Gavin Harrison here!

Hi Gavin, quick question just out of curiosity; any recent live performances of individuals or groups that stood out to you or that you enjoyed particularly?

Are there any artists that you would love to see live but haven't had the chance to?

Cheers, Phil.
 
Hey Gavin,
great clinic at Session Music in Frankfurt. Glad to hear you Brits warm your feet the same way as "ze Germans" (next question, what's warmer: maple or birch? Not just sound-wise...) ;-)

Righty, got something on a serious note too; the one piece you played was "Cheating the Polygraph" in a big band version, right? Did SW play/record all that music or was it someone else?

Another thing, I recently drove up to the SONOR HQ at Aue/Bad Berleburg and did the factory-tour with Rainer Dreisbach.
(btw. can only recommend this highly to any drummer; had high expectations as I play SONOR for 20years myself now, and I regard them as the top-brand. And tbh it was even better than I thought, absolutely brilliant.)

They were producing and testing the 14" PROTEANS when I was there, I am amazed how much work and craftsmanship goes into these drums...
How often do you stop by or travel to the factory? Projects like the PROTEAN snares surely required a lot of input, testing, designing etc.
Did you do communicate with them only per email, phone etc or were you at SONOR HQ yourself to work with the team there?

Keep up the great work, hope to see you again soon.

Kind regards
Stef
 
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Righty, got something on a serious note too; the one piece you played was "Cheating the Polygraph" in a big band version, right? Did SW play/record all that music or was it someone else?

He played Cheating the polygraph, Futile and The start of something beautiful in big band arrangements in Rotterdam. These where all arranged by arranger/bass player Laurence Cottle (he is amazing, check him out!).
Not sure which big band is actually performing (but there is probably no SW playing along…)

@Gavin: will these big band versions be released soon? I believe you said somewhere in an interview (or maybe here) that there where even 96/24 surround mixes of these big band recordings.
 
Hi Gavin

I have two questions in my mind:

first: which kind of wood shells do you prefere in your home studio and in one live situation, i mean birch in studio or maple......

second: your custom bells, did you cut crashes and take the bell off or.........; and which
cymbals you cut, or you asked to zildjian people do...... , and tell me more about your bell support, because i cannot understand how you make ....

Thanks
Humberto
 
Hi keep it simple

How are the new snares going Gavin? I hope they're proving popular, they deserve to be. It's rare for a drum to be designed such that the features are all working towards a coherent "real world" result.

They are selling exceptionally well. Better than we ever hoped for - thanks.

Thanks to Terry Branam for the transcription.

Well, here's an attempt at the "Identitas" pattern. Now the real question is: where does Gavin actually hear these subdivisions? Hope this is in the right ballpark...

I think I feel it as all groups of 4/16ths and then 2/16 on the very end - so the melodic tom pattern feels displaced in the second half. So more like a bar of 7/4 and a bar of 6/4 + 2/16.

Hi SantiBanks

Very nice to hear some of the other big band arrangements. Laurence did an amazing job arranging these songs. Any idea when the full album comes out? Looking forward to hear that in surround!

It is amazing in surround. We're a long way off finishing it though.

A more "production minded" question: did you try to use parallel chains when mixing your drums (for example parallel compression as opposed to direct compression) and if so, did you like it?

I never use parallel compression.

Hi Phil Brodermann

any recent live performances of individuals or groups that stood out to you or that you enjoyed particularly?

I was very happy to make this duet with Simon Phillips. A big thrill for me and one of the most enjoyable 'musical' things I've ever done. All written rehearsed and performed in two days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6YooxOTsus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPf39uh1Mdk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Yx41LSmXI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV1Arl7Z2Ls

Hi heaven'stef

Righty, got something on a serious note too; the one piece you played was "Cheating the Polygraph" in a big band version, right? Did SW play/record all that music or was it someone else?


No Steve didn't work on it. Everything was arranged by the brilliant Laurence Cottle - who also played bass on the song.

Another thing, I recently drove up to the SONOR HQ at Aue/Bad Berleburg and did the factory-tour with Rainer Dreisbach. They were producing and testing the 14" PROTEANS when I was there, I am amazed how much work and craftsmanship goes into these drums...How often do you stop by or travel to the factory?

I go to the factory pretty much every year or two. The Protean project took about 18 months and most of it was done on email and video conferences on Skype with the developing team headed by David Schulz. They sent me many prototypes and I requested changes and gave feedback along the way. I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Hi humberto

first: which kind of wood shells do you prefere in your home studio and in one live situation, i mean birch in studio or maple......

Maple in both situations.

second: your custom bells, did you cut crashes and take the bell off or.........; and which
cymbals you cut, or you asked to zildjian people do...... , and tell me more about your bell support, because i cannot understand how you make ....


The bells were all cut from Zildjian crash cymbals with the medium cup size. 13" to 17".
The bell support is made by Sonor in their 'Basic Arm' range.

thanks for the birthday wishes.

Cheers
Gavin
 
Hi Gavin, this is a beginner drummer from Spain. I once heard from you that you had never practice speed itself. Then how did you manage to play as fast as you do nowadays?
Nowadays I intend to play "The Funky Beat" by David Garibaldi but seldom I reach 80 bpm. because I play a flam when things should work at unison.
Do I try again as faster as I can? or is it a matter of working independence exercises at slower tempos and then time will bring the conquest of faster tempos???

I hope I made myself understood, cheers, Alberto.
 
Hi Gavin,

I hope all is well with you! In the past you had mentioned your lack of fondness for electronic triggers and e-drums, in general. However, fairly recently you've incorporated the newer Wavedrum in both a live setting and recording as well as checking out the newer Gen16 Zildjians. Can you see yourself incorporating some of those items into your setup as more of a "regular" part of it or for your needs, are they best used/utilized in a more clinic-type of setting?

thanks!
Michael
 
Greetings from Romania Gavin!

First of all I'd like to join all the other people who have shown their admiration to you, you are an exceptional musician! Such a role model for so many people, including myself, a big music enthusiast of all genres and an amateur drummer. You taking the time and answering all these questions shows just how down to earth you are.

I red 70+ pages of this thread, and I got most of my questions answered, but I chose 1, the easiest I could think of to post myself. I hope it has never been asked before:

How come you never crash your rides ? I was (re) watching some of your youtube videos and it just hit me, I don't think I ever heard you crashing a ride cymbal.

That's it, thanks again for doing this and we're all looking forward to your next projects!
 
Hey Gavin, I recently picked up a Pearl ICON rack and some PCX200 clamps I ordered just came in, I was wondering if those were the ones you used. Also, I was wondering how you go about mounting your toms, like clamp positioning and stuff like that. I LOVE the way your toms are a perfect straight line like that and I'd love to know how I could get my three toms like that.
 
Hi Mr. Harrison,

I'll number my question topics, if you don't mind. I do have a loooong list, I hope you don't mind. :) Many questions on improvisation, however.

1. Quoting you:
there have been times where I REALLY didn't feel like playing - and that usually happens at some point during a long tour when I don't feel well (heavy cold/flu or food poisoning).

I have several questions about this. If you do feel unwell during a long tour, is there much chance for you to reschedule the gig? And how do you prevent from getting sick on a long tour? Needless to say, Vitamin C helps a lot, but I've heard that on tours you rarely get enough time to eat and sleep properly, and I presume that since you'll be crossing a few borders you're definitely not immune to all local sicknesses even with a bucket load of vitamin C in your stash somewhere. So how do you usually deal with these circumstances? And what do you do to avoid food poisoning? (Like, avoid fast-foods or something?)

2. In your early gigging days, I'm sure you wouldn't have had the luxury to have the perfect drum setup for you all the time. Say if the drum set is a 4-piece and you have practised your parts on a 5-piece, or worse, you've practised on a 4-piece but the set you're provided has no floor tom (3-piece), how do you go about that change? That is, assuming you weren't using your drum set and didn't know about this until you arrived at the gig. I have a similar problem as I'm currently a music student, every time I attend my performance workshop I end up using a crap old 4-piece yet my drum notations may have 5-6 toms notated. If your answer is "improvise" (or not), then it leads into question 3.

3. I struggle with improvisations, but thankfully I've experimented and learned a few successful methods helping that, like practising short phrasings and limb independence. I used to think, "What drum should I play?", but that was frying my brains so now I tend to think, "What sound am I after?".

The problem is, most of the time I'm not using my own drums... I used a friend's drum set once for a workshop. I never got to play on it properly until my performance, which I found out in my drum solo section that the drums did not sound at all like how I wanted them to, and it pretty much killed my solo. Is my perception on how to improvise flawed? Either yes or no, is there a way to go about these situations where you may have to improvise on a badly-tuned drum set? (Minus the snare drum since I always bring my own.)

4. I have a huge issue with drum setup, and it's not just a 4-piece or 5-piece issue, it is my traditional grip which is what I use 99% of the time these days. I main that grip for personal reasons; being born left-handed, my biased culture has forced me to use my right hand for just about anything I do everyday since I was a kid. Trad grip is my current solution to establishing left-right coordination. Before my trad grip days I almost gave up playing drums because I could instinctively play a tom fill leading with the left hand, and stop short at tom 1 super confused because I then realised all too late the leading hand changed (I play the crossed-hand method on a right-handed set).

Being a trad gripper now, I run into the big problem of "why are the drums so out of reach?!", as I'm physically smaller than everyone else in my class, and the trad grip utilises an odd angle on anything. I don't mind the current in-class issues but I'm really afraid of this happening in a gigging situation. Are there any pro advice you can give me on how to tackle this dilemma?

I also practise the matched grip a lot recently due to Latin cross-stick/tom combinations. I'm also planning to buy another drum set someday with a 20" bass drum just so that the rack toms don't have to be above my shoulders. Besides I like the 20" sound more.

5. I struggle to add ghost notes in-between my accents while improvising. I've been reflecting on this and have come up with a reason; I try to think musically as if I'm soloing on bass or piano, and on melodic instruments you just need to play the first note and let it ring if it is not a staccato. On drums though, long sustains are impossible... So I assume ghosted snare notes act as the sustain one way or another.

Is there a way to mentally hear those strings of ghosted notes as say, a minim with tremolos? I keep getting lost by the sheer number of notes, and this is only for double and single strokes... Once I get to paradiddles it gets exponentially harder!

6. How do you do spontaneous improvisations with paradiddles without tangling your arms? I have learned a few ideas but they can only go so far. (I need a method to simplify all the information coursing through the neuron cells in my brain.) This is also a how-to-visualise/hear-it-mentally sort of question.

7. In my performance exam today, my right-stick flew out of my hand halfway through a song and my left-stick hit it into my face on its way up from the snare. I pretty much stopped dead for like a whole bar and although I think I recovered well after that, it is nowhere near as well as how you recovered from dropping your stick in the David Letterman show (The Chicken solo). How do you practise that?? I must say I'm always impressed how professionals recover so quickly when they drop sticks. In the video I wouldn't have even known you dropped your stick if I relied solely on my ears.

8. Do you bury your bass drum beater into the drum head? From a sound perspective, do you think that burying the beater makes an unnatural sound? All the teachers in my region teaches the "bounce the beater off the BD head" approach, whether playing foot down or heel up. I do this most of the time but find it impossible to achieve if I'm on double kicks, or playing complex BD patterns on a single kick while clapping the hats on an 8th-note pulse, or playing 200+ BPM up-tempo jazz trying to swing the notes. (This is why I avoid double-quaver BD notes in up-tempo jazz.) Another problem is that the sound engineer sometimes doesn't like the sound. I wish we have a trigger because that would solve everything but we don't. What is your take on this?

-------------------------

I think that's all for now. Sorry for the long read. I read your article in a drum mag in the library last week, and really liked what I've read. It's the article with the catch-phrase "It's all about luck." (And "practising improves your luck" is the basic message.)


Thank you, I look forward to your reply.

funkmonster
 
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Hi Gavin, I was wandering which one of these Porcupine Tree albums do you like most: In Absentia, Deadwing, Fear Of A Blank Planet.
I'd like to know your best pick in terms of mixing (the whole songs, and the drums in particular). I'm studying Sound Engineering, really wanting to become a Pro, I'm sure your observations will be so much precious to me :) thank you!

Francesco.
 
Hi atman

this is a beginner drummer from Spain. I once heard from you that you had never practice speed itself. Then how did you manage to play as fast as you do nowadays?
Nowadays I intend to play "The Funky Beat" by David Garibaldi but seldom I reach 80 bpm. because I play a flam when things should work at unison.
Do I try again as faster as I can? or is it a matter of working independence exercises at slower tempos and then time will bring the conquest of faster tempos???


I never practise to 'try to go as fast as I can' and then the next day try to go even faster. I can already play as fast as I want to (and am asked to) play. I only wish I could think that fast. Much more important is control. You have to trust that being accurate and slower is more useful to you. Things won't be more accurate the faster you go. They may appear that way because the notes are closer together and you're ears can't process the information that quickly and judge the accuracy. However - the better you get - the better your ears will get. It's good that you can hear your inaccuracies now - and the way to go improving them is to play even slower - until it sounds right to you.

Hi tradgrip

In the past you had mentioned your lack of fondness for electronic triggers and e-drums, in general. However, fairly recently you've incorporated the newer Wavedrum in both a live setting and recording as well as checking out the newer Gen16 Zildjians. Can you see yourself incorporating some of those items into your setup as more of a "regular" part of it or for your needs, are they best used/utilized in a more clinic-type of setting?

It has been fun experimenting with the WaveDrum and the Gen16s - but I can't (at the moment) imagine them in my live concert setup.

Hi dare

How come you never crash your rides ? I was (re) watching some of your youtube videos and it just hit me, I don't think I ever heard you crashing a ride cymbal.

Yes you're correct. I don't really love ride cymbals that double as crash cymbals. If they are thin enough to really crash - then I usually don't like the ride sound - plus I like to keep the cymbal reasonably stiff as it's easier to play (because it's not swinging away from me) and I can position it hanging a couple of inches over my 12" tom. I do like ride cymbals that I can slap with the shoulder of the stick as a smaller kind of accent.

Hi Theyoungdrum

I recently picked up a Pearl ICON rack and some PCX200 clamps I ordered just came in, I was wondering if those were the ones you used. Also, I was wondering how you go about mounting your toms, like clamp positioning and stuff like that. I LOVE the way your toms are a perfect straight line like that and I'd love to know how I could get my three toms like that.

I think my clamps were PCX100 and I mount them so that the opening of the clamp is on the inside of the rack facing me. It also depends what make of drum mounts you have and if there's a few inches of 'wiggle' room for them to go backwards or forwards inside their own adjustment. Some companies don't give you much room to do that. Sonor - however - have a split ball mount so that the arm can move in or out by a few inches.

Hi funkmonster

If you do feel unwell during a long tour, is there much chance for you to reschedule the gig? And how do you prevent from getting sick on a long tour? Needless to say, Vitamin C helps a lot, but I've heard that on tours you rarely get enough time to eat and sleep properly, and I presume that since you'll be crossing a few borders you're definitely not immune to all local sicknesses even with a bucket load of vitamin C in your stash somewhere. So how do you usually deal with these circumstances? And what do you do to avoid food poisoning? (Like, avoid fast-foods or something?)

reschedule the gig? Usually the tickets have been on sale for months and many people have traveled a long way to see it. Sometimes they have flown in from other countries. They have booked hotels and flights to be there or might driven for many hours and taken time off work to do the trip. I can't announce that afternoon "I'm not feeling very well any chance we could do this next week"?
You can't really prevent from getting sick on tour. You catch a cold or flu - you may get food poisoning at any moment. I have tried taking Vitamins and echinacea and all kinds of stuff - but due to the conditions of the touring life. Low and bad quality sleep plus random eating, shaking hands with hundreds of people, and being in very close contact with 12 or so folks in the band and crew - it's almost inevitable that at some point you will get ill. Doing a job that has times of massive physical exertion getting very hot and sweaty and going in and out of air conditioned rooms etc. just compounds the possible problems.

2. In your early gigging days, I'm sure you wouldn't have had the luxury to have the perfect drum setup for you all the time. Say if the drum set is a 4-piece and you have practised your parts on a 5-piece, or worse, you've practised on a 4-piece but the set you're provided has no floor tom (3-piece), how do you go about that change? That is, assuming you weren't using your drum set and didn't know about this until you arrived at the gig. I have a similar problem as I'm currently a music student, every time I attend my performance workshop I end up using a crap old 4-piece yet my drum notations may have 5-6 toms notated. If your answer is "improvise" (or not), then it leads into question 3.

I can't remember more than a couple of times that I had to use someone's drumset instead of mine. The jobs I was doing at that point were just basic 'kick/snare/hat' types of things with simple fills so it wasn't really an issue. I would take my snare drum and my bass drum pedal.

3. I struggle with improvisations, but thankfully I've experimented and learned a few successful methods helping that, like practising short phrasings and limb independence. I used to think, "What drum should I play?", but that was frying my brains so now I tend to think, "What sound am I after?". The problem is, most of the time I'm not using my own drums... I used a friend's drum set once for a workshop. I never got to play on it properly until my performance, which I found out in my drum solo section that the drums did not sound at all like how I wanted them to, and it pretty much killed my solo. Is my perception on how to improvise flawed? Either yes or no, is there a way to go about these situations where you may have to improvise on a badly-tuned drum set? (Minus the snare drum since I always bring my own.)

I can't really comment on this as it hasn't really happened to me...and I would try as much as possible to not put myself in those situations. You may not believe this but the night before my Letterman performance (as I arrived in NYC) I was informed that my drumset had been lost and I would have to do the show on a rented kit. It gave me a pretty bad sleepless night. After a lot of stress and early morning phone calls my drumset was located and the show went ahead on my drums. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see my drumset.

4. I have a huge issue with drum setup, and it's not just a 4-piece or 5-piece issue, it is my traditional grip which is what I use 99% of the time these days. I main that grip for personal reasons; being born left-handed, my biased culture has forced me to use my right hand for just about anything I do everyday since I was a kid. Trad grip is my current solution to establishing left-right coordination. Before my trad grip days I almost gave up playing drums because I could instinctively play a tom fill leading with the left hand, and stop short at tom 1 super confused because I then realised all too late the leading hand changed (I play the crossed-hand method on a right-handed set).
Being a trad gripper now, I run into the big problem of "why are the drums so out of reach?!", as I'm physically smaller than everyone else in my class, and the trad grip utilises an odd angle on anything. I don't mind the current in-class issues but I'm really afraid of this happening in a gigging situation. Are there any pro advice you can give me on how to tackle this dilemma?


Maybe drop the hi hat lower and get another ride cymbal on the left. Start playing matched grip all the time and play either way - left lead or right lead.

5. I struggle to add ghost notes in-between my accents while improvising. I've been reflecting on this and have come up with a reason; I try to think musically as if I'm soloing on bass or piano, and on melodic instruments you just need to play the first note and let it ring if it is not a staccato. On drums though, long sustains are impossible... So I assume ghosted snare notes act as the sustain one way or another.

Long sustains are what cymbals are for. Let them ring out and do their job. Same with the toms. Don't feel the need to play every 16th in the bar. Rolls can give the illusion of sustain.

Is there a way to mentally hear those strings of ghosted notes as say, a minim with tremolos? I keep getting lost by the sheer number of notes, and this is only for double and single strokes... Once I get to paradiddles it gets exponentially harder!

Have you studied any snare drum books for sticking, dynamics and articulations? Ghost notes will come easy once you really get into snare drum books.

6. How do you do spontaneous improvisations with paradiddles without tangling your arms? I have learned a few ideas but they can only go so far. (I need a method to simplify all the information coursing through the neuron cells in my brain.) This is also a how-to-visualise/hear-it-mentally sort of question.

I'm starting to get the feeling that you maybe haven't been playing the drums for as long as I have. Don't worry - all these things will come together over with time.

7. In my performance exam today, my right-stick flew out of my hand halfway through a song and my left-stick hit it into my face on its way up from the snare. I pretty much stopped dead for like a whole bar and although I think I recovered well after that, it is nowhere near as well as how you recovered from dropping your stick in the David Letterman show (The Chicken solo). How do you practise that?? I must say I'm always impressed how professionals recover so quickly when they drop sticks. In the video I wouldn't have even known you dropped your stick if I relied solely on my ears.

As I said earlier - you need to think fast.

8. Do you bury your bass drum beater into the drum head? From a sound perspective, do you think that burying the beater makes an unnatural sound? All the teachers in my region teaches the "bounce the beater off the BD head" approach, whether playing foot down or heel up. I do this most of the time but find it impossible to achieve if I'm on double kicks, or playing complex BD patterns on a single kick while clapping the hats on an 8th-note pulse, or playing 200+ BPM up-tempo jazz trying to swing the notes. (This is why I avoid double-quaver BD notes in up-tempo jazz.) Another problem is that the sound engineer sometimes doesn't like the sound. I wish we have a trigger because that would solve everything but we don't. What is your take on this?

I play both ways. It certainly makes a big sound difference if you have an open 'jazzy' bass drum. The beater will mute the sustain of the note. I have heard guys play where they bury the beater - but it bounces a little against the head and gives them a strange fluttering sound.

Hi Bonzo92

I was wandering which one of these Porcupine Tree albums do you like most: In Absentia, Deadwing, Fear Of A Blank Planet.
I'd like to know your best pick in terms of mixing (the whole songs, and the drums in particular). I'm studying Sound Engineering, really wanting to become a Pro, I'm sure your observations will be so much precious to me :) thank you!


That's a hard question because I'm not a subjective listener when hearing albums that I worked on for months at a time. I like all 3 albums probably for different reasons - they remind me of what was happening in my life around the time that they were made. They are a kind of reflection of what I was thinking about at those times. In Absentia was very well recorded in a very good studio in NYC - but I find it very difficult to divorce the pure sound from the music.

cheers
Gavin
 
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I just wanted to pop in and say how awesome I think it is that Mr. Harrison stops in and answers every question asked .

something you do not see often by people as busy as Gavin.

also.......every year I ask my more advanced students pick a tune they find very challenging and have them transcribe it

one of them picked The Sound Of Muzak .....I think he did a fantastic job on it

I would love for you to check it out if you were at all interested .....i could send you the PDF

that same student used one of your solo pieces as his Berklee audition .

and got in on scholarship by the way.....very proud

hope you are well
 
Thank you for all the replies, it really helps me get a better picture of what I'm looking for, even if it was a "never had this happen to me before". (Basically, try to avoid that situation right? Got it, sir.)

I'm starting to get the feeling that you maybe haven't been playing the drums for as long as I have. Don't worry - all these things will come together over with time.

Your feeling's definitely correct... I'd say I've played drums for not as long as even a quarter of your practice time. I started it too late in my life, something I wish wasn't the case. No musical upbringing, education, all that stuff, unfortunate as it is but I work with what I've got. =)

The suggestion of getting snare-focused books is a really good one, though may I ask for some personal recommendations? I know of a few titles which I've been itching to get, like the Wilcoxon titles but they don't seem to come easily. My local music shop shelves are filled with "7 Greatest [insert popular band name here] Songs" books... I really want to avoid getting crap books as I'll be paying hefty shipping costs if buying through Amazon.

Once again thank you for your replies.

And hi atman, I know I'm just a nameless person here but I have to say, you're definitely not a beginner anymore if you're playing songs from Garibaldi's The Funky Beat. I can count with a few fingers of mine how many drummers among my real-life drummer friends who's actually eager to play 4-N-Matter, Escape from Oakland, etc. They're difficult in my opinion, and not many people care to raise their standards once they feel like they can play something. So I just want to say you're awesome. Keep up the good work, peace.
 
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I'd like to know your best pick in terms of mixing (the whole songs, and the drums in particular). I'm studying Sound Engineering, really wanting to become a Pro, I'm sure your observations will be so much precious to me :) thank you!

Francesco.

Not to hijack Gavin's answer on this one; but you might have noticed that the drumsound on these three albums is all different and that the overall sound of these albums is different too.

In Absentia sounds rather bright and a bit compressed (i'm listening to the dvd-a which is a different mix I think) while Deadwing sounds warm and FOABP "low midrange fat" (for a lack of better term, describing sound is like dancing about architecture).

I think these drumsounds are all equally good but they all serve the sonic vibe of the album.

@Gavin: where the drums for Deadwing tracked at your studio? I'm asking because in the small documentary, there is a scene of you sitting with Steven in your controlroom, discussing industrial beats for Halo, but most of the documentary looks like shot in a studio (and it doesn't look like John Wesley's).

I have a similar problem as I'm currently a music student, every time I attend my performance workshop I end up using a crap old 4-piece yet my drum notations may have 5-6 toms notated.
If you already know that you get into these kind of situations a lot, why not change the setup of your kit from time to time and practice on "smaller" kits? Maybe sometimes even removing more having just 1 rack tom and a floor?

A friend of mine did this a lot as he was left handed, usually couldn't play his own kit on gigs and played a lot of jamsessions too. He practiced left and right handed, on smaller setups. He almost played as good right handed as left handed and could play anything on the most minimalistic crappy rehearsalroom kits…

@Gavin: some other questions;
The backing track for Beyond the A has mostly just a 16th note pulse without accents. Is this on purpose and do you actually think in the different time signatures or just in 4? Im struggeling a bit with the transition fill from the small bridge to the verses (between verse 1 and 2). I always forget a note or I add one extra.

Also, there was a video from you playing something (I can't remember what it was, maybe the videos for AKG?), but you switched the 8" tom to the position of the 12" tom (so next to your ride). Marco Minneman plays with that setup a lot. Was there a particular reason to have the 8" tom there?

And last, I'm in the market for an additional monitor set. In the rehearsal clips for the GH05 tour, it seems like you have two extra monitors on the table (as opposed to the 5.1 NS10 set). Are those Genelec 1031's? How do you like them as opposed to the NS10's?
 
Funkmonster,

Just thought I'd chip in and recommend getting Stick Control by George L Stone if you want a good snare drum book. My ghost notes have definitely improved as I work through it. Concentrating on the exercises with more notes played with the left hand will be great for your ghost notes.
 
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