mewithoutYou Band • Page 17

Anyone wanna play with Aaron at a show?

"Hello, I have a solo acoustic performance in Joshua Tree National Park scheduled for this Tuesday, August 16th. Please forgive the short notice, but would anyone like to perform with me? Here are the basic criteria:

1) you live in the Southern California area or can make it to Joshua Tree or L.A. in time (I can likely provide transport from & back to the city)
2) you are sufficiently skilled at a non-guitar instrument (e.g., accordion, keyboards, strings, horn)
3) you're familiar with a good portion of mewithoutYou songs and/or extremely competent at improvising

I can likely cover all ground travel expenses, food, lodging (if necessary), etc., w/ additional compensation open to discussion.

(n.b. This same offer loosely applies to experienced and solid pitched treble/soprano and bass Sacred Harp singers).

If interested, please contact our manager at:

ajwshow@gmail.com

Thank you, Aaron W."

 

That's so cool that he wants to do that with strangers. Wish I could be there.

 

I can play a mad recorder.

But I don't live in CA. I'm close though. In Florida. So I'm close... Relative to the universe as a whole.

 

i played baritone in high school. does that count

 

That is the coolest thing ever

 

It was great to see them last night in Nottingham. I still can't believe they've been over twice this year after not visiting our shores for 9 years! Very fortunate.

Naturally when you see a band twice within a few months you kind of compare the setlist. I think I enjoyed the performance in February a bit more. But it was still a fantastic evening and a privilege to see this band live again - something I honestly didn't think I'd get to do, let alone twice within the space of a few months!

 

I was there too! I'm just glad I got to see Wolf Am I, haha.

 

I'm trying to learn the drums for "Nice and Blue PT 2" and "Sun and the Moon".

Trying being the key operative word those songs are hard haha

 

Rickie is such a great drummer. He's the driving force behind this band.

 

I love that he does most of the transitions live.

 

Yeah really creative with how he uses his cymbals and toms. He really gives them an expansive and unique sound.

 

As a drummer, I'm consistently blown away by Ricky's style of drumming, especially when I see him live. One of the best I've ever listened to. Very unique.

 

I love that he holds his drumsticks backwards. I'm sure other people do it too, but he's the only one I've noticed do it.

 

"Sun and the Moon" is really awkward because the way the guitar starts you tend to think beats 3 and 4 are beats 1 and 2 when the song starts. And then once you figure out how to fix that, then you have to do syncopated/off beat kick drum stuff that doesn't fall exactly on beat 1 (it matches the pulsing bassline in the verse which is also off beat.)

So you're constantly alternating your left and right foot because your left foot is keeping time ON beat with the hi hat while your right foot is mostly OFF beat on the kick.

/drumming is hard

 

Pfft... I drum on my steering wheel to this song all the time and it's super easy.

Get on my level.

 

That's what I thought too until I actually bought a drum set haha. I destroy every fill in "Nice and Blue" if you're talking steering wheel drumming. Lol

 

Tip: the hardest part of drumming to get used to is actually the feet not the hands. Though it's also hard to drum fast without getting loud and sloppy and that's where drumming technique comes in to play

 

when I saw them on the US tour with Say Anything, that was the second song they played and I remember the energy of that room ratcheting up x10000000. What a good song, what a good show, what a good band

 

Ah man! That's great. Yep, loved seeing that. I also was particularly pleased to see My Exit, Unfair.

 

As a drummer, every everything is difficult to get used to, especially your non-dominant hand, not just your feet. If you're trying to drum fast without getting loud and sloppy, you need to work on your stick height, as in how high you bring up the sticks when you do single stroke rolls. Also, you need to work on your grip so that you're pinching the sticks with your index fingers and your thumbs, which leaves the rest of your fingers to catch and bounce the stick between strokes.

This is all stuff I never thought about for the first three years I drummed for (I'm discounting Rock Band) until I started taking lessons at the beginning of 2015. Now I'm learning the language to drumming and I'm beginning to understand the rhyme and reason of it all.

 

I'm at the point where I understand all these things (I've had guidance from various drummers in my band) and the hard part is just applying them consistently. Sometimes I get carried away with my stick height, especially when playing fast or playing something difficult I tend to lose focus on dynamics. I tend to fluctuate by 10 bpm or so in tempo (though learning how to keep time with the hi hat has helped a lot, now I realize why drummers do that)... and I'm actually getting pretty good at controlling the bounce, starting to work in ghost notes in between the main snare hits and also learning how to do 16th notes and 8th note triplets with one hand. Jazz drumming is my biggest influence.

Still not very good at rudiments like paradiddles yet. I can work one or two of them in there in a fill or something, but I've seen the drummer who is on most my recorded material play entire minute long parts of songs with awkward elaborate patterns of 16th notes left and right hands. And I am nowhere near that level yet haha.

 

But keeping time with your non-dominant foot is really not as easy as it looks. I mentioned the feet being hard to get used to because

1) the arm motion of hitting a drum will feel more natural to the average person than trying to be exact with a footpedal, that's just not something you do with your foot often, you have to build up the calf muscles and ankle muscles to start being precise, etc

2) the kick drum really messes me up with my hi hat because you usually emphasize a lot of the more offbeat rhythms with the kick drum. So it's a constant battle of wanting to stomp both feet at the same time when they have to be alternating, and vice versa. I also struggle miserably with quick double-kicks when I'm counting single quarter notes with the hi hat.

Also trying to learn when it's good to use the kick drum and cymbals as part of drum fills. I also find that more of a learning curve than just playing fills on the snare and toms.

 

I'm in the same boat, trying to apply things consistently. My teacher always tells me to play on the pad because then you have to work on your dynamics and rudiments instead of getting too carried away. The hi-hat does help a lot to keep time. It also helps keep your left foot doing something, which is important because then that opens you up to doing other things with opening and closing the hi-hat. Also, I love ghost notes. Took me a bit of time to get decent at them when I started implementing them into my regular playing back in 2013, but now it's starting to feel natural. Now I just need to focus on keeping the stick height low and controlled. Rudiments are key though. You can do a lot of cool things with stuff like paradiddles, doubles, triplets, linear playing, etc. I've found myself putting those into my regular playing style as well. Lots of fun stuff.

 

Yeah man paradiddles and other rudiments can take your drumming to a whole new level when you start splitting them between the cymbals and the toms as well. The patterns that come out end up sounding so cool even if it's as simple as R L RR L R LL. My old drummer had a strong jazz background and he would just slay me with his ability to mindfuck the rhythm by subtly changing his pattern.

 

I completely understand. I have the same struggle, as I've only just begun to apply my left foot into the mix. It's a lot to keep track of in my mind. As for doing quick double kicks, try applying the heel-toe method. I used to just try to took my toes quickly to get that pseudo-double bass feel, but it's much easier and more comfortable to put your heel down on the bottom of the pedal and then your toes on the top. When done quickly it feels a lot like just taking a step. And when it comes to putting the bass drum or cymbals in fills, linear playing will help with that immensely. You could always try doing right hand, then left hand, on snare, then make the third hit the bass drum to begin with. That's also how drummers do those cool rock finishes, like they'll do two floor tom hits and a bass drum hit all in quick succession and repetition. Or they'll do bass drum->floor tom->snare as some quick finish.