(rock music) (metal music) – (laughing) Dude, that was so so good. – Thank you, thank you. – Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Lang. – Hey guys. Thank you Jared. – Thanks for coming. – It's great to be here,
thank you, thank you. – Thanks for coming out to Drumeo. I was saying to the guys in
the control room before this. I'm like, I'm going in to do
a lesson with Thomas Lang.
Can you actually believe that? – I said the same thing. (both laugh) – So for those of you who
don't know Thomas Lang, I'm just going to give
you a short introduction. I hope that's all right. – Of course. – You have a little piece of thread right here on your cheek. – Ah, thank you. – So Thomas Lang, he has been on the cover of pretty much every
popular drumming magazine. You've won pretty much most of the awards that come from a lot of the
modern drummer's readers pull as far as like, Clinician and you know, many many other categories. And we were talking before. You only spend around
20 percent of your time doing clinics and tours
and the rest of the time is playing music and touring with a bunch of different artists. – Yeah, absolutely. – One thing you have coming up and it's always the
Fourth of July weekend, is the Big Drum Bonanza. – Indeed, indeed.
– (laughs) Now, can they get
a shirt exactly like that? – Exactly like that, with custom-made sleeves
like that. (laughs) – Now, that's always the
Fourth of July weekend– – Absolutely. – So if you're watching
this video later on or after the Fourth of July, just know that every Fourth
of July that's coming and this one you have Chad Wackerman– – Absolutely. – Gergo Borlai– – Yeah.
– Rich Redman. – Yeah.
– Gregg Bissonette, Matt Gartska. Unbelievable. – It's a really incredible lineup, yes. We've been doing this for a few years now.
Every Fourth of July in Los Angeles. The Big Drum Bonanza. The coolest drum camp on the planet with some of the best
drummers in the world. Teaching private lessons, group lessons, performances, clinics, so it's really quite an experience and
if you are interested check it out. Www.bigdrumbonanza.com. – Yep, and you have a
playalong contest in that– – Absolutely. – And so you guys go
check out the website, find out all the information about that and you also mentioned the
hotel is right near the beach. – It's very close to Malibu Beach, there's some great shopping,
there's a pool, there's wi-fi. You'll have a good time. – Now you also have the Thomas
Lang drumming bootcamps. – Yes. – And this is the first kind of artist-hosted camp of its kind. Now there's many other people trying to do things similar to this
but you were the original and I'd really encourage
you guys to check out the Thomas Lang Drumming Bootcamp. I know I would love to host
one here in our new facility.
– It'd be great, let's make it happen. Let's make it happen,
it would be wonderful. – Yeah, because I think I
would love to attend that. You're also getting ready to
launch your own drum school– – Yes. – In partnership with
a drum channel called the Thomas Lang Drum Universe. – Indeed, yes, exactly. – That hasn't come on– – Materialized yet. We'll launch in the summer, exactly. – Okay, so if you guys
want to hear more about that kind of stuff and more
about all this kind of stuff, I'd encourage you to
follow him on Facebook. It's Facebook.com/officialThomasLang and then Twitter and
Instagram @ThomasLangdrum. – Indeed.
– And the final thing I want to talk about is all of the people that
you're playing with currently. You're going on tour with
Paul Gilbert in the fall. – Yes, exactly. – You're playing with Tony
Macalpine this summer in Asia. – Yes, yes. – And Spark Seven, you
just released a new album. – Absolutely. – That first song– – That was a Spark Seven song, exactly. A song called Cricket
Chorus from the new album. – Awesome.
– Yep. – And then there's Yumaflex, which is an album you released last year and you're still kind of doing touring. – Yes, we're still working on it and me and a guitar player from Austria named Conrad Schrenk.
We have a more fusiony type of project. I'll be playing a song from
that a little later on. – Awesome, cool. So if you guys want to check
out any more of his music or check out any of his upcoming projects when it comes to the music side of things you go to muso-mart.com
and you can kind of keep up to date on
everything that he's doing.
– Thanks for the plug. (Jared laughs) It was great, thank you. – One more final thing. If you guys like what we're doing here, we do this on Drumeo every day. Not necessarily with Thomas Lang, although we absolutely
love to invite you back every single day. (laughs) – Love to, yes. – I'd love for you guys
to check out a free trial. If you go to drumeo.com/trial, you just go ahead and sign up.
It's free for 30 days. If you decide to stay on,
it's 30 bucks a month. If not, you just email us and we'll go ahead and
cancel your account. But I really encourage you
guys to at least give it a try. We have lots of cool things going on in the Drumeo members area. So with that said, let's get into some of this stuff. – Okay. – I hope you're gonna show us exactly what you were doing
during that song.
(laughs) – I will. – Or how to develop all
of the crazy things– – That's exactly what I'm
going to be doing, exactly. So this lesson's about applying basic rudimental techniques on
the whole drum set, okay? I'm gonna start laying this out in a very simple, methodical form. I'm going to start with single strokes, so one stroke per hand, right left, right left, and double strokes two per hand then groups of three. Right left right left right left or right right left, left left right, et cetera. Groups of four and so on. So we're doing single stroke rolls, double stroke rolls, three stroke rolls, four stroke rolls, five, and so on.
So you guys know the single stroke roll. It's rudiment number
one in every drum book. Right left right left right left. (snare drum rolls) And you play just simple– (snare drum rolls) Which you can then, and that's what I want
to encourage you to do, is take each one of those
rudiments immediately and start working creatively with them, don't just play them on the snare drum or consider them to be a snare drum pad exercise or just a rudimental sticking exercise.
Each one of those phrases and patterns is a musical phrase, a term that you can play many different ways on a drum set. Single strokes, you can
just orchestrate them. (drums beat) You know, eight strokes per drum. (drums beat) Okay, or split them up,
play groups of three. Alternating singles. One two three on the floor tom, one two three on the snare drum. (drums beat) Right left right left right left. Right left right left right left. (drums beat) Or right left right left
right left right left. Floor, snare, rack tom, 10 inch tom. (drums beat) Create fills. (drums beat) Okay? So this is a triplet pattern that you can play in many different ways. – Okay, so for you guys to know, Thomas has a lot of stuff
that he's going to cover so he's going to go really fast.
– Yes, I'm going to go fast, guys. – (laughs) If you need to watch this, don't worry, you're going
to get to watch it again and on repeat. – So I'm going to just try and pack as much information in
here as possible, okay? I hope you guys are ready. – You're gonna package
like 10 years of lessons. – Yeah, it's very simple. Three, three. Right left, right left, right
left, right left, right left. (drums beat) Let's do it faster. (drums beat) But you can do many things
with single strokes. Just try them out,
orchestrate them on the kit. For example, play triplets. (snare rolls) One triplet, two triplet, three triplet, four triplet, right left right left.
And put the quarter note
accents on the rack tom. (drums beat) And then take those subdivisions and switch from snare
drum to floor tom like so. (drums beat) Okay, shorten the sequence and switch every half bar. (drums beat) Speed it up. (drums beat) Or put the accent here. (drums beat) Or put the accent on the
crash cymbal. (drums beat) It's just single strokes. – It's just simple. It's simple, right? (laughs) – It's simple, it's very simple. It's just (drums beat) one triplet, two triplet. – So now the question we're going to get, and this is the same
question we'll probably get throughout all of these is, how did you develop that, how did you get to that level? Like obviously this is something you just didn't start practicing yesterday, this is something you've been
doing for a long, long time.
– Right, yes. The key is, the faster you
play, the more relaxed you are. If you have a long distance to cover, like from floor tom to crash cymbal, bring your body forward into
the middle of the two targets so you have the reach, basically, or you double your reach
and half the distance so don't lean back when you (drums beat) create cross-sticking patterns. Make sure you sit straight. (snare rolls) Bring your upper body close
to the action, basically, and stay relaxed. And of course, you start with a lot of very basic hand practice.
I'm sure you've seen hundreds of lessons on finger control technique. (snare rolls) Without wrist. I however, use mainly
wrist strokes which is hardly any fingers at all,
it's all wrist. (snare rolls) Because with wrist
strokes, you can actually move stuff around the kit very easily and you always have a very tight grip. Make sure you have the
correct hand position, which is always palm down. Imagine you're playing the drum set without sticks in your hand and you would be playing
palm down. (drums beat) You would never be playing
with your thumbs facing up or the palms facing each other. So you would never
karate chop the drum set. That would hurt. So it's the same way you hold the stick.
Relax your arm, bring it up, put the stick in your hand. (snare chops) Boom, there it is. The palm always faces down. If you're playing in this position and if you make sure that the
sticks are at a right angle, like so, and imagine the
snare's a face of a clock, it's always 20 to four. Hour and minute hand. And this position gets
moved all over the drums. (drums beat) You basically, you're just
transferring this position. This is a very powerful stroke, you have a very firm
grip and it's very easy to switch surfaces and
play with a lot of power.
– Awesome, cool. Okay, let's go on to double strokes. – Yes. Now of course, same goes for the feet. I just wanted to add this. If you play singles on top of the kit, also play those singles with the feet. Same thing. Here's a good example
for something that I call note rate pyramid. For control, I want you guys to practice 16th notes, eighth note triplets, 16 note triplets, quintuplets, septuplets, all these phrases. (drums beat) Play a basic beat and work
those phrases in with the feet, for example.
It would sound like this. (drums beat) One foot. (drums beat) And mix it up and play two, two, three, three, five,
five, eight for example. So. (drums beat) These are just for control, okay? – I've done that. Usually it's with my hands. People kind of leave out the feet when it comes to doing this. – Yes, but the thing is you
can use the feet as well. So it's worth exploring. There's a lot of creative potential and a lot of modern
drum set playing happens below the belt, so try to explore that and have fun with it, okay? – That's great.
– There's basically nothing
you can't do with your feet that you can do with
your hands potentially, so anything you can play with your hands you can play with your feet. Now doubles, sorry, I
just want to cover that. Double strokes, I learned
to play doubles this way, it's called the stone killer number two in Joe Morello's book. Soft, loud, soft, loud, right right, left left. (snare rolls) You speed that up. Til you get a very nice,
even roll. (hi-hat crisps) You don't accent the second note. You don't do that, the
first note becomes louder due to the hand movement
and it sounds like this. (hi-hat crisps) Kind of a weird bounce,
so you don't want that. You want it very strong. (snare rolls) And match grip. And I try to put those
on the toms. (drums beat) Okay, or play patterns
like triplet patterns and then diddle them
like this.
(drums beat) One triplet, two triplet,
three triplet, four triplet. (drums beat) So spread the doubles all over the kit and then do the same thing with the feet. Play soft. Soft, loud, soft, loud,
soft, loud. (bass drum thuds) Soft note is always on the beat. So one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. (bass drum thuds) Until you get a nice double
stroke roll. (drums pound) Then play it as 32nd notes, as 16th notes. (drums beat) Or as 16 note triplets. So one, two, three, four. One triplet, two triplet,
three triplet, four triplet. Same with the feet. One, two, three, four. (drums pound) So practice it in different
phrasings, different patterns, but these are basically double strokes. You can play them as two
different instruments. (drums beat) And create interesting pattern that way. But this is just to illustrate that a double stroke isn't just a pad exercise. It is a pattern you can
use and you will use in grooves, for example. If you check out my hands now.
Three, four. (drums beat) These are all double
stroke rolls, you know, and we use them all the time on the kit. – Yeah cool, and now you said with singles you're using mainly wrist strokes. Is that the same thing with doubles? Because I see it changing a little bit. – Well, it depends on which
surface I'm playing it. If I'm playing on slack
floor toms. (toms thud) It's all wrist stroke. (toms thud) Because there's no rebound. If I play it at a low volume and on a high-tension
drum like the snare drum, not match grip. (snare rolls) It would be a lot more
fingers. (snare rolls) But I try to avoid fingers on the kit and try to play everything
using wrist strokes.
(drums beat) – Awesome. – So the next pattern would be, we've done singles and doubles, now we'll do groups of three. The three stroke roll. The sticking is right left
right, left right left. Right left right, left right left. (snare rolls) (drums beat) It's called an open ruff,
or three stroke roll. Right left right, left right left. (drums beat) And of course you can do the
same thing with the feet. (bass drum thuds) So same pattern, same
concept, same technique. Same rudiment, played
with both hands and feet. – The challenge with
that one I know for me is going from the right lead to quickly going to the left lead. And is that something you practice a lot with all your fills? – Absolutely. And in this case, if you look
at the three stroke roll, imagine you're playing an inverted double and you add a stroke in the middle. So the inverted double sounds
like this. (sticks click) Three, four. (drums beat) The three stroke roll, so you're bouncing from right to left. (beat boxes) In the three stroke roll, you just add a hand in the middle.
So like this. Three and four and. (drums pound) And you're playing an
inverted double. (drums beat) That way for me it's easier to lead with the left hand
and bounce from right to left. Same with the feet. I'm thinking inverted double
and add a note in the middle. (bass drum thuds) – That's like a little drum hack. – It's a drum hack. There's your magic moment shortcut. Boom, there it is. – People love shortcuts. – Yes. But the three stroke
roll you can also play not as an open ruff or drag but as a closed drag using
a double and a single, as in right right left,
or left left right. (snare rolls) Here's an open. (snare rolls) Closed. (snare rolls) Okay, same goes for the feet. You can play right right
left. (bass drum thuds) Or left left right. So right ruff. (bass drum thuds) And left ruff. (bass drum thuds) In the left ruff, of course the right foot plays the
eighth note.
(bass drum thuds) The left foot plays the
ruff. (bass drum thuds) And so on. So again, same pattern. Play it with both hands and
feet and on the whole kit. – That's cool. Now did you go through
each of these patterns like you're explaining them now? Did you say one day I'm just going to work on the single strokes
and that's what you kind of focused on for a
specific amount of time and then moved to double strokes or is it kind of you
practiced a bunch of them all at the same time? – Well, I focused always on three things. If you're not sure about how
to divide your practice time, choose three things
that you are terrible at and choose your biggest weakness, the second and the third biggest weakness. Choose a weakness in
relation to your goals and then find out what you're terrible at and try to eliminate the biggest weakness. Now if that's single strokes,
choose single strokes. And then the second biggest
and the third biggest.
If you work your way down
a list of weaknesses, you end up eliminating all the weaknesses and end up with strengths at the end of, you know, a couple years of practicing. – That's cool. – A couple, many years. – (laughs) We were talking at lunch and I really think you have
so many cool insights on just practicing, developing
practice routines. I'd love to get you back
and do a whole lesson that. – Sure, absolutely. – Even if it's more behind the desk or how we structure or how
we actually spend our time. – Absolutely, yeah. – It'd be really cool. Okay, four stroke roll. – Yes, four stroke rolls. Now it can be played in two ways. Either using singles or doubles.
Using singles it's right left right left, left right left right. (snare rolls) Right left right left,
left right left right. (drums beat) I like to add maybe a bass
drum at the end of this phrase and go. (drums beat) And you can play the four stroke roll always starting with the right hand. Right left right left,
right left right left. (drums beat) But when I play from the low
side of the kit to the left, I lead with the left. (drums beat) So I go right left right
left from left to right. And left right left
right from right to left. (drums beat) So you can also play the four
stroke roll using doubles. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Do a four stroke roll. (sticks clack) (drums beat) Two bass drum. One two three four, one two three four. Or. (drums beat) And of course you can do
the same with the feet. (bass drum thuds) Or right left right left.
With an accent on the second. (drums beat) Okay, so. (bass drum thuds) Or left right left right. So. (drums beat) So always bouncing both ways. – Yeah, that's just crazy how
you can switch back and forth and it doesn't sound any
different than the lead way. – Just like with the
hands, that's the goal. The goal is to be able
to play. (snare rolls) And each one sounds exactly the same way. Because we want to condition ourselves to be able to play to the
right side of the kit using a right lead
sticking and vice versa. So. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Both sides have to be equally strong. If they're not equally strong, you're really only exploring 50 percent of your playing potential and you're always very weak at 50 percent of your playing potential. So it's really worth always
exploring the left side and same goes for hands and feet. If you play four stroke rolls
with the hands, (snare rolls) you should also go.
(bass drum thuds) (drums beat) So why not do both? – Yeah, why not. Five stroke roll. (laughs) – Here comes the five stroke roll, guys. Guess how many strokes in that? Five exactly. You can play two ways. Using singles. (snare rolls) Right left right left right, left right left right left. Right left right left right, uh uh uh uh uh. (snare rolls) You can do the same thing with
the feet. (bass drum pounds) But you can also apply that on the kit and for example play right left right left right. Left right left right left. (drums beat) It's a cool little fill. (drums beat) And it's just a basic five stroke roll. And you can also use it or play it closed using doubles. Right right left left right. Left left right right left. (snare rolls) And same goes of course for the feet. Right right left left
right. (bass drum thuds) So you can play and you can practice all these patterns in unison. Maybe hands and feet together. Soft hands. (drums beat) You know? And save a lot of time that way.
– Yeah. – Because a lot of drummers are just practicing hands,
you know? (snare rolls) And then feet. (bass drum thuds) Why not at the same time? (drums beat) And of course as doubles,
you can use it on the kit, crashing on the quarter note. (drums beat) Those are all five stroke rolls. – Yeah, and as far as the note value you're choosing to orchestrate it in, how conscious of that are
you when you're playing? – Very conscious. Because I play them sometimes
as 32nd notes, like this. Three and four and. (snare rolls) So using four 32nd notes
too, and one eighth note. (snare rolls) Sometimes I
play them as 16 note triplets, not playing the second 16 note triplet.
So. (snare rolls) So I'm always very much
aware of the phrasing and how I use them, how I play them, and same goes for the feet of course. So yeah, be aware of that
and I also like to play them in completely different
phrasings and timetables, like for example, the five stroke roll but in a quarter note pattern
layer over a four four bar. For example, three and four. (drums beat) You know? – Cool, that' really really cool.
Okay, six stroke. – Six stroke. Guess how many strokes
in that? (Jared laughs) So we can play this again two ways: using 16th notes and 32nd notes like this. Three and four and. (snare rolls) Leading with the right hand or
with the left. (snare rolls) And I like to put the two
16th notes on the tom. (drums beat) Or on two crashes with
kick drums. (drums beat) Or just on one tom. (drums beat) And of course I like to
play it with the feet. (bass drum pounds) And when you practice it with the feet, or with the hands, always
practice it in all positions. So starting on the 16th note or starting on the 32nd note. For example, three, four. (drums beat) So starting in both positions. – [Jared] Yeah. – Do the same with the hands. Three, four. (snare rolls) (drums beat) And then of course you can play the six stroke roll using doubles. (snare rolls) (drums beat) And you can phrase it
as 16th note triplets.
But here it is first with
the feet. (bass drum pounds) So it's right right left left right right. And I like to also phrase
it as 16th note triplets, which makes it almost
like a paradiddle diddle. So I'll play. (drums beat) And then you can put the
two accents on cymbals. (drums beat) And of course you can
play the same pattern again with the feet. (bass drum pounds) But as a paradiddle diddle. You're now on two different sounds. (drums beat) So an interesting pattern, very useful, and we'll revisit that when we manage to get to the paradiddle diddles. – This is the most fast-paced
and intense but amazing– – Good! (claps) – Amazing lesson ever. It's very cool. – It's value for money, I'm telling you.
– (laughs) Yeah. This is great, man. – Sorry you guys can't tell
me if we're going too fast. – Well they can, but we're
just going to have to watch it 10 times each so
it's all good. (laughs) Okay, so let's keep going. We got seven stroke roll. – Seven stroke roll. – How many strokes is that? – Uh. So right left right left right left right. Left right left right left right left. One two three four five six seven, one two three four five six seven. Right left right left right left right. (snare rolls) Same with the footsies. (bass drum thuds) Please make sure you
always play dynamically. The bass drum is the largest
drum of the drum set. It deserves to be played
dynamically as well, so make sure you're
playing with nice accents just like with the hands. (snare rolls) With the feet. (bass drum thuds) Okay, and the seven stroke roll
with the hands for example, a good application is to play one two three four five six seven, one two three four five
six seven.
(toms thud) So you play two notes per drum and end on the floor tom and then two notes per drum
starting on the floor tom playing up the kit,
leading with the left hand. (drums beat) You know? So they're very useful just
like the five stroke roll. (drums beat) And seven. So a good way to get
around the kit very quickly and another example for
an applied rudiment. – Nice, great. Okay then, flams. – Flammage. Alternating flams. (snare rolls) Of course you know what a flam is. You have a full stroke and
a transitional stroke, so. And then same with the
right hand. (snare rolls) Practice flams individually first just with the snare and then
put the accent on a tom. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Choose little patterns
like high tom, middle tom. (drums beat) Or floor tom and high tom. Then a snare drum and
middle tom. (drums beat) And then do the same with
the feet. (bass drum pounds) Left flam. Right flam. You know? So I'm playing heel down
with the right foot, then with the left foot.
(bass drum thuds) It happens very quickly. It's very similar to what
we played earlier, the ruff. You know, where also we
use different techniques with each foot or with the hands. Here I use a finger
stroke with my right hand, a very soft tap with the right hand and a loud wrist stroke with the left. Same with the feet. I use a full stomp with the
left foot, a full stomp, and I use a heel down
stroke with the right foot. (bass drum thuds) We always switch techniques when we play. That's why it's important
to practice each technique with the hands for example,
finger control technique. It's just fingers, no wrist. Wrist strokes. Gladstone, where you
use also just fingers. So we use different techniques
for different things.
Same goes for the feet. We use stomps. The whole leg is involved. (thuds) For loud strokes, then
heel down for soft strokes. And then combinations. (drums beat) So we can play dynamically. And the flam is a
typical example for that. Another applied rudiment here. Soft stroke, loud stroke. (drums beat) So it's a great fill. (drums beat) So it's a very powerful, quite aggressive kind of stroke. – Yeah. Okay, Swiss triplets. – Swiss tripletges. So there's two ways. You can lead with the right
hand or the left hand. Imagine you're playing a shuffle. One two three four. (cymbal chimes) Which is the first and last of a triplet. One trip-let, two trip-let,
three trip-let four. That's the right hand. (drums beat) The left hand plays the
first and second triplet. Three, four. (drums beat) Then you can invert it and play two, three, four. The inversion. You can use that as a fill on the kit putting one hand on the tom toms. (drums beat) Or the inversion. (drums beat) You can also split each hand
over two different drums.
For example, just the
right hand on two toms. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Leading with the left
hand, or. (drums beat) So you can also put the right hand and double it with the
bass drums. (drums beat) And of course you can play
the same thing with the feet. (drums beat) And play beats like in a shuffle feel. Or you can play it in 16th notes. And create beats using Swiss triplets. You can play it in two instruments. Again, many options, and another bunch of fun
applications of simple rudiments. – Yeah.
– Swiss triplets. – That's crazy, man. It's crazy all the stuff and how you can just transfer from the hands to the feet.
Within many different note values. I find that fascinating. You must have just practiced
this stuff an insane amount. – I never had any friends
as a child. (Jared laughs) I had no television, no bicycle. – Was there Internet
when you were a child? – (blows raspberry) What's the interwebs? I don't know. – That's probably how you got so good. It's because you had no
Internet to distract you.
– There was no Internet, no. There was absolutely no Internet. – Okay, one more thing I want to discuss that you call mixed stickings. – Yes. Mixed stickings. Of course that means combinations
of singles and doubles and the singles and doubles are like a binary code in drumming. Like one's and zeros in
computer programming. You can program anything
out of singles and doubles. So the most basic mixed sticking would be one single, one double. (drums beat) Like right left left. (drums beat) And I used to practice not like this but actually put one hand on the hi-hat. (drums beat) The left version, so. (drums beat) And of course you can do the
same thing with the feet. (bass drum thuds) And of course also the inversion, not just right left left right. Also. (bass drum thuds) That way you can step on
two pedals for example.
And play interesting patterns. Another great mixed sticking is of course the paradiddle, which is two singles and one double. Right left right right
left right left left. (snare rolls) And I love the paradiddle because there's so many things you can do with it. With the hands, you
can just orchestrate it on the toms for example. Paradiddle, paradiddle. (drums beat) Or. (drums beat) Or you can play for example, put a crash on the accent. (drums beat) And then put the RA on a tom tom. Crash, RA, diddle,
crash, RA, snare, snare. (drums beat) Or put the diddle on a tom tom.
Crash, RA, diddle, crash, RA, diddle. (drums beat) Or you can play paradiddle,
crash crash diddle. Crash crash diddles, so. (drums beat) So all paradiddle, and of course
you can play with the feet. (bass drum beats) With accents, stomp. Heel down, heel down, heel down, stomp. (bass drum thuds) And then play different
sounds for example. (drums beat) Again, such a cool thing. A paradiddle can also be
just a groove.
(drums beat) You know Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song? – [Jared] Yeah. (sings Immigrant Song) (drums beat) – It can be a paradiddle. (drums beat) – Awesome. – You know, so yeah. – Man, I hope that's enough
for you guys to practice for the next– – Probably not. It always goes on. – When someone watches this video, and I know I'm so inspired
so I can't imagine how everyone else feels
but I'm sure they feel very much the same way. – I sure hope so, I hope so. – What do we do? We choose one of those three weaknesses? – Yeah, and the reason why I'm blasting through all of these very quickly and I'm fully aware of that, is I just want to give you the basic idea. The idea is that you
don't look at rudiments like they're some sort of pad exercise and some stale, boring,
sterile little sticking pattern that you practice on your
snare drum rubber pad and then you go and play music, no.
There is nothing that
you can play on the drums that does not exist in
the form of rudiment. There is nothing. So whatever you try and play at home, go and play anything you want. Everything you will play I can break down into some sort of a rudiment. There's nothing you can
play on the drum set that does not exist as
some sort of rudiment. Single strokes, you know, unison strokes, flat flams, you know, any kind of flam thing. Nothing. So it's a good idea to work with rudiments and to apply them on the drum set. Because that way it's like the alphabet.
If there's many words you
don't understand in a story, it's maybe because you're not
able to read all the letters. You don't understand
the individual syllables that make up the words
that make up the sentences that make up the story. It's the same with rudiments. Break it down into
small, manageable bites. You know, three stroke. (snare rolls) And take this idea: right left right, left right left, and orchestrate it. (drums beat) Or in many other ways. You can go so many
different ways. (drums beat) It's still the same thing. And I can play each rudiment in like 7000 different ways on the kit with all these combinations
of sounds and drums and it's very easy once
you know the rudiment.
– Yeah. – And you look at all these
different variations of it and you go wow, that's so much stuff. I can never practice that much. It's like, nope. It's one thing that I
play in 17 different ways. – [Jared] Yeah. – So it's a good idea to get
down and dirty with the basics. Singles, apply them, use
them, orchestrate them. Doubles, use them, you know? (drums beat) Don't be afraid to think
outside of the box. You can take a double and
play it on two instruments. Steve Gadd. (drums beat) You know? Or play doubles on two toms,
two drums. (drums beat) And cymbals and snares. (drums beat) So it's all the same thing
played in different ways and that's what I want to get across. There's a lot of stuff but really, there's only eight things that we did. Singles, doubles, three,
four, five, six, seven. So not that much stuff, just many different possible applications.
– Yeah, awesome. Well thank you very, very much. We're going to get to some playing. You're going to do a
little solo and a song but before you get to
that I just wanted to remind you guys if you have
any questions for Thomas, now's the time to get them in. There's a submit a question
box right below this video if you are watching it live so go ahead and submit
your question to there. We will not be able to get to
all of them, unfortunately, just because the amount
of people online watching and I told Thomas we would
be here literally forever if we decided to stick through
the questions. (laughs) So get your questions in now and then right when he's
done playing the song we can get into some of those, alright? – Okay, here's a song. I'll play a little solo which I will try to create out of a
lot of rudimental stuff that I just showed you and you will find all of these ideas somehow
wrapped into this little solo and I'll play a song
from my Yumaflex project called Resolution.
(drums beat) (rock music) – That was so good, man. You got a text there
during the song. (laughs) – Yeah, I got a text
there, sorry. (laughs) – It's alright. It's live, that's the way it is. You guys got to see everything. – There you go. (both laugh) – Okay. You get dried off and I'll
fire a couple questions. – Okay. – This one's from Joey Woodjeck. He says hey Mr. Lang, first of all. – Hey Joey. – Great inspiration for me. Do you still have time to practice and if so, what are you
working on right now? – Well, thank you Joey, and I don't really have
time to practice regularly unfortunately but I do try
to practice occasionally and I'm working on a
lot of conceptual stuff. I'm working on a lot of independence and how to apply more complex independence in groove-based context.
So I'm practicing things,
again, applied concepts. Applied rudiments. A lot of coordination
and independence patterns sound really weird when you
play them with hands and feet. I try to work on patterns and try to experiment with things
that sound cool and groovy and push drumming forward
also on a technical level in a very groove and beat-driven context. – Yeah. – That's what I'm working on. – Cool. This one's from PattyNZ. He had a few questions but
I'm just going to ask one because we have a lot to get through.
He asks, what is the
best advice or guidance you can give to help
develop my independence and double bass? That's a loaded question. – Well, independence,
there's a lot of great books. Four Way Coordination,
Independence by Dante Agostini, and of course, New Breed
Groove Independence and a book called Advanced
Techniques for the Modern Drummer by Jim Chapin. Practice those. I also released a DVD
called Creative Coordination and Advanced Foot Techniques. There's a lot of independence
exercises in that. And in order to work on
your double bass drum, practice rudiments. The same patterns I just
showed you. (drums beat) Five stroke. (drums beat) Any kind of snare drum
exercise. (snare rolls) The feet. (drums beat) So basically, take your snare drum book and practice it with the feet. – (laughs) This is from
Too Poor To See Forward. Can you give any advice
to drummers who would like to pursue drumming professionally, like a studio session
drummer, touring drummer, or work for hire? – Any advice?
– Yes.
– Focus on the essence of
what drumming's all about. Great, solid time, good
feel, and good sound. So all the technical stuff
we're discussing here, this is just me from drummer to drummers because we want to be able
to play with more ease. That's why we practice technique. But really the essence
of what it's all about is playing time, playing
beats. (drums beat) Just very simple basic time exercises. Groove, feel. If you're a solid drummer who's confident in his own ability, who has great feel, great sound, really consistent time and a good feel, then other musicians will
want to play with you and that'll help you slowly
stumble up the ladder and have a career in music. – Cool. Rodney Crudenpowell says hey Thomas, I was just wondering how many hours a day you would practice when you were younger, as in before you became professional. – As many as possible, as many as I could squeeze in besides everything else that I had to do. A basic guideline: the
more you practice per day, the sooner you will reach your goal of being at a high, professional level.
I'm sure you know the
10 thousand hour rule. If not, Google it. It says very simply, you have to spend at
least 10 thousand hours in any area of expertise to
reach a professional level. So that's about four
hours for seven years. So practice for four hours for seven years and you get a very, very
high level of playing. – Yeah. This one's from Frederick. He says, so for wrist doubles, your downstroke comes from the elbow arm and the upstroke from the wrist? He says awesome lesson. – Elbow and arm? – So your downstroke comes
from the elbow and arm and the upstroke comes from the wrist? Is that what you– – Upstroke from the wrist. – The question happened when
you were discussing doubles, so I don't– – Oh, I see. Yes. For the doubles, I see. Yes. Well, the accent is actually the and. One and two and three and four and. So the downstroke is not the loud stroke, it's not the downstroke. So. (bass drum thuds) Here's the time.
Four. (cymbals chime) If I play 16th notes the loud stroke is on the E and ah, so
it's a finger stroke, just a light tap, and then a wrist stroke. Finger, wrist. (drums beat) And so it's fingers and wrist. There's no elbow
involvement at that volume. And the faster you get, the less involvement of
the arms and forearms. So if it's a fast double stroke roll, it's really just fingers and wrist. If I slow it down, the right hand– which camera is good for the hand? (cymbal crashes) So I'll
play one finger stroke and one wrist stroke. You can see my finger's facing
up for the finger stroke and my hand is turning
for the second stroke. Soft, loud.
Soft, loud. (cymbal crashes) Finger, wrist. (snare rolls) And on the wrist stroke I play a rim shot or a loud note. (drums beat) It's great for shuffle. And it's basically I
do it with both hands. And this is very similar
to the Gladstone technique, which is a push and pull technique. Or here the right hand
with the other camera. Push pull, push pull. Now here's only when I play double strokes I only use two of those. Push pull. – Cool.
This is from Chris Forunki. He says hi Thomas. When I was on tour in the UK I came across a rare solo album of
yours from the mid-90's. I think you were doing lead vocals and someone else might
have been on the drum kit. – It was me too. – Could you tell us more
about this side to your career and do you plan on doing
another album as a frontman? – The odds is no. (Jared laughs) Yes I was singing and I was a frontman and making records like that in the 90's. And it was fun and I do
still make a lot of records and write music and play
and sometimes also sing and perform, but more
anonymous than back then, so I have no plans to
become a frontman again.
I'm very happy where I am on stage. But I very much do enjoy
writing and producing music which I do a lot of. But I don't try to sell
it as a frontman anymore. I don't fit into the silver
suits from back then anymore. – So you don't want to plug the
album name or the band name? (laughs) – No. (laughs) No, it's under my own name actually. I released various albums
and singles and stuff and some were actually
very successful in Europe and I had some hits back in the day and some great guests singing on my albums and collaborations with people. Many chart songs.
But I'm not trying to
be the pop star anymore. But it's great that you found. I don't know which one that is, but yeah, there's various albums out there. – That's cool. – From that era. – Okay, two more questions. This one's from John MC. He says, what do you
suggest for practicing many of these exercises for those of us without a double bass? – Well, all of these
exercises can be played on a single bass drum
and hi-hat, you know. The double stroke for example, you take a single stroke roll, and you replace one hand
with one foot. (drums beat) Or doubles. (drums beat) You can break any rudiment
down between the hands or one hand and the foot,
you know? (drums beat) Or a paradiddle. (drums beat) And all of the double bass drum exercises you can play on the
hi-hat and the bass drum. You can play a group of
three like this. (drums beat) Or a paradiddle. (drums beat) So all of these patterns,
flams. (drums beat) All of these patterns work also on two different sounds with the feet. You don't need a double bass drum pedal.
What I teach here is foot technique, not double bass drum playing, okay? So everything we do with the feet we can do in any
pedal-operated instrument. Not just double bass drums. Just like with the hands. I don't teach snare drum technique. I teach hand technique which
we can play on all surfaces. Same goes for the feet. If you only have one pedal,
just work that foot really well. Work triplet strokes,
you know. (drums beat) Not just in doubles,
not just. (drums beat) And groups of three and
faster patterns with the feet so you're good to go. – Cool. Last one's from Seaquaria. They say, when I usually play heel down, my foot tends to go forward in the pedal.
How do you avoid that? – When you play heel down, you slide forward. What I do is if you look at my right foot, I anchor my heel very slightly against the heel plate like so. I put a little bit of pressure and wait for my leg on that heel plate which is kind of serrated, rough aluminum, and I leave most of
the weight and emphasis of pressure-wise on the heel plate. So my foot is literally anchored against the floor like this and I just tap very lightly
with the front of my foot. The weight always remains at the heel and the pressure, very light pressure, it's always from the heel.
(drums beat) Soft rudimental stuff. There's always a little bit
of pressure on the heel. (drums beat) So if I anchor it against that heel plate, I just simply can't slide
forward with my foot. – Cool, awesome. Well thank you so much for coming out. – Thank you. – Shake your hand again. It's been awesome. – Thank you Jared, thank
you very much guys. – For those of you who don't
know what we do at Drumeo, you can go ahead and check it out. Drumeo.com/trial. We're actually filming
some lessons tomorrow exclusively for people
in the members area, so give it a try. Also, make sure you guys check out all the stuff Thomas has going on. BigDrumBonanza.com,
ThomasLangBootCamp.com, and then muso-mart.com. You can kind of follow
everything that he's got on. You do so much stuff. – I do, I'm very lucky. And thank you everybody out
there for all your support and thank you Jared for having
me here and inviting me.
It's a real pleasure and honor to be here. You've got a really
amazing studio and place so it's a real honor. And thank you guys for watching and check in with the other
exercises we're filming tomorrow. And hope to see you next time. – Yeah, and one more thing. I just want to thank DW and
Meinl sent some cymbals, Vic Firth and Remo sent
some heads as well. So make sure you guys
check those companies out. – Meinl, DW, thank you very much. Shall I play another song? – Yes, the last song is
Chainsaw Serenade by Stork. – Exactly, Stork is
again one of my projects and we released an album last year and this is a song off the latest album called Chainsaw Serenade. Again, it's kind of a tricky one. It's a little heavier,
but also in odd signatures like the previous song I played.
I like to play in odd times. Here we go, Chainsaw Serenade. (metal music) ♪ Stain steel heart ♪ ♪ Plastic smile ♪ ♪ Falling apart ♪ ♪ Days defile ♪ ♪ Clutch ♪ ♪ Choke ♪ ♪ Clutch ♪ ♪ Choke ♪ ♪ Leads to clutch, leads to choke ♪ ♪ Creeping ♪ ♪ Corpse ♪ ♪ Mass death ♪ ♪ Light ♪ ♪ Take my ♪ ♪ Voice ♪ ♪ Or my sight ♪ ♪ Sweeping ♪ ♪ Corpse ♪ ♪ Rips through ♪ ♪ Night ♪ ♪ Eerie ♪ ♪ Form ♪ ♪ Hit by ♪ ♪ Light ♪ ♪ Stain steel heart ♪ ♪ Plastic smile ♪ ♪ Falling apart ♪ ♪ Days defile ♪ ♪ Clutch ♪ ♪ Choke ♪ ♪ Clutch ♪ ♪ Choke ♪ ♪ Leads to clutch, leads to choke ♪ ♪ Rusted ♪ ♪ Rain ♪ ♪ Leaves me ♪ ♪ Dry ♪ ♪ Oil the ♪ ♪ Pain ♪ ♪ Engines ♪ ♪ Fry ♪ ♪ Burning ♪ ♪ Bones ♪ ♪ Horror ♪ ♪ In my head like a hammer ♪ ♪ Nail my head to the floor ♪ ♪ Build yourself a martyr ♪ ♪ Call yourself a hero ♪ ♪ Chainsaw serenade in my ears ♪ ♪ Soundtrack to our rival fears ♪ ♪ Stain steel heart ♪ ♪ Plastic smile corpse ♪ ♪ Falling apart ♪ ♪ Chainsaw days defiled ♪ ♪ Corpse stain steel heart ♪ ♪ Chainsaw plastic smile ♪ ♪ Corpse ♪ ♪ Falling apart ♪ ♪ Chainsaw days defile ♪ ♪ Corpse ♪ (rock music)