– Whoo! Great job. – Thanks. (laughs) – Thank you so much. Everyone and Drumeo give a huge welcome to Julia Geaman.
– Hello. – Yeah, thanks for coming out. – Thanks.
– Yeah. We have been talking for, I don't know, a couple months now about
bringing you into Drumeo and finally it happened. So we're here, we're going
to be teaching a lesson, and just a little bit about Julia. You are our first Romanian instructor. – Yay. (laughs) – All the way from
Romania, which is crazy. She lives now in Vancouver. You've been drumming for about
12 years, you were saying? – Yep, yep. – Teaching for over five years. – Yeah, at least five, six. – Very cool. And you play in a band too. That was the song from your band. What is your band called? – Band is Revenger.
A thrash band from Vancouver. And I'm also in another
band called Alchemy Chamber, which is like instrumental, experimental stuff. Cello, saxophone. Metal drums.
-Awesome. – Yeah. – Well, I'm excited to have you out here. Hopefully we can have you
out on more of a regular, but let's get to the lesson. For all you guys watching here, please get your questions here. We're going to do Q and A at
the very end of this as well and nailing transitions is the topic. Obviously everyone has
problems with transitions, at least from what I've
seen, myself included. So how are you gonna help us with that? – Yeah, I think it's an important subject because you can really tell
how prepared a drummer is or how advanced they are
by their transitions, or by how easily they can transition into the next part in a song. So I picked a couple of examples of different types of transitions and the way that I kind of zoom in to specific parts of a fill or a beat and break it down so that I
know exactly what I'm doing.
And I kind of cut my
practice time by a lot– – Really? – Because I'm, if you zoom into a really
small section of something, you can do it 100 times in like
two minutes, three minutes. And you lock it in way quicker. – So this is more of like your system of how you fight transitional pieces. – Fight, yeah. Physically fight them. – This isn't about fills, necessarily. – Not necessarily, no. It could be like you're transitioning to a different part of the drum or you're transitioning, like
your position is changing, if you're going into a cross stick or just going from double kick to hi-hat. If you're changing your position you're changing your balance, so sometimes you don't really ask yourself what exactly
am I doing in that moment, so you kind of just fumble
through it for a split second but then you get back
on so you're like okay, that was okay. – Right, right. – But actually it was like ugh. – So cleaning those things up? – Yeah, yeah, zooming in.
– I'm excited. Take it away, yeah. – Okay. Well I'll use the first one, the first example, number one there. There's no fills, it's
just two different beats. This is kind of an example
of something that I zoomed in one time and I was like, okay, I'm not actually doing it properly. Let me just play it first and then I'll kind of describe what I went through. So really slowly. So obviously I play it faster
when it's a thrash beat, but this can apply to anything where you're accenting on the bell. Because the accent in this
case is on the downbeat, (snaps) on the one, two, three, four. But there's a crash on the one. So what I noticed transitioning back is that when I would hit the crash, the first thing that I
would hit would be the bell, and that would be on the and actually, not on the downbeat.
So there would be a quick
split second recalibration and that just makes it sound a little bit not as clean. So instead of going
like this. (drums pound) I would go straight to
the bell. (drums pound) Twice, and then– – I've done that so many times. – Yep, yeah. And it's something I
noticed and I'm just like, I gotta figure out exactly what to do. So this example, you
can play this example, you can play it a lot faster too, or any exercise where you're
accenting on the bell, but the idea of this one is to just slow it down and figure out
what the actual path is. So I know the first thing
that I'm hitting is the crash and then the snare, and
then this part of the ride. And then the snare again,
and then I go into the ride. So I just zoom into that one tiny section and I repeat that over
and over like 10 times. And I'm like okay, I know it, and that takes me 10 seconds rather than doing a whole
verse or a whole chorus or even just two bars.
And then I know that section
and I try the whole thing. It's super important when
you're going really fast. So you don't have to
think about it any more. You've used your muscle memory
to memorize it properly. – Right, right. So you're literally just
focusing on the last quarter note and the first quarter
note of that transition. – Yeah, yeah. – And it's really isolating where your body should be going, where
your hand should be going. – Yeah, kind of like
carving the path properly so there's no obstacles when
you're going through it. – Right, right. – Especially when you're going fast or you have adrenaline, like a live show or you don't have enough time
to think your way through it.
It has to be automatic, like grooved in. – It's kind of like
those guys if they have a problem with one fill in a song they'll play the whole song– – The whole song. – Yeah. (chuckles) – Yeah, why? You can spend 10 minutes and perfect it. – It seems obvious
sometimes but it really– – I mean, I'm guilty for that too. I have been. (laughs) – Oh me too, 100 percent. It seems obvious, but we
don't do it sometimes. We just don't do it, right? – Yeah.
– Cool. – Yeah, so I mean that's
just the simple concept. Just zoom in and at the time, even for me, it seems like oh, it's
going to take forever, and it literally takes two minutes and that's not a huge time investment. It's just sometimes you
feel like you want to play, like play the whole song, but it's way more fun if you
just fix that one problem really quickly.
– It sounds like people always say later, I'll fix that later, or eventually
that'll sort itself out. – Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's totally worth it and it takes way less time
than you think it does. If you don't feel like
you're in the mood to do it, just do it.
– Right. – Yeah, and you'll be thankful. – That's a big tip right there, yeah. – Yeah. – Alright, what's next? – Cool, the second one is way different. It's just a six eight beat. Super simple. It's just a six eight beat
with the backbeat on the four. Switching to a cross stick with the backbeat on the one, the and of two, the four, and then the and of five, and the reason why I picked this one is because I'm going from
playing the snare normally with my stick to going to a cross stick.
So first of all, I hold my stick like this because in this particular beat, I don't feel like I have time to switch. Sometimes I can and I can flip it, but in this case I just
start off that way. I don't like to play
like this all the time because of the splinters but it's fine. But the main thing is how my
balance changes in this one.
So I use this one as an example to really be aware of your
positioning your body. Because I'm playing an open hi-hat and I've seen so many of my students lift their foot completely
off of the hi-hat when they're trying to play an open hi-hat and I really suggest you don't, because you totally lose
one of your anchors. So I always like to do just heel up, just lift up from your toe. And also, you're going
from just playing normally to a cross stick and that means I'm moving forward a little bit.
So I just try to be aware. I go through this exercise really slowly and I try to be aware of
where my body position is and if anything feels uncomfortable, I try to readjust, sometimes I have to move the hi-hat a little bit further or just place myself somewhere different. So yeah, if you're playing a song that starts off sort of differently, just keep it in your mind that maybe on this song I have to
kind of position myself a little bit differently.
– Right. – And just start off a little bit better. So the beat itself is just. Really simple, but I'm
just being very aware of where my placement is and when I'm going for the open hi-hat I know the next thing that I'm hitting is all of them at the same time. So just that awareness of
where my body placement is really helps me, and I
go really, really slow. Super slow, and yeah, then I usually can get it
a lot quicker that way. – Let's hear that super slow. Faster. Yeah.
– Cool. Now would you ever take that same concept you taught in the first
one, which is just like highlighting just the
transition to use that for something like this? – Totally, yeah.
It's kind of a habit for me right now and I get all of my students to do that. And I realize now that
not everybody does that but I just get them to really focus on even two beats or three beats, so like the last beat or the last note and the first note, just
consciously being aware of it. Just looking at the tab or
figuring out what you're doing and consciously being like,
oh that's the last note and this is the first note. It just helps you be more aware of where you have to go. Because you're doing everything
so quickly sometimes, you think you know. – And then when you get to the point where you're playing more improv and
you're jamming with someone and you don't have time to think of that, it should come naturally.
– Yeah.
– So this is good practice for that. – Yeah, yeah, it just
puts you in that position and there's something about
going through something really slowly and just one piece, like one section of it, I feel like it goes in a little
bit deeper in your memory or in your coordination than just practicing a whole exercise
with the metronome. – Yeah, and this one here we're going from snare to cross stick
and from open hi-hat to, well, from ride to open hi-hats. So there's two key things there. – Yeah, yeah, the backbeat changes and also landing a cross stick. I'm not an expert at cross stick but I know that sometimes it's a little bit, you know, you can kind of flam.
So just practicing like. Landing that one note
right after the hi-hat and knowing where you like
to hear the cross stick. And yeah, just figuring out exactly the position that you want to be in when you do that, but yeah. – Cool. – Yeah, so. Yeah, so I think the third one. Third one there? Yeah.
– [Mike] Yeah. – Cool, yeah so this one, I wanted to put a triplet
fill in one of them because what happens when I
play triplet fills sometimes or anybody else, is that
it tends to speed up and you lose where the one is. And I really kind of encourage not only playing this exercise, but playing the rhythm on
your snare when you do it. So I'm just gonna play the whole exercise all the way through a
couple times really slowly and then I'll kind of break it down. I'll go through it. So that in itself, if you're practicing like a triplet fill, you could just practice the whole exercise or the whole fill and just kind of work the triplets through there, but what I like to do is
whenever I'm sight reading or trying to figure out a fill by ear, is I always take the rhythm
and I play it on my snare or on a rudiment pad or I just figure out what the rhythm is.
So if I look at the rhythm on top, I know I'm going from
eighth notes to triplets, back to eighth notes and then 16th notes. If you go to exercise 3B, I put the whole rhythm just on the snare. – Oh brilliant, okay. Yeah. – So instead of going
through the whole exercise, I want to hear the rhythm in my head first so that I know what's right. And then I know if I'm
speeding up or slowing down. So if I just played that whole rhythm, it'll just sound like this.
I do that over and over and I
get the sound of it in my head I'm way more likely to
nail that whole transition going into the next part because it's way simpler to practice, so I can do that over and
over a lot more times, and get it in my head
rhythmically, at least. Rather than having to think
about the orchestration of it. – I was just going to say, a lot of times the
orchestration is just as hard and you're just fighting
the note value changes.
– Yeah, you're trying to
do two things at once. – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. – So just simplify it and
separate the two things. Figure out what the rhythm is. And sometimes a fill, if
you're listening to a fill, the rhythm of the fill is
more important sometimes than exactly what tom you're hitting. Everybody tunes their toms differently, so the pitch is not as important sometimes as the rhythm. I'll be more impressed if you can figure out what the
rhythm of that fill is. And you can also take liberties with the orchestration of it sometimes, but the rhythm is so much more important.
– Right. – I always start there. – Right. This is good because you
can obviously apply it to eighth notes, triplets, 16th notes, any note value change you have. Even some quarter notes
to 16th note triplets. – Yeah, yeah.
– Yeah. – Yeah, and that particular exercise, it's also a little bit tricky because the first fill starts on the first beat and the second fill
starts on the fourth beat so it's uneven in where
it starts in the fill so it kind of really gets you to focus on where you are and you should be counting, definitely, when you're doing that. – Yes. – Definitely took me a long time. – Yeah, count out loud. – It made a huge difference, though. – Even if it's embarrassing. – Yeah.
– Yeah. – Your voice is like
a fifth limb, kind of. – It's like singing the rhythms, almost. – Yes, yeah. – Very cool, that's a great tip. – So yeah, those three concepts of zooming into a really
small section of a rhythm, making sure that you're
in a comfortable position and in the right spot, and also breaking down the rhythm
to its most simple form, just playing it on your snare.
And understanding what it
sounds like unorchestrated. – Very cool.
– Yeah. – So we got another one that has like A, B, C, D. – Yeah, lots of examples. – What is this one about? – All of that one is basically everything that I've mentioned before. Just a few more examples of each, or more importantly, each one of them is a transition from a quarter note hi-hat to an eighth note hi-hat which
can be a little bit tricky.
The most important thing
when you're playing any of those exercises is
that the thread of the rhythm, the bass and the snare, is always the same and the dynamic of all
of them are the same so you keep the rhythm going and this should just be on top, like your hi-hat, the quarter
note or the eighth note should not be affecting the actual rhythm. So I did four different examples. They're all kind of related. They kind of get a
little more complicated, basically just adding more basses. So it starts off a little bit simple and I add more and more basses as we go. – Yeah, I can see that. So this is all eight bar examples here. We only have four that we can
display on screen at once, so Kyle will try to do
his best to change them but follow along with the sheet music. Why don't you just walk us through very quickly all four? – Okay, so the first one starts
off with quarter note hi-hat and there's a really small
16th note fill at the end, just and a at the end of the fourth bar, and then immediately
goes into the same rhythm but with an eighth note
hi-hat on top of it.
4B is basically just
an extra bass on the a, I believe, of one. I think that was it. And then the C is just an
extra bass note on the and, like the and of two. That one's C, yeah. And a bass on the E of four, which I really like putting a bass on E right after the snare.
– Yeah. – It sounds really cool,
a little bit more funky. The last one is a little bit harder. It has two 16th note
basses in the beginning. So that one will be I
think the trickiest one to switch the feel from
quarter note to eighth note because you got 16th notes all the way through the first beat.
So that one is really going to be the test to see how comfortable
you are holding the rhythm and changing up the hi-hat. – Alright. – But I'll go through each one. I'll start with 4A. I guess I'll just do it once through, like I'll do the four bars
with quarter note hi-hat and then four bars with
eighth note hi-hat. So that you can repeat
over and over and over, but the really important thing is that that bass and snare are the same. It's not being affected.
So that example, I
think, it's pretty easy. But if that's too hard, just go back to. Start off with that, obviously. – Very cool, yeah yeah yeah. – And it's a cool tool to
if you're writing drums, writing drum parts, it's
a really cool way to pick up the pace of the song without making anything louder or
actually playing faster, which you shouldn't be doing. (laughs) – Right, right. – Yeah, so B is just an extra 16th note on the first beat and that's about it.
I'll do that one. Cool.
– Cool. Throw up number C. – Yeah, do the third one real quick. So this one's just an extra
bass on the and of two and on the E of four. Nice.
– Sweet. Let's go on to number D. – Yeah, number D. – Number D. (laughs) – Number D. (giggles) Yeah, so this one's cool. This is just one extra bass. I find some of my students
have a little bit of trouble with that extra bass in there, so just separate this one. Yeah, I did two. (laughs) But yeah, so if I was
having trouble with that and I did make a few mistakes there, I would just go back to all of my ideas from the beginning.
So I would zoom in and I
would see what I'm doing at the end of the first one and the beginning of the next bar. The fourth beat of the fourth bar. That whole rhythm. So that last part. So I'll figure out exactly
what I'm doing there. I'll zoom into that one section and I'll repeat it over and
over until I get it. – Right. – And sometimes it might
just be the rhythm itself. I'll figure out what
that rhythm at the end is and the rhythm at the beginning, so the last two beats of that exercise is. Three and, four E and a. One E and a. Two and.
– Right. – So I'll just figure out that because maybe that was the problem. Maybe I think it's a different rhythm. So I'll break it down and
I'll play that rhythm.
Okay, so it's three and, four
E and a one E and a. Two and. And I'll just kind of play through that. Three and four E and a, one E and a two and. I'll figure out exactly what that– – Totally.
– Section is. – Very cool.
– Yeah. – So the three main points. Isolate, even if it's two quarter notes worth of transitional pieces. Isolate it.
– Yes. – Second point, making sure– well third point, sorry,
I'm going to jump ahead. Picking out the rhythm behind it. – Yeah. – And what was the second point? – Balance.
– Balance, correct. – Yeah, figuring out where you're sitting and your placement and figuring out if you actually have to
switch where your balance is, if you have to move forward
or lean back a little bit.
– Very cool, yeah. The sheet music in this lesson, it's not that you have
to learn the exact things that we notated here,
that Julia notated here. This is just examples of the three points that we just talked about there. But they are great ways
to practice those points. They highlight and isolate
certain key trouble issues that we all have as drummers, but yeah. Take those tips and
apply them to every time you are having issues with a transition. Transitions aren't just fills. I know a lot of people were asking me, is this lesson about fills? No, it's about just transitioning from just two different parts. – Yeah.
– You know? And you even had a fill in there which was part of the transition, eighth notes to eighth
note triplets, right? – Yeah, yeah. Just figuring out where exactly
you're playing everything and being aware of what
you're doing mostly.
– Alright, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Alright, thank you Julia for coming out. – Yeah, thank you. – Hope we'll see you out here again. Leave a comment below
if one of your questions wasn't answered within the lesson or within this Q and A and
we'll see you guys all later. To close us out, Julia
Geaman. (Julia laughs) Playing a Revenger tune. See you guys.
– Got it. You got it..