Adam Silverman : Nashville Session and Touring Drummer

I had a really interesting conversation with a drummer friend of mine last week about playing with a click track, and it inspired me to write a little ditty about it. He basically said that he wasn’t being asked to play in church as frequently because he was having trouble staying with the click track. Now I won’t agree that this is a wise way for churches to choose their players, but without going into a huge rant about church “auditions” I’ll just keep it here, and talk about how to getting better with a click track for those of you that are struggling with it. Here the top reasons why drummers struggle with the click track.

1. They don’t practice with a click.

   A lot of guys will practice all day long with no click track, and then expect that when one is turned on, they’ll just get it. It definitely doesn’t work that way at all. Playing to a click is something that takes practice on it’s own much like drumming itself, you can get sloppy if you stay away from it for a while. So first off, if you aren’t practicing to a click change that now and within a few weeks you’ll be 100 times better.

   I’d recommend playing very simple beats and fills to a click, see where you’re struggling, if you’re good on your own you’ll be able to help drive a band much better. This will also drastically improve your time when the click isn’t running. Trust me, you’ll quickly see where you struggle. Ever hear a song take off on that big drum fill, big cymbal crash at the end and then the band follows about a split second later, that’s a symptom of no click that needs to be resolved if you wanna work, or play at church in this case.

2. You can’t hear the click.

   If the click is the last thing you put in your ears it’ll get buried, and your overall volume will be too loud to compensate. Make sure the drums are all good in your ears, get the click set now with your drums playing, than add in the other players on top of the bottom you’ve created. If anything interferes with the click, take that instrument down so you have click on the higher side of your mix. As you get better with the click you can lower the volume down a lot, but when you’re starting out, keep it hotter than you think you’d like, trust me you’ll be thankful when everything kicks in.

   The goal here is that eventually the click is pretty low in your mix. That way you can make it sound and feel better by moving in and out of the click, the difference here is that you’re practiced so much that you’re doing it on purpose. In the early stages keep the click loud.

3. You have the wrong subdivisions.

   If you’re playing a song at 65bpm with a quarter note click you’re going to get lost. The longer between clicks the more likely you, or someone else, will get off the click. Keep it 8th notes as long as you can stand it. I always prefer the quarter notes to be accented, but just anything but a straight quarter will help you out a lot. For 6/8 tunes or other odd time you have to figure out what works for you, but generally I’ll still keep 8ths as much as I can.

4. The other players are off.

   This is a tough one to swallow, but if the other guys are getting off the click when you are playing, and it’s pushing you around, you are failing at your job. You are the captain of the ship, you have to push the other players where you wanna go. If they are dropping time when you aren’t playing a full groove, keep time with you hat or your ride during the down sections. That way they are still listening to you. That will teach the band to listen back to the drums and will cause them to tighten up to you, and if you’re tight to the click, you have a tight band.

   Playing with a click is the #1 way to tighten up a band and as drummers are really do need to be prepared for this. Modern music is almost always cut to a click track which means the days of winging it live are over. We are always going to emulate recorded music when we play live, so if the music we are emulating is very tight and accurate, we’re going to need to replicate that when we are playing the songs live. As music changes so must we or we’ll get left behind.

So, though I don’t agree that falling off the click is a good reason to replace a drummer at a church service, in the professional music world it’s going to create a huge problem if you’re looking for work. So woodshed with that click running all the time and get used to it. Think of it like a very comfortable blanket that you take with you everywhere and I bet the gig callbacks will go up. Good luck, click click click click click peeps!

This is a video that I was a part of with Doug Price, Chris Lockwood, and Jason Barton. We were stranded in a lodge in Canada for 48 straight hours, and this viral video was the result of that time we spent together. It was really fun getting to be a part of this, though I am not drumming on it, it’s still pretty awesome :) Enjoy!!

Here is a Songo Groove out of the drumming book Groove Essentials 1.0 by Tommy Igoe. If you don’t have the book I’d highly recommend that you go buy it NOW!! It’s an amazing book filled with all kinds of grooves to either teach you some chops, or really to allow you to work on your sight reading and session playing. I love working these things out. Hope you enjoy this Songo!!

This is another bad-a Songo groove that I was working on the other day. It’s a derivative of one that I found in my Afro-Cuban drumming book. I’ve been spending a lot of time working on these grooves just to develop them into more pop grooves. But this one is just a straight up killer Songo that’s pretty quick and very traditional sounding. Please keep in mind, this groove only works if you don’t have a percussionist playing with you. If you ever did this on a gig with a percussion section I’m pretty sure they’d beat you in the streets for it :)

A little taste of 33Miles at the wired worship week of 2010. That was such a cool opportunity for us to spend a lot of time in one place for a change. We had some time to get to know some of the staff, some of the kids, and just really enjoyed getting to lead worship for a change. I find that my playing changes so much when I am doing worship tunes. It starts to become less and less about chops, and more about keeping some really solid time and really letting the groove speak for itself. It was a great break from my usual chops playing and I enjoyed it.

On a personal level, I loved interacting with the kids and watching them all serve God in their own communities. We saw kids re-working an entire goodwill warehouse, kids doing painting and construction, kids playing soccer and football with little kids in the community. It was such a blessing to be able to see God using these kids and I really loved being a part of it.

Enjoy the video peeps!!

So I am out with 33Miles on their current Summer Block Party tour. They are co-headlining with Aaron Shust, and guess what, I get to play with both 33Miles and Aaron Shust. If that wasn’t cool enough, last week I had the privilege of filling in for Pocket Full of Rocks as well. So two new artists, 14 new songs, 3 days to learn them all. So first of all, let me say that I really enjoyed working with all of the different artists, and yeah, it was a little tiring each night, but I could definitely get used to playing like that every day on tour. It was pretty awesome.

For me personally, there is always the question, what did I learn from it? I think I learned about the term “flipping the switch”. Pocket Full of Rocks is an amazing worship band, They have some really up tempo rock worship tunes, and some really powerful ballads. 33Miles is hard hitting Pop/Rock music live, where I push my chops and skills each night to really bring energy and musicianship to their show. For Aaron, he’s a much more vibey and chilled out worship leader. His songs are really cool, but it’s a completely different vibe than 33 or PFOR. So I had to learn how to very quickly flip the switch. Become one drummer, than another, than another, all while still being myself. That was the hardest part for me. That’s the part of me that is still learning what to play, when to play it, and the part of me that’s going to make an amazing session player out of me one day… I hope :)

The other thing I learned was to trust my charts. To be honest, I didn’t have enough time before coming out on the tour to sit down and learn a ton of new songs, I had sessions and other commitments, so I was really sight reading with a groove and a tempo. I kept finding myself battling between my ears and what I was seeing on my charts. I think I learned to trust both of them equally. It’s easy to miswrite a chart, it’s also easy to have your ear tricked by a 6 instead of a 2 chord that makes you think you’re off. So in situations like the beginning of this tour, the key is trust everything you have at your disposal, and rely on experience to get you through.

It was awesome, I am looking forward to working with Aaron for the rest of the tour, as well as continuing to rock with 33Miles. Can’t wait get back out there and hit up some more shows! Hope to see some of you out there!!