remember. What this means is that most feedback is not about you…its about what you did. There is a crucial difference there, You are a person and What you did is really quite easy to change and is not a value judgement on who you are. An example that I am sure everyone has either experienced or witnessed might go something like this:

What the director actually said:
Trumpet 2, in Bar 39, it should be a Bb not a B natural

What Trumpet 2 could have heard:
You misread it should be a Bb

Or

WRONG NOTE, WRONG NOTE, WRONG NOTE You are a horrible musician with no hope for a career, in fact you are probably a total screw-up in all other aspects of your life too. Nobody will ever love you…..

This is only partly meant as a joke, because I know that I have seen it a lot. A simple comment, can often spark a heated response either internally or externally, and the problem is that the response is often not the least bit helpful. Which one of the two above comments has the most positive affect on getting the desired result? I think you can quickly decide.

Universal translator in action


So if you find that you are someone who naturally hears closer to answer No. 2 from above, here are some steps you can take to reword what people say to you to give you an idea of what I mean.

1. Get rid of the word "you"
Change “You played that wrong” to “That was played wrong”

2. Decide if the comment has merit, ask yourself, “Does the feedback lead to improvement?” If it does, incorporate it. If it doesn’t, disregard it.

Change “You are playing way to loud” to “the volume needs to be lower” then lower the volume

OR

Change “Have you guys ever even heard the way that song is supposed to go” to “Blah blah blah”

When this happens don’t bother trying to sort for the message the person is not trying to help you to improve, and frankly its better to just ignore the comment, thank them for their observation and move on.

This skill is invaluable because it allows you to receive the message and not give it extra weight.

You have to always remember that you can’t change anything about someone else but you have absolute control over how you deal with it. You have the decision to react emotionally or choose (because it is a choice) to solve the problem instead.


So just remember the main steps are:

- Separate the message from the emotion, and respond to the message and
- Take the feedback at face value and as a specific comment on a specific issue, not a general comment on you as a person

If you can consistently do this you can improve quickly and consistently, because you will be able to keep your ego out of the way and just keep learning and incorporating, from both people who are at a higher and lower level of expertise.

5 T’s that can help you get more gigs Pt. 5 Temperament

Here are some words of advice for musicians, and once you understand this, then you can probably move on with a different perspective.

There is always someone who is better at something than you, and you are always replaceable….

Now I am not trying to crush anyone’s dreams. What I mean by this statement is simply to say that there is something that is almost more than the practice room that helps musicians to get constant work. Many musicians think that they are only judged by their musical ability, basically the same exact things that their teachers judged them on. However, most often your teachers aren’t judging you on your character…perspective employers are. More times that not you will be hired the first time because of your skill, you will be re-hired (or not fired) multiple times afterwards for who you are as a person.

To take a real honest assessment of yourself ask yourself the following questions?

Are you someone who is musically competent?

In other words you have the first three of the T’s in order (time, technique and taste)?

Do you work well with others? Or more importantly do people like working with you?

Are you the sort of person that can get along easily with others and get things done, or do you find that you are constantly in full-on arguments with everyone around you.

Are you able to take critique without either blowing up or shutting down.

Can you accept feedback and quickly incorporate it or do you get indignant and either yell at the person giving it or just totally close down.

Are you doing the job you are hired to do?

This is more crucial than you can imagine. Many times excellent musicians can work themselves straight out of a gig by doing what they want to as opposed to what the gig calls for. What I mean by this is that if you are hired for a certain gig, know what is required of you and the etiquette of it.

A couple of examples would be

Getting a gig as a church organist and showing up on Sunday morning dressed in ripped jeans and a T-shirt that says “Atheism for the rest of us”

Getting a gig for a cocktail party and playing super loud and very free jazz

Getting hired as an accompanist and playing louder and without disregard for the soloist.

In all of these situations you will probably not be hired back. The funny part is that it  doesn’t matter if you are a incredible organ player, or a phenomenal free jazz artist, or an insanely talented pianist, because you are not doing the job that you were hired for.

So when you get hired for a gig make sure to recognize what they are actually hiring you for, and be observant as to what everyone else is doing, and take your cues from there.

Lets look at the hiring process from two perspectives, first from the musician trying to get a job, and secondly from the agent/leader/whoever is trying to put a band or group together.

Questions they are asking themselves

Musician – Am I good enough? Does my tone match the band? Is my technique clean enough? Should I solo over these chords instead? Am I better or worse than the other guys in the band?

Agent/Leader/Whoever

Can they play? Does this person blend with the band? Do they seem like type that is going to be on time and at the gigs? Do they seem like they will get along with everyone? Do they understand our sound and what we do?

Now obviously these questions can change dramatically depending on whose doing the hiring. However, if you notice there is a definite distinction between what the main focus is for each side.

In Summary

I feel as if I should add something to the quote at the top of post.

There is always someone who is better at something than you and you are always replaceable….so don’t make your future employers look for them.

The fact is that most people do not like change, and most employers are…yes that’s right, people so therefore they don’t want change either. They want to hire someone they like who can do the job, and keep them around. If you are competent and easy to work with word will get around and you will be constantly in demand. If you are a brilliant musician, but a total jerk, you will get a lot of calls for first time gigs but probably not too many follow-ups, and word will get around about that too.

In closing, I hope that the 5 T’s for getting more gigs has been informative and helpful, and as always please feel free to comment below.

5 T’s that can help you get more gigs - Pt. 4 Teamwork

There is no I in team...but there is a Me

The line above is meant to be a joke, but some performing situations can quickly break down to that sort of mentality. The true essence of teamwork is that everyone works together to do something bigger than they could do alone. It is where people attempt to put away their egos in an effort to reach something together. It also means that sometimes you will need to compromise and maybe do something that you would rather not.

Most bands will be stocked with talented people. But the difference between good bands and great bands is generally if all the members are able to work together towards a common goal.

A great illustration of that for me was when I was growing up as a runner. The number one team in the region was a team of about 10 guys who were all quite fast, but they took turns winning local races, as they would run as a group and alternating who would win the race.  Now for the big races there was going to be a fastest runner, but by taking turns winning races and running as a team it built up the whole team, and in the end allowed them all to do better, and be a stronger team.

Sports and music are very much alike in that manner. If everybody on your team is looking out for the good of the group, your group will be amazing. If everyone is looking out only for themselves than the performance will obviously suffer.

A lot of playing together as a team comes down to paying attention to what your role is in a particular musical situation. You have to recognize if you have the melody or the focus point (solo) or are you accompanying and play in that manner. Another problem that people get stuck in is that they think the learning is done once they learn their own part and are able to perform it well with the band. However, this is only a middle stage of development, which means that you need to move through it to play at the next level. For instance, when you are first starting out you need to place all of your focus on what you are doing, then as you develop you are able to focus on more things at once beside just yourself.

A Step-by-Step list of the process might look like this:

Step 1 Perform your part alone

Step 2 Performing your part with the group, but only being able to listen to your part

Step 3 Performing your part with the group, and noticing how it interacts with the other parts

Step 4 Performing your part with the group, and using your part, interacting with the other players using volume, articulation, and intensity as a means of communication.

Many players make the mistake of thinking that Step 2 is the final stage, but as you can see there is much more to go. These are also the people who are perpetually bored doing the same thing over and over, which makes sense because that is all they are paying attention to.  The good news is that the higher step that you are at the more exciting the performance becomes, because each time you perform the same song it could be different. By the time you reach Step 3 you are starting to play as a band, and when all of the players are at Step 4 you are probably playing with one of the best musicians around, as so few people do it.

There are two main types of reasons that bands don’t mesh well. The first type to be discussed can be categorized as unintentional. This generally consists of people not listening to what is going on. This generally happens when someone just decides to do their own thing without thinking about how it affects others in the group.  This occurs typically when someone is bored with what they are playing and trying to amuse themselves or just not at the level yet where they can focus on more than one thing at a time. It typically shows up as the addition of some random technique (musical or physical) and it has no relation to the music at the current time.

The important thing to remember is that the intent isn’t to intentionally make the song sound bad or affect anyone else. Once people realize how their playing affects everyone, this type problem goes away.

The second main type of reason is intentional. These are tougher to solve because generally they are only a symptom of a larger problem, mostly based on personal relationship issues within the band. These can range from musical based arguments, for example, between the bass player and drummer as to where they want to place the beat. Or it can be a personal argument between players off the bandstand that shows itself on the bandstand. The former needs to be solved by either a third party or compromise, and the latter is just an example of a lack of professionalism. The tough part is that the result is the same in either situation, the band gets divided, and the performance suffers because of it.

The benefits of working together far outweigh the benefits of trying to work alone, and in the end, everyone looks better. By the way, the running team went on to be the fastest team in the State of New York, which is impressive on its own, but especially because the school was a public school that typically graduated around 85 students a year.

Make sure to check back for the Final T of the 5 T’s for getting more gigs. It is the most obvious but the most frequently overlooked…

Feel Free to comment below

Just because you can…. doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Pt 3. Taste

Taste is the ability to play appropriately in a particular style or with a particular group. This aspect includes being able to play in both an idiomatic way, and a musical way. If you are a pianist at a jazz gig and start comping using an alberti bass (Mozart-esque) then you look foolish, in the same manner you do if you are a saxophone player at a gig and during a ballad you play a back-up line at a screamingly loud volume. They are both strong examples of poor taste.

Taste is something that can easily be developed once you put a little bit of thought into it. Most of the time it is a matter of asking a different question of yourself while you are playing. The typical question most musicians ask themselves is...

What am I going to play here?

As opposed to the question:

What is going to make this song sound better, and more in style with what everyone else is playing?

The difference in answers is that the first question implies that you are going to play something, meaning you are only focused on what you want to do. The second question forces you to focus on what else is going on at the time, and how your part is going to fit in with everything else.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing, lay out for a second and listen to what the music requires. Does it need a fill? Does it need another comping instrument? Or maybe a background voice?

I believe taste also refers to your ability to “play the same song” as everyone else in the band. This comes up especially during soloing. A lot of my work has been in cover bands and I often hear players taking these really harmonically advanced solos. Which in all respects are good solos, however, not over the simple tunes we are playing. It sounds as if we changed songs in the middle of the tune.

Often times people fail to use the musical vocabulary of the song into their solos, so it seems that they are playing a different song altogether. This is especially apparent if the rest of the band is playing in a different style or using a different musical vocabulary.

A final aspect of taste is simply knowing what your function is in the band. Which is a combination of knowing the style and listening to the ensemble. Lets use the example of playing a jazz swing tune with both a guitar and a pianist, if both players are freely comping and not interacting at all, there is no structure to what is going on, and the music is going to sound bad, regardless of the actual lines played. The reverse is also true that if both instruments are playing strict rhythmic patterns the song is going to sound boring and unimaginative. The ideal is of course for both players to be listening to one another and know and to change functions when necessary. Perhaps the guitar player should play on every quarter note (ala Freddie Green) and the pianist does the more rhythmically adventuresome comping or adding lines. Or maybe the pianist keeps a more strict and sparse rhythmic figure and the guitarist fills in more of the texture. There are many ways to solve these issues but they all rely on everyone having a rough plan and most importantly listening to what’s going on around them.

Developing taste is relatively easier than say developing technique, but equally as important and often overlooked. It requires that you consciously listen to the style you are performing, you are aware of what your function is in the band, and are matching what is going on around you when performing.

Simple as that, but unfortunately simple doesn’t always mean easy.

Please feel free to comment below