(applause) – Well done, Tosin. – Thank you. – Very cool. Hey welcome everyone,
welcome to Drumeo Edge. I'm Dave Atkinson
and I'm here with a special guest,
Tosin Aribisala. – Yeah. – Tosin, thank you so
much for coming out. – Thank you for having me. – Absolutely. You guys are in for a real
treat with today's lesson. Tosin is an
incredible drummer as you just heard, but
what's really cool about this is very
creative beats that you're playing
in there, and if you guys liked what
you just heard there, we're gonna be teaching
that in this lesson, so stick around,
we've got a full PDF for you to download, Tosin's gonna be playing some more music for us as well, so
there's a lot gonna be happening and it's gonna
be a really cool lesson.
But before I get
into that, let me just introduce
Tosin, if you guys haven't heard of Tosin before, he's originally from Nigeria. – Yeah. – Been living in Washington
DC now for the last 16 years. – 16 years. – Or so, very cool. Been playing drums
most of his life, actually you won an
award in Nigeria, best drummer in Nigeria in '95. That's very cool. – Yeah, yeah, long time ago. – Since then he's
gone on to play and perform with Femi
Kuti, you've recorded albums with Spyro
Gyra, he performed at PASIC 2006, he is known as The Groove Man, his nickname is T Groove and you
can clearly see why. – Yeah. – Very cool man. – Yeah, thanks. – And Jared and I
actually had the honor of going to PASIC in 2016 and we both watched a clinic by Tosin, we both
looked at each other and we're like man, we gotta get this guy out on
Drumeo, not because of your share of
skill and talent, but the creative
edge that you bring to drumming, it's
something that I don't hear a lot of, and I know members, and myself
included, were always looking to build our
creativity, find ways to expand our horizons
besides just rock.
– That's right. – I really am looking
forward to this lesson. Huge thanks to your
sponsors Evans, Vic Firth, Sabian
Cymbals for helping bring you out for
this lesson, and if you guys wanna
follow Tosin online you can check him out
at TosinBeats.com. That's T-O-S-I-N Beats.com. Or you can follow
him on social media, Instagram and Facebook
is @TosinBeats. – Yeah. – Am I missing anything man? – Everything's cool. – Everything's cool? – Yeah. – Well then I'll
stop talking and I'll let this guy do his thing. Again, if you guys are watching for the first time,
welcome to Drumeo, we do a lot of this
stuff every day in Drumeo Edge, so
make sure you check it out because
we're also gonna be filming a full Q&A
with him tomorrow as well as a course
that's diving into Afrobeats even
further than this. – Yes. – Enough of me man, I'll
let you take it away.
– All right, yeah,
thanks for the awesome introduction
and I'm glad to be here to, I
always say that the drumming community is
a sharing community. – Yeah. – We drum as we learn
from each other. I learn from up and
coming drummers, I learn from intermediate
level players, and up to the pro
players out there. Everybody has
something to offer, something to give,
and we just blend that energy together and
create something deep. Today I'll be talking about some African beats, some
Afrobeat drumming, and some other variations
of the Afrobeat drumming like the music
that I just played.
That was some Afrobeat groove. – Cool. – Fused with some
jazzy interpretations. Jazz fusion
interpretation of it. And vocals and horns
and things like that. I'm gonna be
breaking things down, giving you pieces of
the beats, pieces of the beats from bass
drum to, because we have four limbs to
work with, so when I sit on the drums,
I look at the whole drum like okay, what can I achieve here
with my four limbs? Because I didn't
start off playing drums this way, I
started out playing the hand drum, and I was only using two of my four limbs. Just using the hands, no sticks, just pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, like
(mumbles) all those things. – [Dave] Sure, yeah. – When I discovered
the drum set, I figured wow, how am I gonna be able to play all
of this, one person with five or six or seven drums? So I figured okay, I have
to learn from scratch. I started putting
things together, for instance I told you a story of how I put together the drums. – That's right. – The traditional drum, I didn't have access to
drum set back then, so I had some
African tribal drums, the bongos, I used the
bongos to mimic the mounted toms, and I used
the shekere as the…
– As hi-hats.
– As hi-hats. – No way. – Just to get that little
tiny sound together. Eventually I was able
to take drum lessons and then started
playing drums and listening to jazz,
all kinds of music and putting everything together. Afrobeat started out in Nigeria. The pioneer was
Fela Kuti and the drummer that played
with Fela Kuti back then that
originated, created all this groove with
Fela back then was Tony Allen who now
lives in France. So he came up with
all these beats when Fela was forming his music, his musical direction back then in the 60s/70s, so yeah, so I'm gonna give you some examples.
– Very cool. – All right. – Be sure to download the PDF, everyone who's watching live. – All right, so gonna play the first one, putting
everything together. Between the bass drum,
snare drum, and the hi-hats. Usually in Afrobeat
the snare drum doesn't display a
straight or one note per measure or
something like that. In funk you have
one note on the two, one note on the
four, two and four. (rhythmic drumming) The snare drum is
always busier than that. And the bass drum is always
busier too, playing like two consecutive 16th notes
at the same time, so like. (loud thumping) One, two, three, four.
(rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) Something like that. – It's just so different. – Yeah, yeah. The snare drum is
always talking, interacting with the bass drum. Do do, da da da,
do do do, da da da. All those 16th notes
all coming together. I'm gonna play this
second one here which is somewhat close to this. And mind you, you don't have to limit yourself to the
hi-hat for, to back up what the bass drum and
the snare drum are doing.
You can always go to
the right, for instance. (rhythmic drumming) For the second example,
I'm gonna change the hi-hat rhythm a
little bit, so instead of just playing the ostinato. So this time I was going. And a little swung, so it's
not just so straight forward. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) (hi-hat accompaniment) – Cool, so these
are, if you look on the page, these are
number 4A and 4B, but the cool thing about them is you're gonna break
them all down for us. – Yeah, yeah.
– So why don't we
start at the very top and show us how you can
build into these grooves. – Okay, so I'm
gonna start off with the bass drum and simply playing the two consecutive 16th notes on one and three,
the down beats. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Other variations of
these on example B is one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four. Yup, and for the snare
drum, like I said earlier, the snare drum is
always playing a combination of two consecutive
16th notes and three. 16th are combined
together, you can just place them rhythmically. – Before you get into
that too, there's also a couple other
exercises on this page. You guys are gonna
notice there's other examples that you
can try on your own, we don't have time
to explain every single B, C, D,
E, and all sorts, but we're gonna talk
about the main ones, a couple of the examples,
and then you guys can apply this to other
sections on the page.
So you got your foot
going on the bass at 16th, now it's on A
and B, number one A and B. Now we're on to number two,
so the snare drum variations. – Yeah, so this is the one with the combination of the
three 16th note groupings. – Yes. – So one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Right? So the next one, the
B, will be coming in on the four, so one,
two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four.
Now I'm gonna put
it all together– – Now I'm noticing
when you're doing that, you're basically practicing
with your left hand. – Yeah. – Only with your left hand. – Only with my left hand. So the left hand, yeah,
the left hand usually only plays the groove
on the snare drum. Except you are left-handed,
I'm actually left-handed. – No way. – Yeah, but I trained to
play the right hand way. – No kidding. – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. – We'll have to talk about that towards the end 'cause I'm sure there's a lot of questions that are gonna be there for that. So we got the hi-hat, or so we got the snare and the bass drum.
What are you doing
with your hi-hats? – The hi-hats, it's the ostinato with the groupings
of three 16th notes, so one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one hat, two hat,
three hat, four hat, one hat, two hat,
three hat, four hat. Sometimes what we
do, when you play an Afrobeat is to give the music some more push, to
give it that metronomic feel, to give it
that steady feel. You open the hi-hat and the
clave does the same thing.
It's just that the clave
plays it differently. The clave plays a
steady quarter note with the double,
the two 16th notes, two consecutive 16th
notes together, like. (rhythmic drumming) One, two, so on the
hi-hat you combine that with the hi-hat and you go. (hi-hat accompaniment) One, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four. All right, so that's
for the hi-hat, and of course the right
does the same thing. Playing that ostinato feel. (rhythmic drumming) – So let's put this
together, and you kinda just did it
there, let's throw it from number 4A on screen,
so 4A is basically an example of 1A, 2A, and 3A
put together, let's hear it.
– All right, so one,
two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) – Cool. – Cool. – Very cool, so the
first half had a little bit of a different
snare pattern to that. – Yeah. – Yeah. – Yeah. – Sounds awesome though. – Thanks. – How would you develop that? Would you literally go through each step of the way, would you put any notes on
top of each other before you put
them all together? – Yeah, what I'll
say is you can go step by step by
playing the bass drum, especially if you're new to this type of playing, to this type of music, and you're trying to get everything together, work on the bass drum separately,
snare drum, hi-hat separately, once you get an understanding of what each of the drum pattern
are doing, then you can combine them
together, so I'll say step one is to play
each part separately.
Step two is to
combine two parts, for instance bass drum and the snare drum, and then the third part which is the
hi-hat, and then you can always,
the variation of it is to move between
hi-hat and ride. And it's the music,
the composition of the music would
determine what pattern you use, especially in Afrobeat when the horns come in, the drummer switches
to the ride. – [Dave] Yeah. – Yeah, to give
you a full sound. – [Dave] Makes sense. – Yeah. – Let's start with
number 4A, just burn that one a little
bit more with us, I think it's such
a cool beat and maybe just go to
the ride back to the hi-hats, we can
get a good feel for it.
– All right. – Yeah. – All right. One, two, three. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) (hi-hat accompaniment) Now this is extended
into something very
very polyrhythmic. – Yeah. – Whereby you're splashing the
hi-hat with your left foot. One, two, three,
four, one, two, three, and then the off
beat on the bell. One, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) Has a swing feel to it. – Yeah yeah yeah. What I like about this
too is that with rock and most pop music you're really looking for a back beat, like an accented two and
four, and you already kinda mentioned
this, but with this, what I notice with
your playing is that all the notes
you're playing on the snare are
at the same volume. – Yeah. – They're not going
up, they're not going down, there's
no accent there, and it creates this really cool perpetual motion, I
guess you can say.
– And very relaxed. – Yeah. – Yeah. Let's do number 4B, let's throw that one screen, this
is another variation of the groove that
you guys can practice. – All right. – Using the open hi-hats. – Okay, so for this
one the bass drum shifts a little bit,
so we still have, because one of the
fundamentals of Afrobeat is to have that two consecutive
16th notes somewhere. It could be on the down
beat, on the up beat, or something, but
here we only have the occurring on beat one,
so one, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) (hi-hat accompaniment) Yeah. – Love it man. – Cool. – Very cool. – Yeah. – Let's move onto
the next one, 4C. – All right, so now
this, on the 4C, it's a combination
of quarter notes on the bass drum and
the two consecutive 16th notes on the two and four, so that gives us one,
two, three, four, so one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, this is
usually in off beat. Where you speed things
up, so one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four.
(loud thumping) (hi-hat accompaniment) (laughter) – Cool, you got a
lot of space there when you're not
playing your snare and you throw some
extra toms there. – Yeah. – Gives it a really
cool feel to it. – Exactly, it makes
it sound full. – Yeah, yeah, totally. – The fullness of groove. – The fullness of groove. (laughter) We talked a little
bit about that, maybe we can get
to that at the end. – Oh yeah. – But let's move on
to the next page. You guys, there are a
couple other grooves on that sheet that
I would recommend you give a try, but
in essence of time we're gonna move
on to the next page 'cause we got some more
feels to talk about. – Oh yeah, oh yeah. Here we have, now
it is a shift from, we're talking about
African beats, there's a shift from Afrobeats,
and this is more from East Africa, between
East and West Africa. – [Dave] Okay. – Yeah, this is Makossa.
– [Dave] Makossa. – Yeah, so it's common
in Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and
other parts of Africa. – Cool. – So this is a very
pop oriented groove. Even in disco, disco
music, pop house music, you hear the same pause of the bass drum which is
far on the bass drum. Four quarter notes, so the beat, so that gives us
un, do, tra, cah. (loud thumping) Only upbeats, dance music. – Yeah. – 'Cause people want to
dance, they want to groove. – That's universal, am I right, more cultural, yeah, big time.
– Yeah, yeah.
That's why they
call it common-time. – Yes. – So everybody can count
one two three four. – I hope so, yeah. – Yeah. Yeah, so basically
one two three four on the bass drum, this is very very easy peasy,
you know, and I'll go and play the snare drum. On this one you can use either the snare drum on the head,
or the rim click for this. – [Dave] Okay. – So the snare drum pattern is basically one, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming) Yeah, or on the… – [Dave] Cross stick? – Cross stick, yeah, so
one, two, three, four. (rhythmic tapping)
(loud thumping) Yeah. Putting this together
with the hi-hat, before that, the
hi-hat varies also. The hi-hat is similar, the first hi-hat variation
for this is similar to that of the Afrobeat
pattern I just played.
The three groupings,
the ostinatos. One, two, three, go. One, two, three,
four, one, two, three. So. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) And on the B, example B
for the hi-hat patterns, that's one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) Let me now put all
of this together. – Sure, yeah, let's
hear how it sounds. – Put this together. – So with just taking
the snare example from 2A and the hi-hat
example from 3A.
– Okay, yeah, so we go
and have it this way. One, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) – Do you wanna show
up B, the hi-hat pattern for B with
that in there? – Yeah, all right, so. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) Yeah. – Very cool, now you
also were talking about 2B, you have
a different example for your cross stick
pattern on there, do you wanna show us that too? – Yeah, yeah, all right, so. One, two, three, four. (rhythmic tapping) (loud thumping) Now I'm gonna have the hi-hat on 3A and 3B respectively.
– Okay, let's hear it. – On this, so one,
two, three, four. (rhythmic tapping)
(loud thumping) 3B hi-hat, two, three, four. (chuckling) – I can just see
it in you, you just wanna bust out into
something more than that. – Yeah. – Very cool. Again guys, check out
the PDF, there's a lot more examples there
where you can put them together, there's a
couple more snares cross stick examples
and hi-hat variations. It's got almost a soul
calypso kinda feel to it. – Yeah. – Yeah, I like that. – It's got that feel to it, and
a little bit of reggae tone. – Yeah, I can see that. – Yeah, especially
the first example on the snare drum,
2A, yeah, that's got some reggae tone feel to it. – Very cool. (rhythmic drumming) (laughter) – Yeah. – Cool man, let's move
on to the next page. – All right. – So what is this
kind of a feel? – This here is another variation of the makossa style of music. – Yeah. – That's popular in the
countries I just mentioned.
Cameroon, Ivory
Coast, Congo, and some other parts of West
and East Africa. Clap, clap, clap, hit,
actually this here is now very common, very very
common, in Nigeria now. – [Dave] Okay. – In West Africa, we call it Afrobeats, with
the S at the back. – [Dave] Afrobeats. – At the back of the T. Original Afrobeat
is just Afrobeat. – [Dave] Yeah. – And now we have
Afrobeats which is becoming very popular among DJs and they play at parties, they play everywhere,
it's very popular now. Making use of, it's almost like the Afro-Cuban clave pattern. – Gotcha. – But we use it on
the snare, we use it on the cross stick,
and rock with it. – Let's hear it. – Yeah, all right,
so here snare drum, snare drum A, yeah, so
one, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming) Yeah.
– Very cool. – Cool. – Now what's the
difference between A and B? 'Cause B looks a
little bit shorter. – Yeah, the B is
shorter because you can use your creativity
for the rest of the space that you
have here on the B. Yeah, you don't have to
play everything, so you do. (rhythmic drumming) You can use a tom for a feel. – Gotcha. – Yeah, a rhythmic feel
as you play along that. I'll just play that
just so guys can have an idea of what
I'm talking about. You have something like
this, one, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming) (loud thumping) Yes. – Sweet. So the main thing is just to get that first half
there and improvise. – And improvise, yeah, yeah. – What about the hi-hat pattern? – The hi-hat rhythm,
okay, the difference between this and what
I've played before, it's still an ostinato
pattern, but you accent the last two 16th note on
each quarter note, so one, two, three, and four,
one, two, three, four. Yeah, and sometimes
the snare drum and the hi-hats do play the same thing.
The same clave pattern. Tap tap tap, tap tap,
so tap tap tap, tap tap. (rhythmic drumming) (loud thumping) – Very cool, so that
was 2A and 2B, two great examples, let's throw
it all together now. – All right. And of course with a bass drum keeping the steady four beats. One, two, three, four. (loud thumping) (rhythmic drumming) So now we're playing two. – Very cool. – Cool. – Yeah. What about the
next one, number B? – Number B, all right. – Or letter B, I
guess it would be. – Yeah, so this, the snare drum, and the hi-hat are
actually doing the same, exact same thing, so
same kind of pattern. One, two, three, four. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) – Very cool man,
now the last one we'll talk about on this page, it's in 6/8 and I really wanted to see how you take
this into a 6/8 feel.
Do you wanna explain
that one for us? Number C,or letter C, 3C. – Yes, on letter C the 6/8 thing is the same thing,
the clave pattern is the same on the
6/8, and same thing with the bass drum,
the bass drum gives us that steady quarter
note, it gains the 6/8. It's like getting
four out of six, there's a way we
count that, we don't just count one, two,
three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four,
five, six, we count four. – Okay. – Well you play to
something visually in 6/8. – Okay. – So say you have
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. (rhythmic tapping) So they interweave
into each other. – [Dave] Yeah,
kinda like quarter note triplets, what
we're talking about. – Yeah, yeah, exactly,
so one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four. One, two, three,
four, five, six, one, two, three,
four, five, six. Putting it together now. So one, two, one, two, three. (rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) You can do the same
thing on the cross stick. (rhythmic tapping) Just as we did with
the previous examples. (rhythmic tapping)
(loud thumping) – That is so cool, do you
wanna do that a little slower? – Yeah.
– For those trying
to count it out, it might be easier to do that. – Okay, so one,
two, three, four. (slower rhythmic drumming)
(soft thumping) (slower rhythmic tapping) – It's cool 'cause it gives you a different way of
thinking about it. When Jared and I
saw you at PASIC, the one thing that
stood out to me was you played a
song and the song had a couple bars intro, and the first couple bars
went by, and in my head I was already
jamming to something, you know how you do
that, you play a beat? Then you started
playing and it was completely different
than what I had in my mind and I was
like what a creative approach, now I can see
where you get that from.
– Yeah, I just
twisted things around. – Yeah. – Like okay, let me not
do this business as usual. – Yeah, well it separates
you from a lot of other drummers out there
which is really cool. Again guys, there's
more on the sheet music that you can mess
around with, and we are doing a course specific
for Edge members that are gonna take
this and other styles of Afrobeats and break
them down, but before we get any further,
I wanted you to play us another
track if that's cool. – Oh yeah. – Yeah, and we got
this mic here because you're gonna be singing
on it, is that right? – Yeah, yeah, I'll be singing. – Set this song up for us. – All right, well
I wrote this song, well I wrote the
groove first, I was working on a project
called, I started to drum on a little
project where it was just me doing
the drum solo thing, and then I met this
guy from Gana who played conga very well,
his name is Atado, and so we got
together, I said let's collaborate, so I
was writing different pieces that we gonna
work on, and we went to the studio to
do some recording of that, so I created
this 5/4 groove and we worked on
that, and after the project he moved
to another state.
I started writing
this song, this was around 2009, 2010,
and so last year, towards the end of a
tour that I was proud of, I started writing the
words to this song. The words kept coming,
so I wrote the words, and then I left it
somewhere, and towards the end of last year
I decided to give this groove a try again, I was working on a lot of
off time signatures, just trying to get my
off time feel right. I remembered that
groove, put it together, and I started merging
the words that I wrote while on tour
into this groove. I said you know
what, let me develop this further, so
I started out with the bass arrangement,
horns arrangement, and then bam, went
to the studio, put it together, I
said you know what, I'm gonna play this live
for the first time today.
– Awesome, and you're gonna
sing at the same time. – I'm gonna sing, yeah. – Well the track is called? – (mumbles) which
means conversation. – Love it. – Conversation. – Let me move this into
place for you, we got it ready to go, and whenever
you're ready man. – Okay, let's make
sure this is fine. – I'm excited. All right, here we go. – All right. (rhythmic drumming)
(funk music) (applause) – My goodness. That was unreal, man. – Thank you. – That was unreal. First off, singing and playing the drums is no easy
task, and then you bust out into that
solo piece at the end.
Unbelievable. Very well done. – Thank you, thank
you, thank you. – Okay, sorry, let me get
back focus here on the lesson. Okay, so we'll get
to some questions here and then we'll
get you to play us some more tunes,
but before we get into that, is
there any tips that you wanna give the
audience, the viewers, for learning this kind of style and playing that kind of music? – All right, yeah,
I'll say first of all you need to
be a lover of music. Be open to explore
different styles of music. That's how I got
to be able to play different genres
of music, and I was always very curious,
so you need to develop that curiosity,
that what else can I do on the drums,
what else can I play? You can play rock,
you can play funk, you can play jazz, you
can play everything, but then when you learn
other styles of music, it's definitely going
to impact the way you approach another style
of music that you play.
– Yeah. – That's what brings
about the uniqueness. So collect a lot
of tunes, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, makossa,
sacouse, calypso, all those things,
and listen to them. Even music without drum sets. Because that helps you to
open up your imagination. Wait, what can I bring to this music that has no
drum set in it? So when I was really
doing, I still do that, I still do a lot
of play along, but there was a time, everything's
a phase for me, so there was this
phase whereby I was doing a lot of play
along to different styles of music to
get a grip of it.
I would get music that
has no drum set in it and try to tune
into that and create something out of nothing
from the drum set to the music, so
just playing along to the music like
okay, what if I was called to play drums
to this music that has no drum set, how am I
going to approach it? – Cool. – Yeah, yeah, and
one thing about African music is it's
very very polyrhythmic. – Okay. – So you have, playing
drum set alone, whatever style of
music you're playing, whatever country you
come from, playing the drum set alone is a
lot of task because you're using your four
limbs at the same time, so that's polyrhythmic already. Say you're playing jazz for now. (rhythmic tapping) These two guys are interacting, and these two guys are speaking a different language
just improvising based on what this guy set up. (low thumping)
(rhythmic drumming) So that's polyrhythmic
right there.
So the approach
to African music, or any kind of
drumming, any style, any beats you want
at all, is to go back to the foundation of
drums which is rudiments. I tell a lot of my
students and a lot of people all the
time that you have to have the foundation
where you're able to play your, say flams, say…
The double strokes,
probably do single strokes, they all
have their place in the entire aspect of drumming. How you move around,
how you combine different rhythms, the
strokes and everything. The five stroke rule,
seven stroke rules, and the extensions
like that, so it's gonna have an impact
on your feels, how you move around,
and your breathing pattern and all
those things, so you wanna be able to
sustain and endure the movement around the drums. Whatever style of
music you play. – Very cool, thanks
for sharing that, yeah. A couple questions from the
people watching if that's cool. – All right. – Yeah, we don't
have time for much, but again, like
usual we do a full interview/Q&A with the guest on the next day on
Edge, so if you want to come out to that,
make sure you remember.
Here is one from Discalculia, just butchering the name,
but long story short they say hey Tosin,
how would you approach, what is your approach on
practicing independence? What would you recommend,
best regards from Norway. – All right, hi Norwaian. (laughter) So in terms of
practicing independence I will say start
from the basics. I always refer
back to the basics. Playing, for instance I
used a book by Alan Dawson.
– Yes. – Written by John
Ramsey, and this one of that, Kid
Copeland also, yeah, Kid Copeland also wrote a book about independence,
so it's called The Forward Independence for
the Contemporary Drummer. Kid Copeland if
you can get that. It breaks down
everything in regards to playing independently
on the drums. I don't just call
it independence, it's interdependence
because this guy is independently
doing his own thing. (rhythmic tapping) And this guy's independently
doing his own thing too. One, two, three, four. (rhythmic tapping and drumming) So in that book by Kid Copeland it broke down a lot of things, and same thing with Alan Dawson. The paradiddle, breaking it down into different ways by which you can approach independence
on the drums. – Yeah. – So like. (rhythmic tapping and drumming) So you can approach
independence that way. And secondly, when
you play almost any kind of music,
try to move around between the hi-hat and the ride and let your hi-hat
keep the beat going.
One, two, three,
four, or the off beat, one and two and
three, and try to to keep the down
beat or the off beat. – Excellent, that's a huge task right here, what
he just told you there, don't expect to do that one night and then
be done with it. – Yeah, it takes time. – That takes time, like how long did you go through those books? How long did it take you? – It took me a few years. – Yeah, you see? – Took me a few years
of daily practice. – Daily practice. – Yeah.
– Yeah, well it's paid
off for you, Tosin. – Thanks. – Bonesy asks hey, I
don't know about you but I play Latin/African
rhythms and at times it seems
almost the same. It seems like I was taught them simultaneously, so what is the distinction between
some of these styles that make them different other than the culture,
thanks and great job.
– Oh thank you very much. There really isn't
much difference between the African
and the Afro-Cuban. I remember when I
was growing up my dad would play some Brazilian music, some Afro-Cuban
music, and I said "Oh, this is from Cuba?" He said yes because
some Africans migrated to that
part of the world, so they took some of
the music that they had from their roots over
there and developed it, so there isn't really
much difference. The only difference
that I will say is they added names
given to the styles. – Gotcha. – Yeah, but I'll just say
they are just variations of the same family tree,
different branches. Yeah, so that's the… – Yeah, well I
noticed that even with the calypso style
that you were playing. – And even the example I
gave about the reggae tone. – Yeah. – Yeah, so everything
ends up bleeding. – Yeah. – Yeah. – EL says in the
question, she says this is utterly ridiculous, wow.
(laughter) Yeah, hopefully you
guys get inspired 'cause if there's
nothing else, if you don't even wanna learn
these beats, just the inspiration behind it
to learn other styles or just listen to
other styles is great. We'll do one more question
before we wrap up here. Here's one from Kevin444,
he asks looks like you're playing the
finger pull, or is that open/close with
your right hand? Maybe basically just talk
about your right hand technique, what are you
doing with that there? – Oh yeah, with the
right hand technique, I do different things
depending on what I'm playing. I don't use, okay for
instance I usually use the French timpani
grip for the sticks. Without thinking,
and I can bet you a lot of drummers
go through that. Once you start
playing, you're not conscious of how you
hold your stick anymore. You just play what feels right. I play, I start off
with, consciously start off with French
timpani grip right? (rhythmic drumming) And eventually, depending
on what I wanna play, how convenient it's
gonna be for me, how it's gonna be easy for me to execute that phrase,
then I can twist my hand to give me the conventional
grip, the match grip.
Sometimes I use these
when I'm playing jazz or when I
wanna play something really soft and subtle, yeah. So yeah. – [Dave] And you
got finger control. – And I have the
finger control when I'm trying to do
something, especially when I'm doing some
ostinatos on the right. (rhythmic tapping) (laughs) – I saw it on your
hi-hats too when you're doing those
little three note grips. – Yeah. (rapid drumming)
(soft thumping) – Very cool. We have tons of lessons
on hand technique, finger control,
and stuff like that in Drumeo, but yeah, I can see you're definitely
using that there.
We got a lot more
questions coming, but we're gonna
save those tomorrow 'cause I want you to
play us out still, but I got one personal question for you if that's all right. – Yeah. – The music you
were playing today is awesome, it
sounded great, and I loved what you played
at PASIC as well, so as a listener
and a music fan, can you give me some suggestions if I wanna get
into that style of music more, maybe one
or two, maybe three bands or artists or albums
that you would recommend. – Okay, I will definitely
recommend first Fela Kuti. – [Dave] Yes. – Femi Kuti, the
son of Fela Kuti. – [Dave] Yup. – Can check him
out too, and then this guy in Brazil, Seu George. – [Dave] Seu George. – Yeah, it's not
pronounced as George. It's J-O-R-G-E, but
I call it George 'cause I'm not used
to that accent.
I think it's Seu
Jor-ge, or something like that, but Seu
George, I call him that. He does a lot of
Brazilian music, but his approach is
different, very funky, very R&Bish with some
nice punchy horns, so yeah, that's a very
good, and the way he approaches the hi-hat,
he plays drums himself. – No way. – Yeah, he's a drummer,
he plays guitar, is a multi-talented guy,
but he mainly sings. He's the singer of
the band, but once in a while he gets on the drum. I watched the way
he plays the drum, they were playing
some funk groove. His approach was
totally different on the hi-hat, and the same with the drummer that
plays in the band approaches the
hi-hat, so sometimes what different shape, one style of music to the
other, or one person's approach to the
other, can just be something as simple as the way you play your
hi-hat, the rhythm. I'll show you an example
of what I'm talking about. – Sure, yeah. – For instance,
this hi-hat rhythm. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four.
(rhythmic drumming)
(loud thumping) Something like that
instead of just. And he played it fluidly,
effortlessly, it was so smooth. – Cool. I'm gonna check those
out, make sure you guys check them out too
if you like the style. What are you gonna
play us out with? – I'm gonna close out with
one more composition of mine. I love different styles
of music, when I was growing up I was exposed
to all styles of music. When I write, I
try to pay homage to all these different
styles, maybe not everything, but
I try to think of expressing myself
in a particular way because I love it,
because I believe I can do it, so I
do that, so this one is more on the rock side. I like to feel that rock energy, that getting dirty and nasty.
(laughter) And funky at the same time. – [Dave] Very cool. – Yeah, yeah, so this is called (mumbles) which
means Don't Forget. – Love it. – Never forget,
and I hope that you wouldn't forget this
music, this groove. – Yeah, sure, I'm sure
not, that's for sure. Thanks for joining us, everyone. Again, huge thanks to
you Tosin for coming out. – Thank you very much. – You're always
welcome here at Drumeo. For those watching
this on YouTube, make sure you come to Drumeo.com and check out the
full course with him.
Also, I didn't say
this in the beginning, but the very first
song that Tosin played is gonna be offered
as a play along on the site of
Drumeo as well, so if you want that, you
can come and grab it. I'm gonna leave and
listen in there. – All right. – Okay? – Okay. – Thank you so much. – You're welcome. – See you guys all later. – All right..