At one point, he got in trouble for pounding out beats on his desk during class. Peart joined Rush just after the recording of their first album, replacing original drummer John Rutsey. Peart credited Gruber and another teacher, Peter Erskine with helping him re-create his technique and sense of time from scratch, leading him to a more fluid approach and a deeper groove.
Newswire Powered by. Close the menu. Rolling Stone. Log In. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. You are no longer onsite at your organization. As simple as that is, the concept behind it is deep.
I discovered that it is the source of time-it is the pulse. The analogy that I used in the video is that music shouldn't be thought of as dots on a line, but rather as points on a circle.
So by working on this exercise I began to get this time sense where, even when I'd move from that exercise into rock and funk beats, the pulse would remain. But it took a lot of practice to get to this point. Somebody actually gave me that issue of MD to autograph recently, and I took a minute to look over some of the things that I was saying back then. It's really interesting because the way that I was feeling was perfectly sincere, I was frustrated with my musical improvement and I said I wasn't willing to sit in the basement for hours every day to develop a faster paradiddle.
And that remains true. There have been a few things. I'm now sitting a hit further back from the bass drum than I used to, and I'm not burying the beater into the head. My snare drum is now set radically higher than it used to he to accommodate traditional grip playing, which I'm trying to use exclusively. So some things about my playing have changed radically, but that created a conflict in my mind: Would I really have the discipline to put in the time necessary to make all of these changes happen?
When I left New York after my first set of lessons with Freddie I thought, "Well, to do this I have to be disciplined and I have to put in some serious work. Will I really be able to develop this discipline? I made sure that I practiced at least an hour on the drumkit every day. That's what Freddie, to me, is really the expert on.
I recently met Richie Hayward, the drummer in Little Feat. He was working in a rehearsal hall near me when I was preparing for the video, and we got to talking and he mentioned he was trying to find a teacher. He said he really wanted to learn more about technique, and he asked me about Freddie. I said. I don't think Freddie is the guy you need because you've already got what he teaches. Oh yeah. He would be better off studying with a technical Master, like Joe Morello.
I think that's what Richie wants to improve in his playing. Kenny Aronoff went to Freddie, but there probably wasn't enough of a pay-off for him, because Kenny has that looseness and that great time sense. That was the thing about Steve Sntith's drumming that really struck me when he recorded his tracks on the Burning For Buddy sessions. If Steve had just become a technical virtuoso, that would not have been nearly as impressive as how musical his playing had become and how well it sat with the music while still being very active and adventurous.
That's what made me do a double take on Steve's playing. That's right! But that gave me a way to get the power I needed. I did start with traditional grip thirty years ago and then left it behind in favor of matched.
It's been said-even in the pages of your magazine-that matched grip is a physically superior approach. I still believe that's true. However, that's not the whole story. What I've realized is that traditional grip can be a more musical approach to playing the drums. It all has to do with the rotational effect it creates and the way it affects the time. I did have a certain amount of doubt, I put off the band for a year so I would have time to let these things develop and mature in my playing, And then, coming back to the band.
I realized that all of the work on my "new direction" might be completely irrelevant to Rush music. During the writing of the new record last October we were out in the country, and I still kept up my practicing every day. I had my little PureCussion kit out in the hallway, so if I was working on lyrics and I needed a left-brain break, I could go out in the hall and practice for a while.
And sometimes at night, if the other guys were out, I could get in the studio and play on the real drums. I just concentrated on power at that point, knowing that was the element I needed to get together. I felt I had developed a lot more finesse and a lot more fluidity, and simply practicing every day also developed a lot more tools.
I felt I had improved in all sorts of ways, and I could feel it when playing with the other guys. Of course, some things weren't as far along as I would have liked. My left hand still isn't what it needs to be, but it will be a superior instrument one of these years. I was able to get a big backbeat and still have the subtleties of finger control and hand control for subtler spots in the music. I'm playing above the drums now.
An analogy that Freddie has about drummers is that a lot of us play like golfers: We're hit-ting "through the ball," meaning we tend to aim at the floor and play right through the drums.
You're right-I played that way. Freddie has me concentrating on my movements above the drums, so that the bottom of the stroke is actually the bottom of a circle. That's where I'm hitting the drum. That was an important change for me. Playing with the butt ends of the sticks with matched grip tor power became unnecessary, because I learned how to get that sound with a flick of the wrist-Freddie calls that spanking the drum.
Just make it the briefest of contact but the most forceful, at the fullest extension of the snap of your wrist-it's like the crack of a whip. I haven't totally mastered it yet, but I'm working on it. The title of my video, A Work In Progress , is very appropriate, not only because ifs about the record being made but also because it's about me as a thirty-year veteran who's still completely rebuilding himself.
Like I said, my grip's not quite what I want it to be, but I'm happy with where it's taken me and the new approach to the drums. I still have much more to learn from Freddie on footwork and getting the soft-shoe approach-you know, the dancing approach to pedal action-but I'll get there.
I like playing hard, although I think my technique suffered a bit, because I set up with my knee almost directly over the pedal so that I could get the whole weight of my leg into the stroke. Freddie suggested I move back just a bit so I could get more of a dancing motion on the pedals, but as I do that I will continue to play hard, when necessary. The power won't go because it's an honest reflection of me. You mentioned that another thing you changed is the shoes you wear.
That's one of the things that Freddie was dogmatic about. He said, "Don't wear sneakers while playing drums. I don't want them slipping off the pedals.
So I thought, "Why not try dancing shoes? In fact, one day I went down to practice and I was too lazy to change my shoes so I just started playing with sneakers on, and it was horrible. I couldn't play. The broader principle here is that instincts aren't always right. What seems right is so often not-the sticky shoes is one example. And I mentioned before that I used to try to get all my drums underneath me so that I could be hitting down on them. I also figured that it would put me less off balance if I could have everything positioned as close to me as physically possible.
It seemed right, but it was totally wrong. What Freddie had me do was push the drums away so that my bass drum was farther away and my snare and toms were all at arm's length. The easiest way to play has nothing to do with how close the drums are.
What's the most fluid way for me to get from the snare to the floor tom or from the snare to the ride'? It all has to do with the motion. Was that upsetting? When they heard some of my ideas they said, "Yeah, but we don't heat much of a difference in your playing. Do you have new hardware or something? Peter gave me some more exercises to work on, and I continued practicing every day. You know what I'm talkin' about! In his December article for Drumhead magazine , Peart reflected about Erskine:.
The third teacher in my Holy Trinity, Peter Erskine, modeled a way of looking back on your younger self with a buddha-like He talked about the unthinking way he used to set up his drums, or how limited his playing has been in some technique, with a knowing, comfortable smile. If he was foolish and lame then, he was better now, and that's what mattered. It was Peter who helped me conquer—or at least attack—what was for me the Final Frontier: improvisation.
Having developed a certain amount of compositional tools and habits over forty years of playing, I was determined to become freer and more spontaneous. Peter helped me toward that goal with guidance in developing deeper time-sense and greater musicality. With credit to Nick "Booujzhe" Raskulinecz, too, who encouraged and enabled my improvising in the studio. It's here that my own path intersects with Peart's—at least as a member of the audience.
I had flown across the United States from Seattle because I knew there were few opportunities to see Peart play with a big band. In addition to Peart, some of the greatest drummers in the world graced the stage—with even more sitting in the audience, including Mike Portnoy and Carmine Appice. When Peart took to the stage, I could tell something was very different about his playing. Afterward, I was a little ambivalent about how well Peart had played.
Something seemed less precise in his playing, at least from what I was used to. A few other fans also commented on this as well. What I had perceived as a lack of precision was really a fundamental change in Peart's interpretation of time.
With Erskine's guidance, Peart had learned to shift his clock beyond his normal boundaries of precise metronomic time. When Rush returned to the road during the Time Machine and Clockwork Angels tours, I watched Peart continue to refine and develop this new time sense. During the Time Machine tour, I remember a different feel creeping into the Rush songs. This approach eventually led Peart to becoming more improvisational onstage, both in his solo and in songs.
By the time I watched Rush play in Seattle in , on the first leg of the Clockwork Angels tour, Peart had reached at a new level of technique and feel. There was an underlying groove and adventurousness to his playing, but also an incredible amount of power. Peart had finally arrived at what he'd been aiming for with all his studies and practice.
Also, I had the realization in the past week or so, as the playing started to come together, that these days, "I am playing the way I always wanted to play.
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