Its a very simple hand clap, but done in a special way.

Put your hands in the praying position, palms and fingers together, also bring the elbows together.  Keep the elbows in front of your belly and the hands the same height as your head.

Now just open the hands, keeping the wrists and elbows together and clap. 

Open the hands equally and close them, make sure from the elbow to the fingers is strate. To help with the eveness you could place a drumstick or ruler in between your hands.

Now this is the hard bit, your going to build up the muscles in the forearms.  To start clap up to 400 times, thats the same as play a 8th note pattern or quaver pattern for 25 bars, perhaps around a minute and a halfs’ time.

You must relax while doing this!

You will tense up, start gritting your teeth ! Don’t!!  Smile, slowdown and try again later.  Your aim is to build up speed and duration, I’d say you don’t need to go longer than 50 bars, just work on increasing your speed and maybe even work on how relaxed your feeling (maybe we can turn this into a medition or even warmup before you play??)

Result; Do this over a number of weeks you should feel that your arms are able to complete and perform the task it better.

Try count all the quavers and bars if you can, this will add another bit of mental training to the exercise.

Vinne Colaiuta is amazing on the drums, this man gets voted the “best around  drummer” every year by the readers of Modern Drummer magazine.  I’m not going to talk about his performance because I’d go on for ages about it.  If you’ve herd him play, I think you’ll agree, as most of the people around me marvelled at his playing,  I think a big majority of London’s drummer came out to see Vinnie, most of the people in-front of me were drummers!

I’m very happy that I had this opportunity to see and hear his playing, very often I hear about events’ that have just passed and would go to, but miss out on.

I’ve been waiting for two months since I saw that he was playing with John Mclaughlin and Chick Corea. To may delight he had Christian McBride playing the bass (I discovered this musician through a spectacular drummer called Terreon Gully) and Kenny Garrett (this man was making the Sax scream). I was seated just behind him and off to the left, so my view of him was perfect to observe his left side.  They played for two hours and I loved every minute of it.

The sound was impeccable, the music was stunning and the performance memorable.

That’s two great drummers that I’ve had the opportunity to see, when’s Gadd and Chambers coming over!

We’re looking for another guitarist lead and bass.  I hope that we can find some people soon. it will be wicked to start giging again and entertaining friends.  Now I’ll get to play alot of the things I’ve been practicing.

The show must go on! To hear Toufs music click here

Today at the studio, I bumped into a student, he had a gig tonight and was having a quick solo rehearsal for a couple of hours, dedication!  He was a little nervous – nothing wrong with that, but as we passed, he was saying that we would
“catch up” for some more lessons with me, once he’s got this gig out the way and “made a fool out of himself”.

I raised an eye at him and said ‘No No, you’ll be fine, stay positive, enjoy it’.  I’ve played many gigs and been at the same situation that he was now in, not feel to confident, thinking ‘what if I make a mistake!’
I then heard the guy working there supporting my comment of remaining positive and going ahead, rather than back or downwards.

So when you have those moments in life where you confidence isn’t at its best, find your positives.
I always look at my positives;

• I’m teaching
• I enjoy my work and life
• I’m a kick ass drummer
• People want to learn from me
• I’m healthy
• Got great and supportive friends

Identify yours

So in closing, stay positive, there’s soo much that can bring you down, don’t include yourself us one of them.

Peace and Love. Ray 

You’ll get Five lessons for the price of four! Thats a saving of £20!

What are you wanting for, take advantage!

I first saw it written on Sharescience, the video shows the drummer playing it a various speeds on the snare only, but Steve leads on the cymbals and snare.

the whole thing is made up using a single para-diddle followed by a double and then a triple para-diddle.

R l r r L r l l

R l R l r r L r L r l l

R l R l R l r r L r L r L r l l

R l R l r r L r L r l l

R l r r L r l l

You start at the top of the pyramid and work down playing each level twice and then move on to the next stage, the letters in capitals are accented, you can start on the snare only if you like or go strait to leading with the cymbals + the bass drum and snare.

Start, and get it smooth, then add accents, when that feels steady, up the speed.  Enjoy!

Enhancements of the exercise.

a) You can increase the repeats of each stage, X3 etc

b) move the non leading hand around different drums or cymbals

c) add a flam at the beginning of each stage

d) change all the accents to Flams

The highs: seeing the legend Billy Cobham playing on the jazz stage (Latin) and Tony Royster playing in Jay-Z band.

The lows, standing in wellies for to long (massive leg ache) and the smell from the toilets.

I would love to do it again next year, perhaps even get a press pass for the site just to interview the un-sung heroes of music the drummers.    Overall the experience have left me on a positive note, get there and back was trouble free and cost of the whole thing was around £300, but off set the many acts you see, you come to the result that a bargain is what you’ve just bought.

Alot of friends are going so hopefully I’ll  be able to meet up with them??  I’ve started a list of bands and acts’ that I want to see – I’m debating if I want to see Jay-Z or not? I’ve got the feeling to see alot of the dance groups and acts rather than the guitar bands, I’ll have to toss a coin or something.  Time to sort out my wellies and transport. 

The next event that is happening will be the London International Music Show, DrummerLive has joined forces with The London Guitar, SRT and Unplugged shows to bring some of the worlds new and coolest products on the planet! Check out http://www.londoninternationalmusicshow.com/ for more info.

Funk ON!

There were bands before them, and the first was Bleached Wale, these guys had a bass player that I instantly got in-tune with, great vibe and musicianship, but they were a shouty band from the north that made negative comments about ‘London’ to London crowd, (fellers have a talk with your Marketing dept)

The second band weren’t anything that I choose to go buy, see, listen to (I think that covers it) my guess is they were fodder, but way they ended was the most memorable thing! They had a Japanese band sound, cant put it better than that.

The lead guitarist, whom didn’t say a thing through-out the 35-40 min set, screamed to a closing while the drums and bass finished up… sharing the pain.

Out of place… Yes, painful… Yes, making people turn their heads and hold that focus… Definitely!

I went to the Cage the Elephant webpage and hearing the songs back over my small speakers, its a hard to hear what makes these guys enjoyable, (maybe the lyrics, music, style??) seeing them on stage of course is the best, the motions of the singer and the guitarist, are what give the band more energy, a vibe, leading to a desire to hear more from them! Great performance, will be waiting for the album and next gig.

Find them on MyspaceMusic.com

See you at DrummerLive