House of Drumming.com

The ghosted hats lick sounds a lot like a Vinnie lick off an early 80's Tom Scott record...one of his first studio gigs I believe.

Your drums sound amazing...if I was to tell someone what a tom should sound like it would be your kit.

You're an excellent educator...not everyone's call, but you have it...calm assertive energy.

Thanks

I guess he uses that kind of thing in more than one place. SImple but effective.

I spent a long time tuning the toms and I'm pretty pleased with how they sound. I think Weckl gets the best tom sound - nice and round and deep. I tune them pretty much the same way he does.

Cheers Joe.

Nice lesson Joe. When you approach breaking down and figuring out complicated and fast parts like the one in your video, do you figure out the sticking first, learn/sing the phrase, slow it down with a plug in??? Steve H and Derek D. have always been real good at transcribing and figuring Vinnie's craziness out. Wish i knew the secret, cuz it takes me forever to transcribe. Good job man...
Peace, Sammy J

Hey Sammy,

For this particular lick I already knew what was going on so I just played it. For more complex solos like the stuff I'm doing in the SoloWorkshop [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3jWa08uoLk[/youtube] I usually transcribe in Cubase if it's to a click. In the SoloWorkshop part 1 on my site I demonstrate exactly how I use Cubase to make it easy to transcribe.
Sometimes I have to slow stuff down in order to hear what's going on. I like the 'Amazing Slow Downer' app for the iPhone. There's a mac version and maybe a PC one, but the concept lends itself really well to an iPhone app. Usually I'll write the notes down then figure out the stickings afterwards.
Cheers,
Joe

Just to add to what Joe said (love the lessons, btw) : I usually pull the track into Audacity or Pro Tools and set up a seamless loop on the thing I'm trying to grok, and let it just go by a dozen times ... until I can sing the curves of the phrase.

Then, if I need to slow it down I'll use the software to do that 10-20% (preserving pitch). But the best thing I've found is pick one voice at a time and write it out. Once I've got that, I'll take a step back and figure out stickings and idioms ... usually some sort of bigger picture becomes apparent at that point.

Lucas Ives wrote:Just to add to what Joe said (love the lessons, btw) : I usually pull the track into Audacity or Pro Tools and set up a seamless loop on the thing I'm trying to grok, and let it just go by a dozen times ... until I can sing the curves of the phrase.

Then, if I need to slow it down I'll use the software to do that 10-20% (preserving pitch). But the best thing I've found is pick one voice at a time and write it out. Once I've got that, I'll take a step back and figure out stickings and idioms ... usually some sort of bigger picture becomes apparent at that point.

I use Audacity too. I usually go 50% from the jump; preserving the pitch. Once I get a decent handle on the idea, I'll slow it down (or raise it up) to 25% still retaining the pitch. I'm trying to "wean" myself from slowing it down 50% and training my ears to hear things at speed. For me that requires many, many, many repetitions.

Joe can play and he can teach..I've learned alot of neat stuff from his YT vids..He real good about interacting with the public and answering questions..

Great as always Joe!

Thank you for a couple of cool ideas for the licks I should practice... Neat!

My pleasure.

I'd recommend keeping the same hihat part and playing around with variations of the kick pattern. You could also try things like accenting every 5th note on the hats instead of every 3rd one.