AUGUST 2010

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THE DRUM WORKSThe Drum Works is based in Muri bei Bern, Switzerland, headed up by British profes-sional drummer and teacher Richard “Doc Spoons” Spooner. The Drumworks offers expert drum lessons in all styles of contem-porary music from rock, punk and heavy metal, to blues, funk and jazz.

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THE BLACK PAGEAUGUST 2010

Steve Moore by Sean Mitchell

Exploring the Learning Processby Adam Hay

Double Bass Fill Ideas Part Iby Ryan Carver

Global Educators Database

The Final Word

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Sean Miitchell - PublisherJill Schettler - Editor in ChiefJayson Brinkworth - Writer

Ryan Carver - WriterRichard “Doc” Spooner - Writer

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Once hailed on Youtube as the “drum-mer who was at the wrong gig,” it would seem Steve Moore was not only

in the right place but, in fact, at the right time. Enter his drumming hero Mike Port-noy, add a little viral video magic and, presto! The Mad Drummer cometh. His Portnoy-ness posted a video of Steve getting his flair on on his Facebook page. Within days Moore was windmilling

his way across the world wide web. Upon watching the video it is easy to

see why one might assume Steve was an over zealous drummer sitting in on the wrong gig. However Steve and his bandmates, Rick K and the Allnighters, are far from an odd pair-ing-- and Steve is far from just a flair drum-mer. Steve’s is a style that proves you can have your groove and flair it too. While the West Virginia native admits the tricks and spins do get attention, the end result is ultimately for the enjoyment of the crowd. Viral video can

be an amazing marketing tool, however what we don’t see is the story behind the proverbial cover. Steve’s is a history of musical talent and hard work in the metal, punk and prog genres. He once slept on the floor of a studio whilst working as a dishwasher to make ends meet. Talk about dues! Yes he flairs, yes, he spins, but never at the expense of the groove.

by Sean Mitchell

Steve, tell me about Rick K and the All Nighters. Are you still with them? How the heck did a drummer like you hook up with a band like this?

Rick started the band almost 20 years ago. He actually started as a drummer and lat-er decided he wanted to front his own band. I came into the picture much later. His original drummer decided to step down because the band played so much. Rick knew me through a mutual friend and gave me a call. I was coming from a very “heavy” background, playing mostly punk and progressive metal. I like that style of music, however I simply wasn’t play-ing enough shows. I wanted to play everyday, not three or four shows a month. It’s very difficult to earn a living playing original music, let alone, play-ing heavy original music. So when he offered to toss me on a tour bus, while playing 175 shows a year, I jumped at it!

I think it’s cool that you have met your drumming hero through the “Wrong Gig” video. How did this happen, and were you guys able to shed together at all?

A few days before the vid-eo went viral, Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater, Avenged Sev-enfold) posted it on his Face-book. A few days later, the video had a few million hits. Mike dropped me an email to

say hello and invited me to a Dream Theater con-cert where we had the opportunity to meet. You have to understand, for me, this was like meeting Elvis! Mike Portnoy was (is) a huge influence on me. He then took it upon himself to get me a Sabi-an Cymbal Endorsement. I’ve said it many times, to have gained the respect of someone like Mike Portnoy is still the high-light of my career. Port-noy isn’t just a “famous” drummer; he’s a respect-ed drummer. There’s a difference. Later, he in-vited me to Charlotte, NC, to see him perform with Avenged Sevenfold. After the show, he invited me backstage. When I walked in the dressing room he had a practice kit set up. He walked up to me, gave me a big hug, then put sticks in my hands and told me to sit down and play for him. It was the best night of my life. I even had the chance to show his son Max a few tricks on the kit. That means more to me than being on the cover of any magazine or talk show!

What I get from the vid-eo is that the guys play

off your energy and showmanship. Is this accurate, and what would you say is the biggest strength of the band?

I would like to take the credit for that, but I don’t think I can. Rick certainly highlights a lot of what I do, but it’s in the context of the entire show. Everyone plays a role. As for the band’s biggest strength, I would say it’s because we have fun, and it’s a nice tight show. People always say, “You guys look like you’re having so much fun.” We hear that every single night! At the end of the day, people are people. They just want to have fun.

Give me the low down on yourself, Steve. How did you come to pick up your first set of sticks?

I started playing guitar when I was six years old. A few years later, I met a kid named Dave Queen who played drums. So we started a little band together, playing mostly KISS covers. After practice he would show me little things on the drums, and I enjoyed that more than playing the guitar (plus I was better at it), so we switched. (laughs)

What is the industry looking like right now for a high level cover act? Is there a lot of work? What types of gigs are you guys landing?

I think people want anything that is a little “different.” There are so many cover bands out there. It’s really hard to set yourself apart.

We’re very fortunate to work as much as we do. I have to give credit where it’s due and say that Rick works his ass off. It’s not easy putting 200 dates on the calendar year af-ter year. I wouldn’t want his job! (laughs) As for venues, we do everything. We’ll be at a fair in front of thousands one night, then at a casino the next night. We also do some cor-porate work as well, but the majority of the work is fairs and festivals.

Are you working on any original music? If so, where can we find it?

I’ve actually been called in to record the new Freddie Nelson CD. He recorded a CD with Paul Gilbert last year called United States. The two of them were fantastic together. It was my favorite album of the year. As with most things, a lot of it comes down to sched-uling because I’m so busy. But I’m really hoping we can make it happen.

Obviously the video has changed your life dramatically. What have been the big-gest changes in your career so far?

I’ve picked up a lot of endorsements. That doesn’t suck! (laughs) I’m also getting calls to do clinics, drum festivals, that sort of thing. To be honest with you, a lot of it is very intimidating. Ludwig Drums and Sa-bian Cymbals are flying me to Seattle on Nov. 7 to perform at Big Beat. I’ll be play-ing with people like Kenny Aronoff, Thomas Pridgen, and Alan White. I’m absolutely ter-rified! Those guys are so going to slaughter

Click here to visit Steve’s band online atwww.rickkandtheallnighters.com

me. You can find out more about it at www.bennetdrums.com. The profits go to The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation so I’m honored to be involved.

How do crowds react to you now after the publicity?

We’ve always had a great relationship with the audience. The audience is just a lot larg-er now. (laughs)

Tell me a bit about your showmanship techniques, what sorts of tricks are you using, and how have you developed them over the years?

First off, there are tons of drummers to cred-it for that: Shannon Larkin, Carmine Appice, Tommy Lee, Keith Moon, Ginger Baker Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa and on and on! I just did my best to “try” and do what they did. It’s really that simple! I’ve said this a hundred times: I can teach anyone how to twirl a drumstick, that’s easy; however, keeping your playing locked while doing it is a bit more challenging. The thing I’ve been working on for the last year or so is not let-

ting the audience hear my showboating. Meaning, you should never hear someone toss a stick or do a windmill. Your playing should still be solid. That’s easier said than done, but that’s my goal.

Having seen the “Wipeout” clip, do I de-tect some heavy Buddy Rich influences here? I’m sure Buddy Rich wouldn’t say so, but I’ll definitely take that as a compliment. Buddy was just insane. You can’t work on what he did. Know what I mean? He was just a natu-ral. You can’t duplicate that sort of talent. He was one of a kind.

Where did the term Mad Drummer come from, and are you planning on making a brand out of the name?

Several years ago, I started a small little company called Mad Drummer Inc. We sold T-shirts and the normal merchandise. In ad-dition to that we had one of the largest direc-tories on the web. I basically became over-whelmed with trying to keep everything up to date and shut it down. I don’t exactly have a lot of free time. However, the term Mad

VISIT STEVE ONLINE BY CLICKING ON THE LINK BELOW

Drummer stuck with me. I still own the name, so I may pursue it again at some point. How-ever, I would need to have the right team of people to oversee it, as I simply don’t have the time for it. A lot of cool things are hap-pening right now, so it may happen sooner than later.

I understand you are a multi instrumen-talist. What else do you play?

Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I can probably still choke out a song or two on guitar or maybe a few on banjo. However, I would never claim to be a guitar player. I haven’t had a twang-ger in my hand in years.

Your DVD Over The Barrel is a few years old now. How have sales been? Can we look forward to another video?

I’m actually talking with a legendary drum-mer right now about doing a DVD together. If we can get it worked out, I think it’s going to be huge. He’s one of the first guys that started it all, so to just receive a phone call from him was a big honor. It’s a little early to let the cat out of the bag, but I’m really ex-cited about it.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What is “The Dream” for Steve Moore?

I want to be the next Mike Portnoy! How-ever, let me explain exactly why I say that. Mike has had an amazing career with Dream Theater, but he’s also had the opportunity to record and tour with countless other legends in the process. He’s been a pillar in the drum-ming community for 20 years, doing clinics, DVD’s, collecting awards, and popping up on the cover of every drum magazine in the world. However, with all of his fame, he has remained humble and sincere. He’s always been dedicated to his fans, never forgetting them or taking them for granted. He is re-

spected and loved by his peers. He has a wonderful wife and family who clearly adore him. On top of that, he finds time to help out a “nobody” drummer like me, while asking nothing in return. What better goal than to become the next Mike Portnoy? i

The right attitude is everything. If you can’t do something yet, you have to accept that straight away. You have to be okay with that. Take emotion right out of the equation. Don’t learn with emotion- it won’t help you to learn any-

thing quickly.

With drumming, the quickest way to learn something is to actually slow things down. Never try to learn something at the tempo you ultimately want to be able to play it at. The slower you go, the faster you learn it.

First comes the math—understanding the problem—then comes the coordination and physical execution of the musical figure, then comes the feel and the musical application of what you’ve learned. The goal, always, is for you to learn the thing in your head (to get the arithmetic all sorted out) before trying to physically ascertain or acquire any physical feel for the lick.

Feel is always the goal. A robot has no feel. Feel is physical knowledge. Muscle memory is where you want to ‘know’ what-ever you’re trying to learn. That’s what takes

Exploring The Learning Processby Adam Hay

time, patience, and focus. The figure has to play itself.

Don’t forget: playing something badly is never that much of a challenge. Playing something well is always a challenge; it’s al-ways a matter of focus.

Relax. Breathe. Take on the challenge. If there’s a voice speaking in your head, you’re not present enough. Be present. Calm down. Be a beginner, even if you’ve been playing for thirty years. To be an efficient learner, you have to be able to identify what slows down and inhibits the learning process. Your own mind is usually the biggest culprit.

You should not be thinking about a single thing when you’re learning. You should be focused on the task at hand. Focusing and being present aren’t synonymous with think-ing. Don’t think. Concentrate.

Let yourself make mistakes. Mistakes are the sound of you learning something. The bigger your ego, the harder a mistake is to handle. If you think your ego is you, gargan-tuan amounts of joy will be absent from your drumming. Your ego is not you. Your mind is not you. When you play drums and you feel joy, when you are present, when you’re not competing, when you’re not thinking, when you are at peace as you play: that is you.

This is the reason I play drums. It is medi-tative, it brings me into the now. Into the eternal moment, whereby keeping time I am here, I am present. There is no mind in the moment, but I’m hyper-aware-awake, listen-ing, acutely observant of every little happen-ing, every sensation, every sensation.

This is the essence of listening. To focus is to concentrate; to be aware is to observe. When your mind thinks it sets off a firecracker racket in your head that makes it impossible to focus. Your mind is always in the past and in the future, and never in the now. Observe it and you’ll see.

What happens when you make a mistake as a student? Why are you so hard on your-self? What are you expecting of yourself? No one is in the study room with you, why do you pretend anyone else but you can hear your mistakes? It’s all in your head.

Take it easy. Relax. It’s just you. Make yourself adjustable to the problem. If the lick is five beats over four and you’re trying to learn how that all fits together, the lick does not judge you or your abilities. The lick just is. You must make yourself be like the lick.

Just be! The lick doesn’t search for other licks and compare its own musical sound-ness and coolness and inventiveness to other licks. The lick doesn’t have a problem with its identity. The lick doesn’t troll You-Tube and comment on the pages of other licks and get into arguments with other licks. The lick doesn’t compete, it just plain exists.

Be like the lick. Be a scale in C# minor. Be an elm tree with its arms stretched wide. A

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student who hears their own mind when they learn, a student who doesn’t just use their mind for solely understanding the counting and structural rules of the problem is a stu-dent that is seriously impeded.

To be a mature student is to observe. The fact that something is difficult to learn or play won’t be a problem anymore. You’ll have learned that your emotions aren’t you either. When you can watch your emotions and your mind, you’ve got it. Learning will be so much easier, whatever level of difficulty the lick may be.

Struggling with coordination is a cerebral issue, not a mental one. Coordination has nothing to do with the mind. If your confi-dence is wrapped up in your mind, the dif-ficulty of the problem will be magnified expo-nentially. Confidence has nothing to do with the mind!

Confidence is physical. There’s way more intelligence in how your body develops mus-cle memory, for example, than in what your mind knows. There’s far more intelligence in what your blood knows about you just in swirling around your body at sixty cycles per minute than in what your grey matter knows,

just sitting there in your head like a crusty ol’ bastard.

Be your blood. Achieve the moment and be proud. Your mind, with its incessant chat-ter and commentaries—with its constant judging and comparisons, with its depen-dence on the past and future (time) in order to exist and to keep you and your happiness smothered—is not you. To know a tree, you don’t have to think about it. Just observe it. Look at it, touch it. Study it. Listen to it creak, watch it sway. Watch it be.

To understand a bunch of notes on a page, you don’t have to think about them. Observe how they’re put together. Just look at them. Listen to them. Study them without desire and without judgment. If you play the notes through your mind, it will show. When the notes have entered your body, then you’ll be able to use them musically. In order to acquire a physical ease (or is that physica-lese?) with the material, the mind must be by-passed.

Let yourself make mistakes. Let yourself be a beginner. There’s an infinite amount of joy there. 8 

Adam Hay is a highly sought after Toronto based educator and freeelance drummer. Click below to visit his website.

www.adamhay.net

Double Bass Fill Ideas Part I : by Ryan CarverNow we’re going to go over some double bass ideas. I like to take one basic pattern and play it as many ways as possible. We will start with a basic pattern, then I wrote a bunch of different fill ideas to practice it. Keep all the notes clear and even in volume. Start slow. When your comfortable, play the fills with a groove.

www.carverdrums.com

Ryan Carver is a world reknown educator with a private practice based out of Brick, New Jersey. Ryan proudly en-dorses Beatnick Rhythym Analyzer from Onboard research and Carver Drums custom snare drums. Ryan is a member of Vic Firth Education Team, The Hudson T.I.P. program and the Percussive Arts Society.

Click on the links below to visit him on the web or to email Ryan your questions and groove requests. For videos of Ryan’s lessons click on his Youtube link.

got gear?The Black Page is looking for gear

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If you make drums, sticks, cymbals, widgets, pedals, or anything to do with drumming, we’d like to hear from you. Whether you sell five

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Reviews will appear monthy and will include a weblink to your company’s website.

Bruce AitkenMarion Bridge, Nova ScotiaContact Info:bruce_cbidrumfest@yahoo.comwww.bruceaitken.net

Jayson BrinkworthRegina, SaskatchewanContact Info:jayzdrumz@yahoo.cawww.jaysonbrinkworth.comwww.musicinthehouse.ca

Damian GrahamVictoria, British ColumbiaContact Info:info@damiangraham.comwww.damiangraham.com

Adam HayToronto, OntarioContact Info:earthtoadam@gmail.comwww.adamhay.net

Sean Jesseau: Music WorkshopThunder Bay, OntarioContact Info:seanjesseau@hotmail.comwww.musicworkshopdirect.comHand drumming/kit drumming

Chris LessoToronto, OntarioContact Info:chrislesso@sympatico.ca

The Black Page is looking for a few good educators. The Global Educa-tors Database is published every month in The Black Page. To submit your contact info to our database, email Sean at: theblackpagemagazine@gmail.com

Listing is free for all pro/semi-pro educators. Please provide reference material to be considered.

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AUSTRALIADan SlaterMelbourne, VictoriaContact Info:slaterslater@hotmail.comwww.drumhappy.net

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Mike MichalkowVancouver, British ColumbiaContact Info:mikemichalkow@gmail.comwww.mikemichalkow.com

Randy RossWoodstock, New BrunswickContact Info:fnordpow@gmail.com

Al WebsterToronto, OntarioContact Info:alwebster007@gmail.comwww.alwebster.com

Chris BrienKowloon, Hong KongContact Info:chris@chrisbrien.comwww.chrisbrien.com

Richard “Doc” SpoonerMuri bei Bern, SwitzerlandContact Info:www.thedrumworks.netinfo@thedrumworks.netSkype : doc-spoons

Stefano AshbridgeLos Angeles, CaliforniaContact Info:stefanoashbridge@gmail.comwww.drumlessonsinLA.com

Jake BurtonNashville, TennesseeContact Info:burtonjc100@yahoo.comwww.jakeburtonmusic.com

Ryan CarverBrick, New JerseyContact Info:carverdrums@yahoo.comwww.carverdrums.com

Chris DeRosaNew York, New YorkContact Info:chris@chrisderosa.comwww.chrisderosa.com

Dom FamularoNew York, New YorkContact Info:www.domfamularo.com

Sean J. KennedyAmbler, PennsylvaniaContact Info:drummer@seanjkennedy.comwww.seanjkennedy.com

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Dave McAfee Mount Juliet, TennesseeContact Info:davedrums4toby@comcast.netmyspace.com/davemcafee

David NorthrupMurfreesboro, TennesseeContact Info:www.davidnorthrup.com Intermediate to Pro Level

Mike OttoBaltimore/Westminster, MarylandContact Info:mike@mikeottodrums.commikeottodrums.com

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“A lot of what we do is still about invention in the moment. Although you have the structure of the songs, you’re not really sure what will happen in the middle of it, and that’s the thrill of it. You can’t practice that.”

THE FINAL WORDIan Paice