– Wow. (applause) Amazing. That was amazing. – Thank you. – Very cool, man. – Thank you. – Everyone, please welcome
the thunder duo to Drumeo. – Hey! – Now if you don't know
who the Thunder Duo is, we have on the drum kit
here Gabor, Gabor Dornyei, he's been at Drumeo before,
it's good to have you back. You are not only a
world class drummer, you're also a professor
at the ICNP in London, and you've done some
pretty amazing stuff. And if you guys haven't
checked out his lesson on Drumeo, we have a
YouTube version of the one you did live.
We also have a whole
course inside of Drumeo, so check it out. And beside him we have
world class percussionist, Kornel Horvath. – Woo! – Yes, great job. Great job. Kornel is an unbelievable
percussionist. He was voted number one
percussionist in the world by Rhythm Magazine
in 2016 correct? – Exactly. – It's crazy. And the setup you have
there is really cool. We're gonna hear more of
that as the lesson goes on. But both of you guys
have also collectively worked with world class
guitarist Stanley Jordan. – Yeah, we still do,
yeah, absolutely. It's a new project, it's
a quartet with Stanley and also a Chilean bass player
we have Christian Garvez who's a world class
player, fantastic. – Very cool. Yeah, you guys are killin
it, you guys are one of the oldest or longest
running percussion
drummer duos out there. – Absolutely, absolutely. And we've been friends for
over 20 years now with Kornel, and we've been playing as a
duo more than 12 years now. I approached Kornel with
the idea of the duo in 2005, in February 2005, that's
when we had our first gig.
So 12 years and running strong. – No kidding. Well good for you guys,
good for you guys. And now we have you on
Drumeo which is really cool. The lesson today is on how
to play with a percussionist, which I mean obviously
you can see this is the perfect setup for that. But if you guys
are here tomorrow, we're gonna be live,
again public to everyone who's watching here,
tell your friends, we're gonna be live for a
performance from Thunder Duo where it's not education,
it's just awesome music. And rhythm. – Playing, yeah,
performance, looking forward to that one as well. – Check him out, you have
a DVD that you released a couple years back. This is available at
Hudson Music Digital, you can find it on
their website too. And if you wanna find out
more about Thunder Duo, thunderduo.com kornelhorvath.com gabordornyei.com I'll post all the information
in the description of this video. But before we get
too far into it, Gabor has given me
five pairs of sticks. His signature stick, right? – Vic Firth, yeah. – Vic Firth signature
stick really cool, we're gonna give all
five of these away to one lucky winner.
That's a pretty hefty
little bundle there. So once we release this
video lesson on YouTube, just leave a comment
below, it's so simple, and just tell us what
you think the best part of this lesson was. And we'll randomly select
one, and we'll ship you five pairs of Vic Firth sticks, Gabor's signature model. Okay, so huge thanks to
the sponsors for helping bring you out here. Zildjian of course. Tycoon Percussion. We got here, I think
a couple days back and all of a sudden there
was like, I dunno, like 20 boxes of
percussion stuff, which was really cool.
Obviously Remo Head,
thank you so much for helping us out with that. Pearl, Vic Firth, am I missing? – Yeah, just a couple
of little things. I'm also using the
great Hard Case products which is a British company. – Right. – And these brilliant
little Sky Gels which is little damper pads. – Very cool. Very cool. I think that's enough
for me talking, cuz I just wanna hear
you guys play more and I wanna hear
what you have to say. So how to play with
a percussionist? – Well that's a
very good question. I think it's a great title. Thanks to you because basically
what we like to create here is and also in my general
teaching wherever I teach, you know I've been
approached since I was 17 for private lessons. And I always enjoyed seeing
the people grow and learn, and play better day by day. But there's one thing
that is very important in my opinion, on top of
the technical facilities, and being as fast as you can
and as smooth as you can, is the musicality. – Right. – Because my point is
that we don't wanna create bedroom drummers.
Because the whole thing of
playing music is sharing the joy and the
enthusiasm and the passion about music. Now music is a wonderful
thing that helps you through a lot of things, good
times and bad times. And you know once we share
the stage, suddenly from that moment onwards, you're
not alone on the drum kit as a solo performer. And this goes for if
you're just playing a duo, or this goes if you're
playing a quartet, this goes if you're
playing a big band, this goes if you pay with, I mean through my career I
had fantastic opportunities to play with a rhythm
section and an 80 piece classical orchestra.
So whatever you do, you
need to know your place in the music for that
particular ensemble. Now when you play
with a percussionist, to break it down there's
a couple of things that is very important
to keep in mind. One thing is the volume,
it's the most important thing because everybody's got
their sort of comfortable volume to play with.
Now if you're comfortable
volume goes from here to even louder, then it's
very likely that he's gonna break his fingers
within the first five minutes. Because we're just
stronger, we're louder with the bit of tools that we
have with the wooden sticks than if someone plays
with their bare hands. So if you're a solo drummer. – Twenty, twenty minutes. – Twenty minutes,
(scattered laughs) yeah, he would last
probably 20 minutes. Now when we do like an hour
and a half or two hours shows and clinics, then he would
kill me after 20 minutes. He would just come in and
you know knock my head to calm down. So that's one thing
because I think musically it's very important to be
able to play certain things at a different dynamic level, and a different speed as good. Because you know very often
I find amateur drummers being able to play one
thing at a certain volume and a certain speed. Okay so it's very important. Like when I was younger, even
younger I mean of course, we are still young
(scattered laughs) I used to practice very
quietly and very slowly.
Because that was one
thing to clarify, what is it I'm really doing? What is the right hand
doing, what is the left foot, so really clarify, what
is it I wanna work on, what is it I want to
express with my playing, what is it that I wanna clarify, what is it that I wanna,
as a final outcome, sound like? So when you break it
down, you slow it down, you play it quietly, first
of all you can practice for much longer periods of
time because back in the day I had the time, I
don't have it anymore. But back then I had. And so that was, the first
thing is that I started working on is the volume.
Now you can reduce your
volume several ways. First of all, try to
play much more quietly, and also the choices that
you make in your tools. You probably noticed that
when we started this piece, there was this amazing
melody that came from what Kornel used, which is
originally from Switzerland. This instrument is
called a hang drum. Now the hang drum is
the sort of hand played version of the steel drum. Kornel going to demonstrate
this little melody for you which he wrote,
and we titled it, the first composition
Hang Samba, after this, and you will probably
notice I'm gonna demonstrate the grooves when I'm playing
them with the brushes and with the sticks how
much quieter that is and how much more flow
and how much more life I can give to Kornel's solo
melody over this piece.
(samba music) – So in order that
melody can stand out, if I were playing this
groove with the sticks, it would probably
hear something like. (drum solo) The melody would not come
out you know, as clearly, and as enjoyable. And also the end of the
piece, probably you noticed that I was also trying
to play something jazzy, something that lets
the music breathe. So I've moved on from
my snare pattern, which is very often
played in Brazilian music, cuz that's a samba
groove that I played. And the floor tom
goes on the two, like one katoom, one tickatoom,
ticka ticka, ta boom, ticka ta tick, so my groove was (samba drum solo) With the normal sticks it
would be just too much.
So I had to consider,
okay, sound choices, let's go with the brushes
in the first time around. But because I had the big
solo piece which we're also gonna talk about in a second,
in the middle of this song, at the end it would be
very difficult to change back to the brushes. So what I did was, I
moved on to the cymbals. And that's enough. You know sometimes that's
enough, if there is someone playing a nice melody you
don't always have to play a full drum kit on full volume. So sometimes you can
choose elements of the kit that you want to use. For example, the right beat. (cymbals) With some additional high hat. (cymbals) Also the other thing
that is very important that you can add,
your bass drum pedal, doom ticka doom ticka doom.
Not on the full volume, cuz that (hard bass drum) if you play in a rock
volume, then it's just gonna stand out too much. So you gotta sort of
improve your foot technique to the level that
you can play the same pattern on the same
speed, but much quieter. (drum solo) Other thing you might have
noticed is the left hand. Why did I change to
the traditional grip? Now the main thing about
the traditional grip. First of all, 90 to 95%
of the time I'm playing the matched grip, I'm
a matched grip player, I have a sort of a
mirror image setup so this is my center point
and I'm moving with both hands to both directions, okay? Because the matched grip
is probably we can state that this is better for
moving around the kit.
Now, for the traditional grip, the big difference is that
all the weight of the arm and I nicked this from
Steve Smith who has an amazing instructional video
Drumming Technique out there. He explains that the weight
of the arm is underneath the stick. And when you play matched
grip, then the entire weight of the arm is
on the top of the stick so you naturally gonna
be more heavy handed. And there are certain
sort of finger techniques and light touch techniques. You maybe play with the
thumb and the index finger middle finger here. You can play really nice
buzzes and a couple of accents, of course you can play loud
notes as well with rim shot and everything. But generally my touch
becomes softer, much lighter, more sort or musical
in the way that I don't feel like I'm
overpowering Kornel's melody. So I automatically change
to that when I play swing, or something that is more
quiet like Latin stuff, samba, something like this.
So these are sort of natural
reaction that of course I've practiced for a long
time to play with the traditional grip. (cymbals) I started that maybe 20 years
ago when I first saw the great Joe Morello and
he had a wonderful instructional video. And that was the time
when I really started understanding that what
is happening here with the motions and the fingers. But the reason why I'm
using it, there's a musical reason behind it. So we mainly want to talk
about music today here.
And how to play together. Cuz you know,
suddenly I'm not alone behind the drum kit and
playing as loud as I want. Because then I'm
gonna kill the music. And that's the very last
thing you wanna do, trust me. Okay, so I change my patterns
according to the melody. First I went with, I played the
first round with the brushes and then we had
conga solo section, which comes over a
certain poly rhythm. Now that poly rhythm we
also like to break down because I received a lot
of questions about that in my first Drumeo
appearance which is titled Percussive Drumming
and Independence. Please check it out if
you haven't seen it. And there was a poly
rhythm that I broke down back then which I
wrote a chart for. Which we're gonna record
tomorrow for the course. So for Drumeo members
it's gonna be available. And that's a four over
five poly rhythm which we play together.
So I play a groove which is
a simple paradiddle groove, right left right left
left right left right hitting the high hat
and the snare drum. And what I'm playing is
a five 16 poly rhythm against it on the left foot. Now the five 16 is a
very interesting rhythm because it comes back,
it resolves on the one after five bars. So another thing that
is very important if you wanna be a
professional drummer, to be able to follow the form. Now normally we have
four, eight, 12, 16 bar, of musical forms. But this one is a five bar form.
Okay, so it's a little
bit more difficult, more advanced, and of
course you wanna finish the section after four
bars because that's what, this is how you
naturally feel it. But with the fives
on the left foot, it's going to come back
after five bars, okay. It's gonna resolve
after five bars. So what we're going to do
is Kornel plays a solo. We can probably count
together, you can count we don't see, we're
gonna show the bars, so one, two, three,
four, two two three four, three two three four,
four two three four, five two three four, and one.
Okay, so that's
gonna be the one. So he plays twice
the five bar form. On the congas. And then he changes to this
very very special instrument, I don't know if we can show a
closeup from that instrument. This one is Kornel's invention. It's a very very
unique instrument. There's a musical
reason for it, again. This one is called the
Udu Kere from Tycoon which is a mixture of
an Udu and a shekere.
So there's a hole in
the top like bass, goom, goom, for the
goom, goom sound. (udu kere) Really cool. So it's a mixture or
an udu, there's a hole and of course it's
a normal shekere so it works for both functions. So after twice, the five bar
section on the conga solo, Kornel's gonna change to
that, and that's where I stop playing the four for us. So try to keep the four,
okay, all the way through. All the way through
it's in four four. But we have five bar sections. Okay, here we go. A one two three. (samba music) (host laughs) Okay. – Very cool. – So it's a little bit harder
to keep because you have the da da, ga ga, bam bam, ta ka ka. So basically the poly rhythm is, these are the
quarter notes yeah, and the one two three four. (percussive music) One. You wanna help us counting? – Yeah, I just wanna know
what are we looking for the students as to playing
together as a percussionist on that section there.
Cuz there's a lot, now we're
talking about a poly rhythm, there's so much going on. (Gabor laughs) As a student trying to
learn how to play with a percussionist, what
was the key thing to take away with that? – Okay, now the key
thing's, of course this is a very complex piece,
as you point out, sorry about that. (scattered laughs) – No it's all good. – But we can't help it you
know, this is how our brain works, Kornel has
the same crazy ideas and I have the same crazy ideas. I mean the reason why I
first sort of formed the band and approached Kornel
with this is because I wanted to play my crazy
ideas more musically. So I thought okay, who
could really add to this? And of course Kornel's
amazing technique and sound choices allowed
us to make my ideas more musical in the sense
that we play them together. So basically what happens here, what I'm trying to point
out is the importance to keep the form because
the form is very important, and of course the sound,
to get the sound together.
So probably you
noticed in the piece, that when I had my solo
part I played the same parts much much louder
and much harder. Okay, so when Kornel comes
in, of course I have to drop the volume
without slowing down. Because that's the most natural
thing that amateur drummers do when they play a
certain thing and then they take the volume down, the
tempo drops drastically. And when they come back
up with the louder piece, they speed up back again.
So the tempo moves, okay so
it's very important thing to keep, timekeeping. Keeping the structure,
and keeping the
volume under control. So these are I would say
probably three of the most important elements that
we try to point out here. And the other thing is, of
course, being able to play poly rhythmic pieces together. Now for example, when Kornel
changed to the shekere, we play a five 16 rhythm. Which is one two, one two
three, one two, one two three, tati tatiti, tati tatiti,
one two one two three, one two one two three,
one two one two three, ta ta one two one two three,
one two, one two three, tati tatiti, ta ta. Now for that, you really
need to be able to listen. Okay, so that was another
thing that we discussed before that how important
it is when you play together with someone to
listen and react to what the other person played. Cuz suddenly you're
not alone anymore. – Right. – Okay, so for that one,
of course, timekeeping, the awareness of the musical
period which is five bar, five times four bars.
And of course being able
to play the certain, hear and play the poly
rhythms against it. So the hearing, the ear
training is just as important as your technical chops. Now Jojo Mayer told
me back in the day that if you wanna play
fast, you need to hear fast. So it's very important
that you hear the different subdivisions and
different poly rhythms or cross rhythms over
a four four in order to be able to execute
them together. Because if you lose the beat, then the whole piece
going to fall apart. – Right. – Like I'm not saying
that the point is that the audience loses the beat,
but the person who plays it should never lose the beat. So let's just work out
this rhythm together. What we're going to do is
you're help us counting. – Alright, let's do it. – And you'll count the
four four, and we play the five 16, Kornel on the
shekere, I'm on the high hats, and we help you counting, okay? – Okay. – Okay so you're gonna count
four four, five five bars. And then we hit the one.
– Got it.
– And repeat, okay?
– Let's do it. (foreign language) – One, two, three, four (percussion music) – [Host] One. Two. Three. Four. Five. – One, two, three, four. – One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Two. Three. Four. Five. One. – Yeah. – Two. Three. Four. Five. One. Two. Three. Four. – Exactly, we'll done.
– Boom. – Yeah. So that's a very
cool part of it. Now that's just a five
16 over the four four.
You can start doing the
same thing with threes. If that's the beat
then you can start. (drums) You can do the same
thing with seventh. (drums) I just want you to train
to hear the different all time signatures and
poly rhythms going against the four, you can do the
same thing with nine. (drums) In this particular
piece we chose the five because that went really
well with all the patterns that they're playing. And another thing that
we wanted to point out about this piece, it's
titled Hang Samba, is Kornel's hand technique. Now this is something
that is very very unique, and Kornel's always
been a very extremely individual player. Now he's invented this
technique which is totally individual and very
unique around the world. We don't really seen
anybody playing this. It started in the 70's
when he's basically just been listening
to the radio. And there was no instructional,
there was no Drumeo, (scattered laughs) there was no other
instructional videos, nothing. And he was just trying to work
out how those Indian players achieve that great speed.
Now the difference is that
they play on the tabla with the fingers only. And Kornel started experimenting
with different techniques, and then he came
about this motion which he's going to explain. – It's very important
the hand position. – [Gabor] Yeah, the
hand position, yeah. – And the first time in this, in the outside. – [Gabor] He plays on
the outside of his hand. – Yes, and this is the start. The start stroke. (conga drum) – [Gabor] Yeah, so it's
almost like a backhand that you play when
you play ping pong. – But crazy. – [Gabor] Crazy
motion (laughing) – And after it's work, and
the other stroke, inside. Outside, inside, outside, inside. (conga) – [Gabor] Yeah. When he plays the
outside he uses the nails of the fingers as well.
(speed conga) – Outside, inside, outside, inside. (speed conga) – Unreal.
– Whoa. – I can see why
Kornel you were voted the top percussionist
in the world in 2016. That was incredible. – I could probably
keep up with him like outside, inside. But it's already hurt. – I know, I couldn't
do that, no way. – Yeah, the very important
couple of things about this technique that we
wanted to share with you here is it's Kornel's invention
and it's came from the desire to achieve speed. Because this way it's an
extremely loose wrist motion and also a bounce.
Now it's very important
that he never leaves the hand in there. It's like when the
boxer makes a punch, he never leaves
the hand in there cuz that's the time when
it really start to hurt. And so what you wanna
do is quick attack and then pull the hand back. So that's why he does quickly
the outside and the inside. It's always a double strokes. It goes like out, in, out
in, which is even more unbelievable at how he
achieves that speed with it. But he certainly does somehow. And it's basically the
same thing for us drummers that I was also trying to
point out in my last lesson.
It's never on purpose,
I never leave the stick in the surface, whether it's
a right cymbal to snare drum, I never sort of play into
the drum or into the cymbal, unless that's the
sound you're after. But generally you should
always try to play out, play off the surface, you know. (drums) Even the floor tom, you know. Which is the loosest
head on the whole kit, (tom drum) bounces the stick back
all the way to me.
So all you job is to allow
the stick to come back to you. Because if you play into
that, that's the best way to hurt your hands, damage the
drum head, break the sticks, and there's no point doing that. Now the other thing
similar to the sticks, which is an extreme
advantage of this technique, Kornel can play
it on any surface because if you play with
the regular conga technique which is a palm down, very
likely you're mostly gonna use the congas, bongos, jambe, but he can play it on
the cymbals as well cuz it comes back so quickly. He's gonna demonstrate
it just super quickly the advantages of
this technique. (speed cymbals) – Unreal, unreal. I would cut my
hand if I did that. I know it would. – Yeah, no it's just
the speed and of course you try not to catch
the edges you know by playing on the surface,
so it's very important. These are the most
important elements that we try to keep in mind
when we compose our music.
Of course the other
thing that we do, there's nothing wrong
with jamming because all about, music for us
is all about having fun and keep that
enthusiasm for music. I mean I've been
playing for 30 years, I started when I was ten,
and this year I'm gonna be (Gabor mumbles) too many (scattered laughs) This year I'm gonna be 40,
I've been playing for 30 years and I enjoyed every
single minute of doing it. – Right, that's good yeah. – So it's a wonderful
thing that's the joy of playing music which
you should always keep, because that's the message here. You need to share
the love for music. And share our knowledge. And so jamming is a very
very cool thing because you just have general fun with
playing with another person. But for us, we thought
we get a little bit more organized if we create
certain compositions where of course the time
signature changes, the mood, the sound, the
style is changing.
Now the other thing that
is equally important in our Thunder Duo music is
the improvisation. So how do we
complement the soloist? – Yes, good question. – This is a very very
interesting thing. So for example in this
piece, which you just heard, probably you notice that
in Kornel's solo section of course I lowered the volume. I kept the same pattern,
but I lowered the volume. Now very often when we
improvise, I just try to be a cushion, I just try
to be a soft blanket on the drum kit without
being too harsh and too loud, just to give him space to play. And when my solo part
comes in I will play, you know I will flash,
so you don't always have to do flash. Try to think about music. Try to think musically,
this is our message.
So we just gonna do a
little improvisation, where I play with the mallets. Which is again another
color that I use. And Kornel's just gonna
improvise over it. We have this pattern
that we play. This is in four four,
it's gonna be much easier, much easier to follow. And inspired by a great
groove from Simon Philips, who was the drummer
with Toto at the time. And it's a brilliant
groove that he played on the Tambu album. And I'm just gonna
play that groove. We normally played
this piece as part of our improvisational
section in our clinics and performances. And Kornel's just
gonna improvise. So you'll see how
much room you can give a percussionist if you
provide solid foundation.
Okay, so the groove will
be something like this. (drum groove) Okay. – Very cool, yeah. – So you just play
nicely the melody, nicely the rhythm,
something there is soft. And also a very important
thing that happens in jazz, you have a lot of choices. This is what I love in
jazz and about sort of world music and
improvised music. It's that you have
a lot of choices. And there's something that I
learned from Tony Williams, the great Tony Williams, after
reading one of his interviews and he was talking about
the choices he makes when he plays with Miles Davis. And basically he
said something that you either follow him
and repeat the rhythm, or join him playing say a
cross rhythm or poly rhythm that he plays.
Or he play against it,
he'd play something totally different, you know? So you have the
choices that you make, sometimes I go with him
if he plays a poly rhythm, and I try to repeat, or
just join in the flow, or sometimes I play something
completely against it. So there's a lot of
choices that you can make. And that's the
beauty of the music. – Yeah, as long as you're
thinking about it that way, and you're purposeful
with what you're doing. You're not just thinking
just as a drummer, right? – Absolutely. – Because you guys
are a duo now. – Yeah, absolutely, and back
to my point which I made. It's very important. And I think the hardest part
in the improvised pieces or the improvised sections
is not to lose the beat. Because basically what
he, say for example, (imitates drum beat) If he was playing something like (percussion groove) – Yes.
– So you always need
to have the awareness of the musical
period and the beat. Where the beat is. Because if you risk that,
it happens very often, even with professional
players as well, that they lose the original beat once they introduce a
poly rhythm against it. – Right. – Okay, so that's when
you have like real timing and poly rhythmic awareness
of what's happening in the music. – Love it. This is so much information,
so much information's coming out right here.
I'm gonna have to watch
this one a couple times. And what I love is just
the fact that you're able to demonstrate and you can see. I mean these guys have
been playing together for 12 years. – Yes. – You were saying, so
you guys know each other very well, but
there's a lotta times, you probably play with
other percussionists that you've never met before. – Yeah. – So you're constantly
listening to them. Or you're constantly just
keeping an active ear for what's going on, right? – Most importantly,
most importantly. And also the other thing, the
first point just coming back to the first point that
we made about the volume, that I was lucky enough.
I'm not a very loud
drummer, I've never been a very loud drummer. But I was taught from an early
age that I'm being too loud, particularly when I started
playing in a jazz band. You know before it I relocated
to London over ten years ago, I played in Abuda
Visralio big band, and it was a jazz band. And you cannot just
play as loud as you can, you gotta be aware of the room. And the entire band,
and the volume. Whether you play
for a recording, whether you play
for a live session, whether you play open air, or you play in a classroom. You know I see students
you know playing like this like in Wembley Arena, when they play in a
20 piece classroom. So you need to be aware. Try to be an all
around musician. That's my message here, that's
what we're trying to do, is to be aware of
the circumstances, be aware of the other musicians, be aware of the poly rhythms, be aware of the pulse, be aware of the timekeeping, the poly rhythms, everything
that is happening in the music.
So with our next composition. – Yeah, let's do it. – We'd like to demonstrate
another very very interesting thing which often
happens in fusion music, or even Eastern music,
Eastern European folk music, when people play in all
time signatures, okay? – Okay. – So this is again an
interesting piece that is titled Transylvania Express. And it features an
all time signature. We would love you to
hear, actually two. We'd love to hear your comments. – Guess the time signature? – Guess the time signature,
it's not that difficult at all. – So there's of 'em in here? – Yeah, (laughing) – Alright. – You're easily gonna get it. And then we break it down
and we're trying to explain what's happened here. Okay. So enjoy Transylvania Express. – Alright. (percussion music) – Yes! (scattered laughs) Yes, that was awesome! – Thank you. – Wow, very well done. It's crazy how engaging just
two rhythmic players are. – Well, thank yoU.
– You know it's crazy. It's really cool. I can see how you guys have
been doing it for 12 years, that's what's so awesome.
– Yeah. – Transylvania Express
that one's called. – Well, Transylvania Express,
there's a lot to take in, there's a lot to talk about. – If you guys can guess
the time signatures on it, leave a comment
below this video. We're not gonna give it away. – Okay. – I wanna see all the
guesses down there. In the comments and all that. But very cool, absolutely. How are your hands not bleeding? (scattered laughs) (foreign language) – I don't know. (scattered laughs) – He has no idea, he just plays. I think it's so
unbelievable, I mean, if I hit like the
drum twice like that, I would break
probably my fingers. It's a lifetime, you know,
he's been playing percussion for like 30, 40 years. And Kornel started
out as a flute player. And I think that's one of
the reasons why his playing is so melodic.
– Yeah. – So I just try to keep
up with the speeds, try to keep up with the
great rhythms that he plays. And as we discussed before what
to take away from this song? Now, very important, I mean
I don't even know where to start cuz there's so
many things to talk about. We've been talking about
before, trading force, now you guys probably
spotted the section that we were sort of giving
each other the room, like I completely stop and
Kornel was playing eight bars in the given time signature
which I'm not gonna tell you just now, in the end we will. Just to make sure
that everybody knows. And so we're just gonna
demonstrate that section, and it's very important
that you keep the counting while the other
player's soloing. Because of course we play
a lot of poly rhythms and it's easy to lose the beat. So what we're gonna do, a
little bit slower speed, we're gonna demonstrate
the solo section when Kornel plays on
the jambe or the congas, whichever he choose cuz he keeps changing back and forth between.
And then I'm gonna
play my little solo because I'd also like
to break down to you. So we're gonna do
the solo section. Kornel will start as
per in the composition, and I'm just going to
try to keep the pulse happening here. – It's very important
(imitates drum pulse) (jambe solo) (drum solo) – Okay. – Yes, yeah. – So that's one thing. Can we tell the
time signature now? Or not yet. – Yeah, let's go, we got
about five minutes left, and you still have one
more performance piece, so let's, yeah, we're
running low on time today. Time flew by.
– Oh really? – Yeah. – Oh my god, I was gonna
talk about so many things. Jesus. – We'll have to save
that for the course. We are filming a full
course with both of you guys tomorrow which is gonna be
available for Edge members, so just come to Drumeo.com,
what are you waiting for guys? Hey, what's the time signatures? Let's give it away.
– Now, the time signatures are,
the whole piece started out in seven four, okay? And that was my idea. I mean like many, many
compositions of Thunder Duo, the core idea of the seven
four, it came to me from a crazy idea of who's playing
a cha cha in seven four. You know one of our favorite
DVD was Giovanni Hidalgo with Horacio El Negro,
we totally love them. They're great players. And most of the stuff was
in four and in Latin style. And we sort of started
to give our flavor to it. So I had this crazy idea, why
not play the cha cha rhythm in seven four? So basically the melody is (drum melody) Two three four five six seven Five six seven (drum melody) One two three four
five six seven one two three four
five six seven one And then we have a figure.
One two. One e and a Two three, one two three four And here we enter
a double time feel, but we're still in seven. But instead of
playing seven four: one two three four
five six seven, one two, now we're in
seven eight which is one two three four
five six seven, one two three four
five six seven, and that was the sort
of seven eight clave that Kornel introduced in (imitates drum melody) And I had a crazy idea
that why not try to play that clave, that seven
eight clave, on my left foot with the cowbell? So I added that, and of
course independently different sixteenth note bass
drum rhythms going. So I keep the seven eight clave (drums) One two three four
five six seven, one very slowly, one two three
four five six and seven one two three four
five six and seven one. So that's a seven eight. (drum melody) And there was another thing
that I wanted to mention. I know we're running low
on time, so I'll be quick. Probably you noticed at how
much we keep in eye contact.
Cuz it's not just the listening,
of course we're listening, but it's very important that
you always set up on the stage that you can keep in eye contact
with everybody in the band. – Right. – Because for example,
there's a lot of improvisation going on in this piece,
apart from the solo sections. So basically the bar
numbers are open. So it's not like a set
structure that this is always like that, no. We improvise, and we
go with the flow with where we go with the
audience reaction, and then we give a cue. So normally in a
professional music world, it will be called like on cue. Like for example the next
section, it's either Kornel or I cue, probably you
notice during the performance that we give a hey sound, or
whatever you look at each other and you acknowledge
that you got the cue. And that's when we
change our patterns. So that's when the (imitates drum solo) Sort of the poly rhythm,
poly rhythmic ending came which we play this in unison. Cuz it's very important that
you don't miss the unisons because if you miss the
unisons, the whole band's gonna fall apart.
– Exactly. – So you need to know your
part, and you need to also be aware of what the
other person's playing. And if it's unison,
try to play as tight as you possibly can. – Absolutely. Looking at each other is key,
I saw you guys vocalizing to each other too which is key. We talked also about dynamics,
keeping your volume low, orchestration, how you're
choosing your patterns, giving each other space,
obviously not stepping on each other's toes when
you're doing trading solos and all that.
– Very important,
very important. – There's lots of great
stuff in here, guys. We've gotta cut it off
cuz it has been an hour. But we're gonna get you
to play us one more piece. – I can't believe
it's been an hour. – I know. – Well it's been a
pleasure to be here. Thank you very much
for everything. – It's been great
having you back. Guys, you gotta check
out Gabor's other lesson if you liked this, and if
you guys are coming from the lesson cuz you liked Gabor
and you're watching this one, thank you! Also, we're doing a whole
course with Gabor and Kornel called Building
Rhythmic Tension.
And we're gonna have a
lot more stuff on here. Plus, tomorrow, we're
gonna be live for free with everyone on
Facebook and YouTube and everything like that. We're gonna just have
a performance hour with Thunder Duo, there's
gonna be no teaching, it's just gonna be nothin but, – Play!
– Nothin but play, which is gonna be really cool. So come and hang out
with us for that. And for those watching
here live right now, thanks for joining us. If you like what you
see, come to Drumeo.com. I mean we have a lotta great,
great videos like this. And every time we bring
in special guests like Gabor and the Thunder Duo
we always do some exclusive courses and material, which
is the best stuff we film in my opinion.
And that goes into
the members section. So, yes, thank you both, Gabor. – Thank you for having us. – Kornel, thank you, so much. – Okay, thank you very much. – And what are you
gonna play us out with? – Yes, this is one of
our oldest compositions. Which again feature
some alt time signatures and some poly rhythms against
the alt time signatures. And also it's going to
feature some vocal percussion. So it's like a multi layer
piece which is titled Tactome, and it also features
different world elements. Like for example it starts
off with a Bulgaria rhythm and it goes into as
someone refers to it as Indian style,
kinda cool singing. So hope you're gonna enjoy. Please make sure to
check out Drumeo, make sure to check
out ThunderDuo.com and enjoy the next
piece, Tactome.
– Absolutely, hey, and
if you guys need a shaker in your band? – Yeah, (laughing) – The Thunder Trio? – The Thunder Trio, no! – I could play the
triangle, or the cowbell. Hey, see you guys all later. Take it away guys. – Here we go. (drum melody) (vocal percussion) (vocal percussion
and drum melody) (soft percussion melody).