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Hey!
Hello.
Hey, Jack!
Hey!
How are you doing?
How you doing man?
That was beautiful.
Thank you.
It's great to hear you play.
First of all, I want to say it's great that you're doing this video.
I know a lot of guys and myself included have been looking for you to do this kind of thing.
I've been checking you out for a lot of years.
and a number of questions. Now that I got you here, I'd love to ask you, you know,
just unlike what you just played, moving around through the different
grooves and a funk groove and a rock groove and a swing thing, you have like
this looseness, this way that you play that's really loose with a huge sound,
it's like almost effortless, and you know, one thing I just wanted to ask, like
physically, what are you thinking about? What's happening in here
physically, and you know, how this is all working, because it's all working
together, which is really beautiful, and what you do or any specific exercises
that you may have to develop some of this stuff. Okay, I'd be more than happy to
share that with you and the audience out there. One of the things is to visualize
being very relaxed and usually before you sit down at the instrument, you know,
you do some warm-ups, you know, could be single strokes, double strokes, you know.
Visualize yourself being very relaxed at the instrument, everything being very
balanced, and a couple of the exercises that I do, one is for the left hand,
particularly. I get complaints from drummers who tell me that their left
hand is a little slower than the right, so one exercise that was shown to me by
a very fine drummer named Clarence Johnston was an exercise which involves
the fulcrum, the fulcrum being just right here between the thumb and the second
finger. That muscle in there, you mean like this? Yeah, there's a muscle that needs to be
developed, so that as opposed to playing with, you know, your fingers, and which
only you can sustain for a little while, you develop the power and strength from
the fulcrum, like that, and that comes all the way up your upper arm, so that you
use the whole arm, so you're getting the power is really coming from up here, so
that when you do these exercises, which are, by the way, triplets, they're
triplets with the accents on the first beat, or you can change that accent and
vary it, and you start this very slowly, and as you gather more strength in the
fulcrum, you can speed up the tempo, and I'll demonstrate.
You can also change those accents around, and vary those accents, which are also
improve your strength of the fulcrum there.
Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's such a huge sound, being so relaxed, and I mean, in the way
you play, it's almost not even just when you're playing exercises, but in the way
that you play, it's all left-hand-wise, pretty open, and you know, really, you
know, finger-wise, and that's what gets that big sound, kind of. Yeah, when I
cradle the stick with my fingers, it's just really to cradle them. Right. As you can
see, the stick will come from here. You know, when I want to make even strong
accents, I'll come up like this. You see, rock drummers will do this, you know, so you come up, so you can get more
power there, you know. Also, in regard to looseness and relaxness, I notice some
drummers, you know, they always come to me and they say, well, you know, I was
tightened up when I play strong, so when the music gets intense, so I suggested
them that they do the reverse as they learn to relax, and it takes a lot of
practice because most of us are in the habit when the music gets emotional and
gets tension in it and gets, so to say, aggressive, we have a tendency to tighten
up, so the sound that one makes on the instrument is sort of choke sound.
Now, invariably, when you do this, you cut off the circulation of blood to the parts
of your body that you need more oxygen, you know, more blood flow, so when you
play stronger, my concept is that you relax and reverse that process,
and you then have to feel a balance within your body, feel the right
amount of tension and relaxation. It's that balance of both things. Between you
and the sticks, and just getting, like, working together with it. Right, right, so
that when you play, like single strokes, for instance, and you play them,
and also think of the sticks as being light in your hand, very light.
So, you see, when I played very strongly, I was relaxing everything, and also
the motion that I used when I played, you noticed, you noticed was the whole arm
turns with the elbow going out like this, like so, so you're getting complete
coordination with your shoulders and your elbows. And you play, like, single
strokes and double strokes and different rudiments, always trying to, always
maintaining this kind of... Yes, circular kind of motion, it's, you know, it's an
open motion, you have a space here, you know, some drummers tend to play like
this, you know, so their movement is choked, their movement is choked, but you'd
like to see this kind of motion happen, you know. Some of the drummers who get a
lot of power, a lot of strength like that, like Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, for
instance, if you watch them when they sit, there is this circle, this fulcrum, you
know, where they sit, where there's this space between their arms, you know, and
Elvin is very relaxed, very relaxed when he goes to make a sound, when he comes up
here, you know, and Tony takes a big full swing at his drums, and he sits right in
the center where he can, you know, really take a really good shot all around the
set of everything, you see, so it's important to keep that balance and
relaxness, and again, to play the drum set, to play it and make it project, you
know, you don't have to go really the drum set or overcome it, you have to make
friends with it, you know, it's, you know, you visualize thinking about the sound
that you extract from the set and project to the listener, so you have all
of these ideas integrating, coming together to work in combination to give
you a flow of ideas and creativity so that you can express yourself without
any physical interruptions when you're playing your ideas, and when you don't
have to worry about physically being tight, then you can relax and let your
creative ideas flow. Yeah, Jack, that was great, you know, the way physically when
you're talking about being open up here and playing on the drums, just what's
happening, fulcrum, and the way you play the cymbals and the sound you get, I know
the sound of your cymbals, the kind of cymbals that you use, I mean, we can get
into that in a minute, too, because I wanted to ask about them, but just in a
way that you play the sound that you get physically, sound off of the cymbal, does
this stuff apply to that, or is it physically motion-wise to move around to
get that loose swinging thing? Most definitely applies to that, and I'll give
a demonstration. Let's say, for instance, the ride cymbal, for instance, I use the
whole arm when I'm playing the cymbal, and I use the bounce, you know, controlling
the bounce on the stick when it comes off of the cymbal, so let's give an
example. I'll play some quarter notes, you can watch the movement of my arm when
I'm doing that. You can see the hand is pushing, the shoulder is pushing, and I want to play the ride beat.
Once again, I think that the stick is very light and flowing.
Was that like a finger thing, you know? No, it's just right here in the
falcon, right here, as you can see, right there, and it's just utilizing, you know,
the right amount of tension and relaxation, the falcon, and utilizing the
bounce. Let's try like a faster tempo, for example, so you can see there's no
fingers, they're just cradled in the stick.
So it's that pushing motion, a pushing motion that I'm talking about. Still real loose with
balance and working with the balance of what's happening. And also, at a
faster tempo, we'll try even a faster tempo where it really helps, you know.
Yeah, sounds so open. Yeah, and you're getting, you know, you're getting the most
out of a little bit, you know. You're making energy and physics work for you,
you know. And also, one suggestion for drummers who, you know, want to play very
long periods of time and very intense and very, very strongly, I highly
recommend that you warm up, do some warm-ups, practice singles, doubles,
rudiments. Yeah, this is also another exercise you might try, which is stretches,
you know, stretching each hand this way, holding it for a while, and doing the
reverse. It's just a stretch, you know, like dancers do, you know. Sometimes
musicians don't think of themselves as athletes, but we have to look at
ourselves as athletes, and athletes do warm-ups, and it really makes a
difference. It's like a boxer, you know, when you see the boxers coming out of the
room, and usually the boxer who wins the fight is the one who came out, and he's
got a sweat, you know, he's wet, he's loose, and the boxer who comes out doesn't
have a sweat, you know. He's tight, his rhythm is off, and usually he gets
knocked out in the early couple of rounds. And the same thing can be said for
drumming, particularly, which is an endurance type of thing. You want to, you know, just
do some stretches, you know, like, you know, some exercises like this, you
know, just get everything loose, touch your toes. Yeah, feet-wise, and, you know,
ways to loosen up your legs. Yeah. When you think about that kind of stuff. Yeah. Because you
have a lot of speed, and accuracy, and endurance with your feet, also, based on
wires and hi-hat. You do beautiful things between them. Yeah. So, ways to work on
that, to loosen that stuff up. Yeah, there are some exercises, there are some
exercises for that, which I would recommend. One exercise is some exercises
with the right foot, which are actually on the pedal, on the set. You can try
them off the set, too, but the reason I suggest with the drum set is because I
want to utilize the ride cymbal beat. Mm-hmm. And one exercise I like to talk
about is allowing your foot to follow your ride cymbal beat. So, you can start
by doing this.
And, as I said earlier, I suggest you start these exercises very slowly, you
know, so that you get comfortable with them. And, as you gain control at the
slower tempos, you can speed this up, this exercise up.
Now, the way I'm playing this right now is with my full foot on the beater. It's
not heel-toe right now, it's just the foot flat on the pedal. When I play
faster, then I'll go up with my toe, because I get asked this question a lot.
Right.
And that time, I was up on my toe for that one. And playing faster ideas, I
usually do that with my foot, with the foot on the, you know, on the toe, you
know. You get a little more speed that way? Yeah, I'm controlling the
spastic muscles, you know, when you get into that, you know, where you roll. I try
to control that in a way so that, besides just rolling, I like to play some
complete ideas, you know, examples like, you know.
And left foot-wise, I mean, hi-hat-wise, is that like figuring in terms of
breaking stuff up and moving around, any kind of... Well, yeah, with the hi-hat, it's
a matter of displacement. In other words, you're placing accents that you might
play here on the foot to the hi-hat, you know. So there are some exercises I do
recommend, like playing ride cymbal beats with the hi-hat.
And then for faster, you know, things, the triplets, you can try that too.
And for that, you notice I was using the toe for that, you know. And for faster
things, you know. That's also toe, if you notice. Things between the drum set, things
like...
Yeah, and ways of, you know, like if you incorporate that when you're thinking about playing time,
between your left hand and your feet, and you're breaking stuff up and moving it around, triplet kind of, just the way that big sound.
Yeah, well, when I'm moving things around, I'll give an example of that, for instance.
Yeah.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about the sound of the drums and the tuning.
I mean, one thing really always that struck me about the sound, your sound, is the really definite kind of like tunings that you go for.
I mean, there's so much tone and you play real melodically, you know, even when you're playing time or stuff like that.
I just want to get an idea, tuning-wise, what do you go for?
Do you think about different tunings for different tunes or styles of music?
But just tuning-wise, how do you feel about the different drums and stuff?
Well, tuning-wise, today, while we were filming this video, I have these tuned a certain way.
Actually, the way these are tuned are pretty broad in range so that I can play either straight ahead jazz forms or I can play like funk forms, you know.
So you kind of go for a tuning that would fit different things, not so radically, but different from one style to another.
Yeah. I mean, depending on the music situation, today I'm going to hear my toms tuned sort of like, sort of to a G dominant seventh chord.
And so we have the floor tom here, the 14 by 14, the 13, we have a B, you know.
Yeah, it's really like chord tones, like a scale.
Yeah, and when you have your drums tuned like this, melodically, you can relate this to the piano or the guitar.
There's always a melody, no matter what rhythm you're playing.
The drummer's quite obvious to himself and to the listener that you're playing melody, harmony, and rhythm.
So you have all these things going.
So yeah.
Yeah.
You find yourself playing with mallets.
I mean, do you kind of use these tunings even when you're playing with sticks and stuff like that?
Yes. You know, the mallets, for instance, if you notice, I'm using marimba mallets as opposed to timpani mallets,
because something about these marimba mallets that sort of bring out more overtones than, say, the timpani mallets,
although there's certain size and thicknesses, softness and hardnesses.
But I've found experimenting with these marimba mallets that I get the sound that I want on the cymbals and the drums.
I get more preferred sound from these.
And the other thing, speaking of cymbals, we talk about cymbals.
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about what's going on with these, specifically these cymbals and how you view cymbals and drums.
It's a little different than just playing time on them and stuff.
Well, again, I'll use the analogy of the piano or the harp, for instance.
To me, the cymbals are, to the drum set, what the sustain pedal is to the harp or the piano.
So you can play things, for instance, you know, on the drum set.
You have a sustained sound while you play something else.
Now, these cymbals, you might notice, are a little different looking than most cymbals.
These are cymbals that I designed in collaboration with the Sabian Cymbal Company up in Medectic, New Brunswick, Canada.
These are Jack DeGeneres' Signature Series.
And they're dark sound. They have a dark sound on them and a dry sound.
And one of the reasons for this is you get a real definite stick sound.
And one of the reasons that I designed these cymbals was because the drummer could play these cymbals and bear down with them,
and play them real hard without major overtone build-up so that you don't obscure the band when you're playing.
And also, from a hearing point of view, it's much more friendlier on the ears.
As we know, sometimes a ride cymbal that fills up.
Over a period of time, it has been proven that horn players and some drummers suffer loss of hearing.
Especially like top end, high frequency stuff.
Right, high frequency.
And the advantage of these cymbals is that even when you do bear down on them,
it's still a comfortable sound, it's not grating to the ears, and the drummer doesn't have to hold back.
You can really lay into them.
So the drummer can still dig in and feel like he's really bearing down without feeling like he's feeling intimidated.
Somebody's going to throw a stick at him or tell him to shut up.
And so this also gives a definite stick sound so that the musicians can always hear where the beat is.
Now, my hi-hats are also the same.
And you notice that these cymbals are not hammered or laid, they're not shiny.
And the reason being, at this stage in cymbal making, I found that the sound I was looking for was inherent in the cymbal at this stage before it goes into hammering and lathe.
So these hi-hats give a dog sound and a nice, thick, fat, meaty chick.
So they're really nice for playing funk things.
So these are crash cymbals, different AA crashes and thin crash.
I'm in the process of designing a Jack Dejanet Dark Crash cymbals and some improvements on the Signature Series hi-hat and also another line of ride cymbals soon to come, forthcoming.
It'll be a surprise.
Looking forward to that.
But again, like I said, the cymbals are like orchestral tones.
Yeah.
One of the questions I get asked quite frequently is, Jack, what are you thinking about when you're playing time and you're playing phrases that overlap the bar line?
And I'm going to attempt to demonstrate this with the help of Harvey.
And before we do that, I'd just like to explain, when I'm playing a time field, there is another timekeeper in my head that's keeping the time so that when I'm overlapping the phrases, there is someone that's keeping the time inside.
So when I'm playing a phrase of four bars or eight bars, I'm not thinking one, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two, three, four, four, two, three, four, two, three, four.
You know, I'm thinking or feeling the length of four bars or six bars or eight bars so that I'm feeling the phrase so that I can concentrate on the idea of the phrase and another timekeeper is keeping up the bar count.
But I'm not, you know, I don't have to deal with that.
I play the field of four bars, eight bars or 16 bars, or whatever the length of the solo form is.
So I'm going to demonstrate with the help of my friend Harvey, who's going to play or keep time with his hands on two and four, you know, clapping two and four, and I'm going to demonstrate my concept of phrasing.
So you ready, Harvey?
I'm ready.
Okay.
I'm going to count it off and here we go.
Okay.
make sure that's clear, because he was saying there's not enough emphasis on playing brushes
these days, and I'm just really curious about, you know, you're playing maybe some of the patterns
that you're doing, how you approach playing ballads, medium tempo things, and up tempo things, so.
Yeah, I'd be more than happy to talk about that. In this instance, I'd like to demonstrate
the ballad playing with the brushes, which is really a really fine art. It's very difficult,
as you know, unlike the stick, the rebound is not the same, so you really have to lift your wrist
in order to get things to happen. One of the examples I'd like to give concerning brush
brush work is a drum set is actually playing a ballad without the bass or the guitar or the
piano or the horn, and just having the drums just play the ballad, a ballad
complete within itself and an arrangement within itself, and because the way you listen to,
like a bass solo or a piano solo or a trumpet or saxophone solo, so I'm going to demonstrate
some variations on ballad playing with the brushes. Here we go. One, two, three, four.
Beautiful. You can really hear the melody in what you're playing. It really sounds like
the song really going for it. You talk a lot about that in terms of being musical,
playing music on the drums. What about like quicker tempos? I mean just really specifically,
I know a lot of guys even that do play brushes have difficulty playing up tempo. It's just really
difficult. Like you say, you don't get the rebound on the sound. Getting the sound out of the brushes
is a whole other thing. In itself, brushes are sort of a separate study on their own,
just practicing with those. As a matter of fact, if you could get your singles and doubles and
flams and the other rudiments happening with the brushes when you're playing sticks,
it would be that much cleaner. The other thing is in terms of touch and tone, this will also help
your dynamics and touch and tone being able to play the delicate as well as strong phrasing
with the brushes. So I'll give some examples. We'll take some medium tempos and then we'll go
up into the faster tempos. I'll slow it down and demonstrate the exact technique
that's being used and how to apply that. We'll take a medium tempo. One, two, one, two, three.
One, two, one, two, three.
So now we'll go into a real, real bright tempo, and I discovered a solution to that, and that
was playing a fast tempo.
Finally, you would play the right hand, and you'd be playing a wide cymbal on the snare
drum.
But now in faster tempos, it's almost impossible, it's possible, you have to really work on
it really hard.
But at a real faster tempo, I use a technique such as this, playing.
Using a sweeping motion with the left hand, so you get that swish sound.
So I'm going to do it at a much faster tempo, but it'll be very relaxed, very smooth.
So here we go, one, two, one, two, one, two, three, four.
One, two, one, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten, ten,
ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten.
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