House of Drumming.com

My buddy “Ross” is posting all kinds of stuff on YT (so, sorry if I’m “over-posting”). It’s just fun to post things from the history we have together as a duo (and sometimes trio). Ross pushes me to play music WAY out of my comfort zone (and thank GAWD).
Our take on Led Boots-

Hi!
I've been in a Neil Peart mood lately when approaching his one year anniversary of his passing, and I thought I could try and play along to Subdivisions, so I found a drumless version of the song and had a go.
Great tune to play and one of my favourites of them, but I haven't really played the song before, but knew it fairly well (just by being a fan), but when learning the song you just realise how great and innovate his drum parts are and so very well orchestrated throughout the song - how it builds and such. I still didn't quite get that as I wanted, but hey...
I am such in awe of that guy (and that band!). So this one was a fun one to do and it made me miss that guy and band so much more.

Well done Sturla, and great sound !!!
PS : you rocking these bloody grey hair better than Richard Gere and George Cooney combined !!!

Yeah...Sturla, you NAILED the sound of NP!
TIGHT...what was your method of learning this
tune? Anything more than repeated play?

Thanks guys!
Well, being a long time Rush fan I kinda new a fair bit by of the song just having heard it so many times, but we all know it is way different than to actually playing it.

But I did repeated listenings before I didn't play a single note, and I didn't try to play at the drums at all before I was in my studio to record it. How I approach it is that I just hit rec right away and see where I had to stop and figure out something or not rush or drag in the groove. Figure out the problem areas.

But before all of that, I did map about the drumless track with a click (doing it manually because these old songs tend to not be recorded with a click and they are usually all over place). I then set up markers for each section and it was only then I realised how many subtle changes there are. I usually do that when recording drums for various people and set up markers in Logic. Great way to quickly learn the song. The obvious 7/8 intro is a giving of course, but I haven't thought of it going into sections of 7/4 and 6/4 in there as well. So I slowly worked it out. I usually am not interesting in copying some guys stuff but Rush songs are tricky and something else. The drum parts are so integral to the song and it is like you almost "have" to play them. That is quite a legacy he left with that band. Amazing.

I did spend a couple of nights mixing the drums afterwards and tried to take my time on that. Many just to balance things out but also trying out some new mixing techniques - for instance I automate my tom bus and automate the volume for each tom hit. Makes it more tidy and you have more control and better then for instance gating the toms.
So I learn quite a bit when mixing. Because i then hear myself and realise I should have done something differently when tracking perhaps, because when mixing I get into some problems. For instance hitting cymbals too hard, or not being dead on on each snare hit. Stuff like that.
So I make mental notes of that till next time I do something like that and have that in mind.

Nice playing Sturla!

We must remember that Neil played this tune, hard, night after night, along with other very challenging tunes and a long drum solo. For thousands of shows, in front of audiences that paid quite a lot of money to attend.

Pretty damned amazing.

I have never posted a video on here before as my playing is waaay below the HOD standard! However I'm posting this because I used an app I've only just found out about, called moises.ia, to reduce the volume of the original drums. Sturla (lovely playing Sturla!) was talking about finding a drumless version of the Rush tune - you can put any song into this app and make it into a drumless version, which is something I've wanted for literally years.

If you take the drums all the way down it tends to mess with the overall sound (it's all frequency based) but you can turn them down sufficiently to not really hear them - I've set myself the Covid-era challenge of trying to learn to play jazz, having never played it before (I signed up to Erskoman's Artist Works school for a year) and when you're trying to find space when playing along to jazz, reducing the original drum volume is really helpful. (It feels odd and not quite right to turn down amazing drumming and replace it with your own hugely medicore drumming but that's a whole other conversation...)

Anyway here's the track, recorded with the proper drums turned down. (I haven't yet learned to not look like I'm having a bad time whilst playing jazz but trust me, I love this piece. )

I enjoyed that theWikiman. Great!
Great to challenge oneself in learning something completely new stuff.

I got intrigued about the Moises app? So it does really work? Some artifacts I guess But If it is fairly decent it sounds very promising.

thewikiman - great job putting that all together. Folks don't realize how time (mind, body and soul) consuming it is to setup cameras and mics, record yourself until you're pleased, mix the the audio sync it with video and then edit the video. It's a LOT. Great tune choice and you sound great too.

wikiman...killed it bro! unique selection...
fabulous drum sound and cymbals...great
combo of instruments for a collective whole.
That snare was spot on for this tune...
Oh...what Steve said above!