Drum-Related Blathering and Minutiae
The first of many lessons has been reformatted for the new site. It’s a brief overview on the concepts and practice methods of metric modulations, focusing specifically on the example of a 4:3 / 3:4 polyrhythm.
Find it here: Lessons > Metric Modulation 101
I’m very excited when I get my YouTube subscription update and there’s a new Travis Orbin video link inside. In a sea of Internet “superstar” poseurs, this guy’s the real deal. It doesn’t hurt that the production of his videos is excellent either!
His influences are clear, and comparisons to Mike Mangini are inevitable, but he nonetheless has a very unique style. I’m particularly impressed with his dynamics, ambidexterity, and super-clean feet-and-hands runs around that cool Mangini-meets-Bruford set-up. There’s a lot of really inspiring stuff here that makes me wish I could lock myself in a practice room for a week straight!
Here’s a video of a session Travis did with Pete Peterson. It’s a really neat, complex tune in the vein of Zappa / Mike Keneally / Mike Patton (the Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, and solo stuff). I’d love to see a chart for this thing. It’s rife with meter changes, polyrhythms, and metric modulations—and that’s just the rhythmic stuff!
More Travis vids here.
I haven’t seen Mike Mangini since I graduated Berklee in 2005, so I was very excited to see what he’s developed in the last five years. I was sure he, unlike me, had added a truckload of new tricks and concepts to his arsenal.
A big reason why Mike is often derided by YouTube baboons for not being “musical” is that his abilities are impressive on both a very technical and cerebral level. What often sounds like drums falling down stairs is actually something that is conceptually nothing short of astounding. So, I thought it was unfortunate that Mike had to issue a disclaimer before sitting down at the kit, stating that not everything he would be playing would be “musical”, comparing clinic drumming to a slam dunk contest, etc. The internet nonsense had already begun back when I was studying with him, but it was evident in Mike’s demeanor that it’s a worsening distraction that gnaws at him at least enough to now warrant a verbal disclaimer before taking the stage.
I’m of the opinion that if people can’t understand or appreciate what he’s doing, then, well… so what? The disclaimer should be “I’m about to blow your freaking mind. If you can’t understand what’s going on up here, I will explain. If you’re just going to right nanny-nanny-boo-boo things about me in 3rd-grade English on the Internet anyway, eat a turd and leave—in either order.” But then again, I’m not an internationally-known drum superstar with endorsements and fans that are legion…
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