How to Build Your Drumming Cred

“Street cred” ... it's about as good as it gets. It means you've survived in the wild and garnered a goodly amount of experience and respect. The music business can be quite a jungle, and the best way to beat your path through it is to have supporters on the inside. By that I mean that your most basic goals are to show people that you know your stuff and are willing to take on the challenge and the responsibility, and for that you need credibility.

And just how do you develop this valuable cred? Well that's going to take some work.

1. Be Worthy
The first step is to become a worthwhile player. You need to have ALL the necessary skills and knowledge to tackle a gig. You also need to demonstrate that it's about the music and the ensemble. Like the old expression says, they won't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

3. Get Out
Get out to playing situations as often as you can. If you’re not out playing yourself, you should be out listening to other, preferably better, players, and not just drummers. There are lots of venues having open stage events. Go. Sit in. Act like a pro and meet as many people as you can. Ask for business cards. Hand out your own business card (Don’t have one? Tsk, tsk).

3. Stay Out
Once you've begun to build and nurture your ‘support network’, get involved with these people. It needn't be much ... an occasional phone call, text, email, or quick chat at the music store. Also make it out to the clubs to just hang and show that you want to support their work.

4. Show & Tell
Having something tangible can help. A published article or interview suggests you are someone to pay attention to. A teacher with a book is highly respected. Online videos are a great way to market your skills. Be sure to have ‘samples’ with you at all times. Anything that you can put into people’s hands increases the chances of them remembering you. So business card, CD, thumb drive filled with videos, actual press kit ... whatever works for you (and your budget).

5. You need an online presence
Get a website, a YouTube page, a social media campaign … they’re not optional these days. Keep in mind that these are powerful marketing tools when used wisely. What you post should be related to your music activities and of the highest quality you can manage. Keep personal views out as much as possible, and make sure your pages can be found easily. If you’ve written a book or had media attention, it’s OK to plug it.

6. Modesty is good, however …
You don’t want to brag or name drop, but you need to let people know that you’ve got something to offer. It isn’t hard. If they ask, you then have permission to disclose ("Since you ask …"). Otherwise, you can work it into the conversation, “Your guitar player reminds me of when I was playing with (insert famous name here).” Perhaps not overly tactful, but you needn’t be shy about mentioning your accomplishments and that you’re serious about your work and your career.

Occam Was Onto Something

The philosophical and scientific principal known as Occam’s Razor is attributed to William of Ockham, a medieval monk who lived from about 1287 to 1347. He advocated the problem-solving principle that the simplest explanation is the best and therefore most appropriate. Aristotle, too, subscribed to the idea, and Ptolemy wrote: It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.

 

A Closer Shave
The ‘Razor’ is a metaphor for the act of cutting away the excess. It’s like the prescription for sculpting a horse: Just remove everything that doesn’t look like a horse. A good musical model is Latin music. It often calls for a number of drummers and rhythms to support the music, but when you remove all the ancillary bits, what you’re left with is the ‘Clave ’, a 2-bar, 5-note figure that is the backbone of all Latin music. Once you understand the clave, you can then build on it to produce something interesting.

K.I.A.S.A.P., B.N.S.  (Keep It As Simple As Possible, But No Simpler)
We’re all familiar the modernized version: Keep It Short & Simple. Good advice most of the time, but it’s the ancients’ belief that the best course of action is to always remove as much extraneous detail as possible to arrive at the core of the matter. A firm grasp of the fundamentals is the key to real understanding.

That’s too simple for me
We’re not aiming to keep it simple for the sake of keeping it simple. What we’re going for, instead, is to reduce the layers of complexity, the clutter, the added frippery -- in short, the noise -- that keeps us from discovering the underlying essence. This will allow us to construct a more solid foundation.

Micro Practice
We do ‘micro practice’ all the time. We work on a single thing: single strokes, double strokes, lines from Stick Control and the like. Why? Because it works. Reducing our focus to a single item reaps big rewards. When learning a new figure, I will often take a 2-beat or even a 1-beat section and work on it exclusively. Then, when I tackle the whole thing, I’ve got a good handle on each part.

Where’s the clave?
There’s a Simon Phillips video on Drumeo that confirms the clave theory. His band, Protocol, was working on one of Simon's compositions called Undeviginti. It’s a fairly basic composition, except that it’s in 19/8. He got a call from the keyboardist Otmaro Ruiz who simply said, “What’s the clave?” He knew that once he understood the essence -- the clave – he’d be off and running ... as was Simon.

The goal is not to shun or avoid complexity, but complexity will come more easily and be more solid if the underlying parts are fully understood.

Simon Phillips Interview on Drumeo:  https://youtu.be/prZZyLHLFbA
Skip to the clave reference:  https://youtu.be/prZZyLHLFbA?t=2335
For more on the clave, see: The Latin Clave Demystified