More on New Breed

Since that last piece about the book The New Breed, by Gary Chester, I've been working with that book fairly seriously— I can already play the drums, it won't kill me to spend some time trying out somebody else's hard thing. 

...my writing persona apparently seems opinionated to some people, but I'm very suggestible. If somebody I trust tells me what to do, I'll go with it. I may not care if a lot of open handed drumming enthusiasts are into this book, but when some former Chester students, professionals doing demanding jobs— e.g. Broadway shows, Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil— advocate for it, I'll take it seriously. So despite some reservations I have about some aspects of the method, it's proof of usefulness and effectiveness for some people who are doing real work. 

So, having spent more time with the book, I have some more thoughts on it: 

Broadly, The New Breed is a framework for practicing multiple ways of counting or singing over some drum set ostinatos, while reading an independent melody part, a la Syncopation— though more 16th note oriented.

As I noted last time, as an independence concept, it's rather simplified— not simple to do, it's often extremely difficult— and similar to the massive second volume of Chapin's Advanced Techniques book, which deals with layering unrelated rhythms in different limbs. Possibly New Breed is the highest practical form of that “pure” independence concept. 

There are some other second order things, that are more particular to Chester, that have not been universally adopted by any stretch— the open handed angle, the unusual set up he recommends. Not agreeing with those things and not wanting to do thatm are part of the reason I never used the book much. But on those players' recommendations I'll play the exercises, adapted for a normal drum set, even as I don't plan to develop the open handed thing in my actual playing. 

All of that together it amounts to a method for developing some deep time and coordination superstructure. Dave Weckl is an example of what I mean by that word— hearing him play, you're hearing a lot of superstructure: 

[h/t to David Crigger for the video]

Clearly multiple layers of stuff happening there— not just in what he's actually playing. You don't just learn to do that on the job, you can't just try to cop it. I don't regularly listen to a lot of players like that. For comparison, you could listen to Billy Hart, who would be a more natural, organically developed player. 

That counting/singing imperative, combined with the hard independence problems, is the main thing— developing a heavy duty internal time/coordination matrix. Working on it has often felt similar learning some Bach on the piano— i.e., slow and painstaking— which is for me the interesting part of it.  

As a grand method of drumming, what I'm missing with this book is a simple core concept. For example, on this site, the major doctrine is that what we do on the drums should be fundamentally simple in concept, for ease of execution, and for improvising. It's based on one rhythm, that is the rhythm you sing, read, and play. We might elaborate on it or orchestrate it on the drums in some complicated ways, but it's fundamentally about one rhythm. With New Breed is the core concept is the mass of work that went into doing it.  

I'm also missing fundamental bodies of vocabulary. It's not a complete what-you-play book. The Reed systems, Gary Chaffee's sticking and linear systems, etc are all bodies of vocabulary— the substance of what you actually play on the drums. New Breed is certainly very thorough on the subject of groove creation, but that doesn't cover everything you actually play. 

So: it's not a complete drumming method. I think its real purpose is as a finishing system for professionally-bound players. Normally, drummers learn a whole ton of stuff fast, between about age 12-21; New Breed seems to be about disciplining that and correcting a lot of detail, ironing things out, justifying everything into a nice professional package.     

About the open handed angle: Part of the reason Chester suggests riding with the left is that it's funkier, he says; because it's controlled by the right side of the brain, which is said to be more creative. That is now a discredited theory, and I would suggest that it's because the left hand is less conditioned for that role, and will remain so, despite the work we're doing on it with the book. I consider the work on it here to be independence practice, not a total drumming orientation. 

I'll be writing more on this as I figure out as I figure it out— what the benefits are, how to incorporate it with my normal practice/teaching methods, how to approach it without being a full blown devotee, etc. 

Looking at The New Breed

Let's talk about the book with the funny looking Ludwig drums with the Silver Dot heads on the cover— and all the ugly Paiste ColorSound cymbals, and Simmons SDS-5 hexagonal drum pads. 

Yes, I'm talking about The New Breed, by Gary Chester. It's one of the big hard books the drumming community likes to talk about. While it hasn't been universally adopted— lot's of people, like me, don't use it, have never used it— it has been very influential in developments in drumming since the 90s. It's a coherent grand system for playing the drums created in a time when there weren't a lot of coherent grand systems for that.  

The book became a thing coinciding with Dave Weckl— who studied with Chester— becoming an extremely hot drumming item in the mid 1980s.  

“Every time I'd walk into a lesson, he'd come up with a different system, and I'd feel r___ded. Then I'd go home, practice it, and get it down to where it was cooking. When I'd go back, he'd tell me something else to do with it, and I'd feel r___ded all over again. It was great though; his lessons are such a challenge.”

- Dave Weckl on studying with Chester 

Visit Scott K. Fish's site to read the entire interview. 

After Weckl, there were a series of smaller drumming sensations— e.g. Joel Rosenblatt— who came out of Chester's studio, that cemented this as a thing to do. In more recent years the open handed drumming thing has really taken off, and this is one of the first books that advocated that in a serious way.  

So let's look closely at what's in it. If you don't own it, you can certainly find pirated pdfs online to look at while you read this. But buy it. It's $18, nothing. 

In the Concepts part of the book, pp. 4-7, Chester lays out his doctrine: 

• Learn everything on the drum set both right hand and left hand lead. 
• Use a funny set up, with hihats, ride cymbals, and floor toms on both sides. 
• Each hand stays on “its” side of the drum set. 
• Singing and counting— do it, sing each of the parts while playing. 

Everything that follows is in aid of those first three points, as the best vehicle for creative reading and groove making on the drums. If you agree with those priorities, you can commence working your way through the book in order. If not, you might want to be more selective in how you use it.

There are 39 systems— combinations of repeating rhythms for three limbs— to be played while reading an independent melody part played with the fourth limb. The reading is not unlike what is in Syncopation, first with 8th note based rhythms, then 16th notes. The advanced reading pages are built on repeating two measure phrases.  

The systems mostly follow standard pop timekeeping conventions of backbeats on the snare drum / ride rhythm on a cymbal. All systems have a right hand lead form, and a left hand lead form— 50% of the materials are dedicated to learning to play time “open handed.”

Here is what is generally happening with them: 

• System 1: A warm up, with the hands playing unison 16ths on the hihats. 
• Systems 2-13: Conventional forms of timekeeping, combinations of simple cymbal and left foot rhythms, bass drum plays melody.   
• Systems 14-15 and 18-19: One hand covers the cymbal and snare drum with the bass drum playing the melody, then the other hand playing the melody. 
• Systems 16-17: Hands play alternating 8th notes between a floor tom and cymbal, with the bass drum playing the melody. 
• Systems 20-25: Simple, unusual, coordination problems. 
• Systems 26-29: Advanced, but conventional, timekeeping combinations.
• Systems 30-39: Conventional timekeeping combinations with the left foot independent. 

Summarizing which limbs handle the independent parts— mostly bass drum, a lot of left foot, a little bit with each hand. 

• Systems 1-17 and 22-29: bass drum
• Systems 18-21: a hand on a floor tom
• Systems 30-39: left foot 
  
  

Getting into the advanced systems starting on p. 24: 

• Systems 1-4: bass drum independence vs. particular, unusual linear pattern in the hands. 
• Systems 5-6: bass drum independence vs. a basic fusion cymbal rhythm with backbeats. 
• Systems 7-8: hand independence vs. basic fusion cymbal rhythm plus alternating 8ths in the feet. 
• Systems 9-10: bass drum independence vs. the linear pattern above, played with an alternating sticking. 

That linear pattern, which is used on several systems, is a little strange, I don't understand the logic for for having that be the one thing of its type: 

Things get vastly more complicated with the composite systems starting on p. 38. There you basically extract one measure from all the playing you did in the first part of the book, and replace one of the system parts— playing all the reading pages with that part. 

That's an order of magnitude more difficult than anything done so far, and virtually endless. This is the spot in the book I would like to see much more fully developed, finding a middle state between the simple (but very demanding and time consuming) first part, and the vast, extremely difficult second part. Suggest some more practical rhythms for the new complex part of the ostinato.

Which we kind of get here, with a standard pop or bossa rhythm in the bass drum, that is only slightly more complex than everything in the basic systems: 

 After that the composite system examples are kind of random. Personally, I would want to pick and choose the new part for practicality, and would like to have seen that reflected in the book.  

My brief experience with it: 

After writing most of this post I decided to sit down and actually play some of it, so I went through the first five systems— including the “open handed” ones— with all eight pages of reading, counting quarter notes out loud. I've never worked on learning to play open handed, but it was basically easy after doing the harmonic coordination stuff from Dahlgren & Fine, and my own related system. It became kind of an endurance exercise. As after doing any kind of serious endurance exercise... things move a lot easier when you're done, even things not covered in the exercise. It was cool. 

It had that result for me, I think, because I've been playing for a long time, and have a lot of real playing content under my belt, and a developed musical ear. This is not an ideas book; if you don't have any ideas in your ear, it won't provide them. 

I also ran all eight pages of reading for left hand independence in a songo feel, and I do like the reading pages for that, and for the intended purpose running Chester's systems. They're well constructed to be progressive in difficulty and challenging, but not ridiculous— the ridiculous part is in how they combine with the systems.  

Thoughts: 
The playing theory here is actually rather primitive, dealing with “pure” independence, based on layering unrelated rhythms, rather than interdependence, with the parts connected and based on each other. Certainly that will be learned in some form while learning the systems, but it's not addressed directly in the method itself. 

The singing element seems to be a key part of this method, and you can actually do that with anything you practice— sing quarter notes, then offbeat 8th notes, then each of the parts of the pattern. Certainly that's possible with all the Syncopation systems. 

Making any kind of serious effort with this book would be a big deal. Certainly there will be hidden benefits beyond just learning the resulting patterns as vocabulary, as I observed above. Your concentration will certainly be improved— Chester mentions that, and Dave Weckl in his interview. I've noticed the same thing with other hard materials. It would be a massive journey, and there will be results you don't expect. 

Some perspective: 

I suggest reading Scott K. Fish's 1983 interview with Gary Chester. At that time, as this book was being written, Chester's studio career had ended about ten years earlier, and he had been teaching drums about six years— a very compressed timeline for developing this method. He's a forceful communicator and talks very intensely about his 20+ year studio career, and it's clear that that is his main orientation as a musician and a teacher. He states that his motivation with the book is for players to be able to do the impossible when it's asked of them on a recording date, or other demanding professional situations. 

It's also clear that he wasn't teaching it to all levels* of drummers— his students were highly ambitious, motivated players. He mentions firing students who weren't performing the way he wanted, who he felt would not represent him well as a teacher. 

[* - Update: Or was he? checking out some videos from his former students, a couple of them started with him when they were kids, and actually doing a very simplified form of the method here— the same principles, anyway— applied to Haskell Harr.]

So, I think the book serves a narrower purpose than is often assigned to it today, as it's a popular item with enthusiasts, who are fascinated with ambidexterity, and have fixated on it as a manual for reinventing the drum set. To me it looks like less of a grand theory of drumming, or a system for initially acquiring vocabulary, and more like a very large, brutal— and somewhat arbitrary— conditioning regimen for professionally-bound drummers. 

You don't start by crawling up Everest. The way most drummers develop is, they learn a lot in a few years. I started playing when I was 12, and played my first paying gig when I was 18, and I was a slow starter. You learn a lot very fast, and then spend the next ten years cleaning up after yourself, which I think is what this brutal slog of a book is for. 

Best books: Like Syncopation

For many years Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer (better known as just "Syncopation") by Ted Reed was virtually the only drum book I used. As I alluded to in the Joe Cusatis book post, I'm a big advocate of the interpreting-a-melody-line approach to practice, for which Syncopation is basically the Bible. Or Das Kapital, Origin of Species, whatever you like. It does have its limitations, which caused me to look into sources for similar materials. Here is a survey from my library:

Modern Reading Text in 4/4 by Louis Bellson. A classic in its own right. I find the majority of it a little too difficult for daily use- either Bellson is going way outside what is conventional in order to challenge the user, or maybe he is including things more likely to be encountered by horns. I use it primarily for its "10 Syncopated Exercises", which are long exercises similar to the ones in Reed. I haven't devised much in the way of practice methods adapted to the strengths of this book.

Odd Time Reading Text by Louis Bellson and Gil Breines. A thick book dealing with a wide variety of odd meters. There are several pages suitable for Syncopation-type applications, and quite a few more involving triplets and 16ths. Much of it is extremely difficult, in changing or */16 meters, which are frankly of limited value to me.

The Rhythm Book
by Martin Bradfield. Bradfield is a teacher in Pennsylvania who has self-published this book and two accompanying volumes of interpretive methods. Covers roughly the same territory as Syncopation, but with a number of rhythms Reed left out. Maybe the best companion volume of these, and a great value. Highly recommended.