Adam Silverman : Nashville Session and Touring Drummer

This is one of the very few times a year when 33Miles actually plays in Nashville, and this is for an amazing cause, so if you’re around please come out and join us as we raise money for a very important cause, and for one my best friends!! The concert information is as follows:

When : Tuesday August 31st at 6:30 PM, doors open at 6.
Where: Rolling Hills Community Church Warehouse (view map)
Cost: $10 pre-sale, and $12 at the Door
Get your tickets online right now – visit the Courage to Conquer Blog for more information on ticket sales!!

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!!

My first in a series of videos. This is taken from Tommy Igoe’s “Groove Essentials 2.0″. It’s a minus-drums play along where you fill in the drum parts. This is a great exercise in reading, technique, musical styles, etc. It’s pretty awesome. Hope you enjoy it!!

If you have ever asked yourself the question, “why do I suck at this style of music”, I can almost promise you that it has more to do with your ears than your hands and feet. Unless you’re trying to play Metal and you don’t have a double bass pedal or something like that :). Seriously though, I’d take a wild guess that if you’re struggling with a certain style of music, it’s because you don’t listen to it enough.

I self admittedly struggle with worship music, not playing it chops-wise, but really getting the feel of worship music is tough for me. Why? You guessed it, because I don’t listen to it enough. I know it’s strange, a drummer in the Christian music world that doesn’t really listen to Christian music. I’d go into my full dissertation of why, but I don’t want to get into that on here today… haha. It all boils down to what I grew up listening to, that’s the kind of music that I play best, but I have recently starting using Pandora Radio to listen to Gospel Music, Christian Rock, R&B, and HipHop, and it’s really changing my ears and my playing by leaps and bounds every week.

If you’re struggling with something, listen to it. Throw it on in the car, listen while you’re doing something at home, or if you’re really a listener, sit down and write out some charts to some of the songs. Analyze what the drummer, bass player, guitar play, and everyone else on the record are doing. If you really want to understand a style of music, that’s the best way to do it. You’ll be amazed the next time you try to play it, suddenly it’s about 50% more natural the first time around.

So what am I doing this morning, listening to Chris Tomlin :) Have a great day folks!!

This past week I had the awesome opportunity to do a session at my friend Derek West’s studio in Nashville. It was an amazing experience working with some seriously talented players. I was able to work with Mike Payne, James Gregory, and Todd Roberson. They were all awesome musicians and really pushed me to create cool parts to fit songs.

Just in case you were wondering, this is how sessions seem to go in Nashville. As a drummer, throw your chops out the window, and learn to think super simple, super clean, and super fast!! It’s all about the groove, the feel, and the songs. Make them sound like something people have already heard, but make it creative, that’s the goal :)

So you go into the session and everyone sets up your stuff, you get sounds, check your ear levels and you’re ready to walk through the songs. Keep in mind, you’ve never heard this song before, and you don’t really have anything to work with but an acoustic guitar and scratch vocal. Sometimes, you don’t even have that. So, you all sit down, look at a number chart, listen to the song, and talk through the basic form of the tun. Literally, you walk into the tracking room, play a verse and chorus to get the feel, and then you’re red and tracking. Generally you’ve got 2-3 takes to get it right, maybe an overdub or two, and at that point, you have a song. Bing, bang, boom :)

It’s amazing how fast this process happens. To create a song from a work tape in about 20 minutes is just amazing. Now, these aren’t masters that are going to be reproduced or we’d definitely spend some more time on them, but for excellent sounding demos, this definitely does the job!! It really pushed me to think on my feet, be confident about my playing, count the band in right, read the charts down perfectly, play neat and clean. Man it’s so tough, but it is such an amazing experience, and something I hope I get to do more often.

So big props to Derek and James for brining me in. It was awesome!!

I just hopped online today and saw that a picture of my pretty little face has landed on the Paiste Cymbals website. I know it seems like a silly thing to say that’s an accomplishment, but to me, it’s very exciting. Right now my cymbal setup consists of the following, and I absolutely love the sounds I am getting.

• 14″ New Signature Hi-Hats
• 17″ and 19″ Signature Reflector Series Crashes
• 20″ Signature Full Ride
• 18″ Dark Energy Crash with 2 Sizzle Rivets