Mark Guiliana played one of the best attended concerts at the 2016 North Sea Jazz festival. Prior to his show with the legendary John Scofield and Brad Mehldau, he gave a clinic at the Jazz Café at the festival. While commenting 'No applause for practice,' after showing two of his treasures of exercises, he actually showed the drummers in the room a higher level on drum approach. Mark taught two great lessons that we feature here: his 2 note exercise and the 7 drum sounds exercise.
You can just sit down, watch what he does, take some time to let it sink in and watch it again before trying it at home. This is some truly amazing drum stuff.
Mark Guiliana - 2 note exercise In this lesson, Mark Guiliana takes practicing a little bit further. Watch how he improves his accuracy for playing time. The video starts with the regular exercise of eight notes to triplets to sixteenth notes.
Then, he takes it to another level by playing only the first two notes of each beat. This exercise derived from the idea that when every second note of each rate is played accurate, the rest of the notes will be better in place as well.
Mark Guiliana - the 7 drum sounds exercise In addition to his '2 note exercise', Mark has another exercise to have a good foundation for building your drum vocabulaire. Based on the seemingly simple starting point that your basic drum set has 7 sounds. Devided in three groups, the 7 drums sounds Mark explains are:
Watch as he explains, plays and shows you how you can go on playing endlessly without even making any 'real' music! These are just two of his methods for better understanding of indepence, time and accuracy.
Videos recorded at North Sea Jazz 2016 where Mark Guiliana played with the John Scofield, Brad Mehldau & Mark Guiliana trio.
Mark Guiliana's Gear Drums: Gretsch (Brooklyn series)
