How I Would Learn Jazz Drums (If I Had to Start Over)

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[@wolfumz]

13:00 I'm learning drums in my late 30's today, but I studied classical painting and drawing (then digital media) when I was a youngster, and I used to work as an illustrator in the entertainment industry. It's funny how you say young people, end up getting really caught up in the details, and only very late in the process, after playing sometimes for years throughout their adolescence, that they finally get to the 'big picture' 'abstract' stuff... and learn _that_ is the stuff that actually matters. The exact same thing happens in visual art. Kids who are naturally drawn to art, they _love_ the details, there's always some detail that's just fascinating, and they want to draw that first. Youngsters learning to draw spend all this time and energy on the bells and whistles-100 difference shades of grey, drawing single strands of hair and the veins on leaves, getting obsessed with details of human anatomy (when I was 17 I was obsessed with tiny muscles like the rhomboid, a tiny diamond-shaped muscle next to your shoulder blade where only bottom corner is visible... or the the extensor digiti minimi in your forearm, which is only visible when you're flexing your pinky). It's just a natural tendency for people who love to draw, you want to get to the fun stuff. Meanwhile, you've never learned how to just lay-in a picture, and make sure it looks right on the page! I remember I had worked so hard, 40 or 50 hours, on a detailed figure drawing with a model, 8 hrs at a time every Saturday. I got lots of help. By the end of it, the details looked great... but the model wasn't even in the middle of the page! It looked like someone had accidentally snapped a photo. The model was occupying one half of the page, and I had all this weird blank space around him. I wanted people to see how I got the model's vascularity and the subtle way his skin folded at the elbow. Instead, half the page was a drawing of the studio. It was _not_ the effect I was going for. I finally became aware, people who are good at this stuff, they have mastered the basics. The basics are everything. And it was a long road after that, because the basics are a lot harder to master than the cool details. And if you get the basics wrong, they stick out like a sore thumb. Real masters have the basics down cold, _then_ they innovate on the details. Just wanted to share. Maybe what you've noticed here, it relates to other creative pursuits.

[@tonymcgeorge6890]

I am exactly what you described; fearful of playing with others. You've got me convinced to start jamming!

[@Jameson-Scriver]

You got this my friend! Get out there and tell me how it goes :)

[@alex-reay]

Thank you from a novice. Subscribed 😊

[@onesyphorus]

youtube rec workin well today

[@Scooped_Orange]

first step of the “better way” reminds me of wynton marsalis’s graduation speech, where he told a story of a man in his neighborhood gathering kids that want to play music, and having them all play together. then all of those kids (including wynton…) grew up to be great musicians

[@Jameson-Scriver]

It's the fuel for everything else!

[@stix9641]

Listen to all good music you are able to hear"The more extensive your acquaintance with those who have excelled , the more extensive will be your powers of invention" Sir Joshua Reynolds quote

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Pretty cool! Reminds me of Tony Williams studying Max, Blakey, Philly Joe obsessively and then exploding onto the scene as one of the most creative drummers of all time

[@manudague]

Great job....many Thanks from France

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Glad you dug it!

[@darry_lavis]

Interesting perspective. Just to add a point, I also think part of the reason why people don’t learn the way you’ve outlined is because they’re not aware that this is the way the masters and next generations (I think of the Marsalis brothers) learned as well. Outlining my own experience would be too long for a KZbin comment haha, but one more thing I would add is trying to find a mentor figure/teacher who holds you accountable but also encourages you really helpful. I think going to a jam session without knowing how to play, at first, is a bit of gamble. I wish we were all more kind to people learning the music, but alas. Interesting video!

[@creativephilo]

Great video, thanks for this. The thing you mention at the end (love, passion, drive, fuel) will be different in the two columns because of the different moments where people give up. For the left column, students will go through several stages before having to be challenged with embarrassment/confidence. With the right hand column, if you dive right in, you might get humiliated right away and quit. So I think that the left column is why there are a lot of career jazz drummers out there. They've gone so far, there's less temptation to quit. From a pedagogical sense, this support helps the student, which is why it's done that way. Thing is though, I agree with you. It's better to jump in and see if the love, passion, drive and fuel is there to get over being thrown into that first humiliation. Perhaps this would weed out the careerists to make more room for the artists.

[@juanpablopena7913]

Hey man, this is absolutely amazing. I think intuitively I was already doing something kind of like this, but did not realize it. I will make this my default way of thinking about it now. Thank you for this, I also really like the format you are using. One take, almost no editing, it's great, feels like a real lesson

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Glad it served you my man! 💪🥁

[@KaiOwensDrums]

Great video! I feel like the way you laid out as the ideal way is pretty similar to my journey in jazz drumming. I started playing jazz after playing other genres for about six or seven years, so I already had decent coordination and everything, but when I got to college and started studying jazz my professor Entirely focused on listening and creating a feeling, not the technical stuff. I was also in big band from the very start of my learning process. Then I started to transcribe and work on coordination after starting to understand a little bit of what I was trying to accomplish Even now my professor advocates for learning how to create a feeling instead of learning exactly the phrase that someone else played. And now I am leading my own jazz group that gigs around pretty frequently

[@KaiOwensDrums]

Not to mention I played my first ever paid jazz gig only about three months and two studying the genre with some of the best players in my city, I was holding on for dear life

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Awesome! Keep going 🥁💪

[@lochday]

Really interesting and very clever. Thanks a lot from a French drummer :)

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Happy to help!

[@onesyphorus]

i also started out on guitar first lol

[@Jameson-Scriver]

Funny how that works right?

[@onesyphorus]

yeah infact i still do guitar nowadays@@Jameson-Scriver but its crazy cos then when u go back to ur first instrument its like u approach it differently. like i went from guitarist learning drums to drummer learning guitar

[@greenflagracing7067]

Joe Morello started out on violin