ALARUM TOUR WITH OBSCURA (GER)

I’m super excited to be playing drums with Alarum as the main tour support for one of my favourite bands Obscura at the end of March! Sebastian Lanser from Obscura would have to be my favourite drummers at the moment, being one of those rare drummers that has a strong command over the skills required for both technical death metal and jazz fusion, and everything in between. The number of odd note groupings (5, 7 etc) on their latest album and the frequency of which they change is just mind boggling!

We’ll be playing a bunch of songs from the new Alarum album due out in a few months, as well as some songs from previous albums. It’ll be a nice mix of heavy stuff and jazzier stuff which should work nicely with Obscura!

Progfest 2019 + Dyssidia & Voros live footage

Hi All,

Some big shows to start the new year with Ivanyi playing on all 3 Progfest shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. There’s 3 international headliners this year with The Ocean, Monuments and Skyharbor all making the journey to Aus for these shows.

I managed to (just) successfully record the drum tracks for the Dyssidia album in late October - check out our Facebook page for some footage. More studio videos to come in the new year.

Here’s some footage from our show in Melbourne a few weeks ago (more footage also on our Facebook page):

And some drum cam from the Voros set at our EP Launch show in October:

New Voros EP + recording for new Dyssidia album

I’ve been pretty slack with posting on here lately, but I assure you, I’ve been busy! My band Voros released our new EP entitled ‘Malignancy’ on October 10 and celebrated with a launch show in Adelaide with Alarum as well as a few of our favourite local bands. I pulled double duties with Voros and Alarum which was challenging and tiring! I also played a metal festival with Alarum in Melbourne last month, then flew to Sydney the next day to play with Ivanyi in support of Intervals and Polyphia. That was a big weekend!

The new Voros EP is available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play etc. and is available to purchase on our bandcamp page. We’ve got one more show for the year on December 1st in Adelaide with NOTHING from Melbourne. We’ll be taking the new EP on the road early next year as well.

Live at the Malignancy Launch Show 13/10/18

In other news, Dyssidia have been working hard prepping the tracks for our upcoming full length album which is 10 tracks and about 70 minutes of very challenging progressive metal! In fact, I’ll be at Against the Grain studio this weekend to record the tracks over 2 days. This is definitely going to be the most ambitious recording project that I’ve ever done, so I’m both excited and nervous to get in there and deliver the best performance I can. Stay tuned for studio vids!

Tutorial Videos: Broken 16ths (Linear Drumming Fundamentals)

I'm relieved to finally release my video tutorials on broken 16th note rhythms/linear drumming available here!

The below YouTube video is the introduction to the series on playing and counting broken 16th note rhythms and creating linear patterns by adding kick drum. You can download the accompanying PDF for free from the link above.

All of the follow-up videos deal with applying these rhythms around the kit and combining the rhythms with each other. 

This tutorial series is aimed at intermediate drummers or even advanced drummers that want to improve when it comes to reading and counting rhythms.

Please note, you should also be able to play these rhythms with alternating sticking, but the idea behind using the stickings demonstrated in this video is that eventually you should be able to read the different rhythms and automatically know which sticking to play so that you always end up with your right hand on the beat (or left if you are left handed).

Feel free to leave me any feedback and thanks for the support!

IVANYI TOUR WITH CALIGULA'S HORSE + TUTORIAL VIDEOS

I'll be hitting the road with my prog buddies James Norbert Ivanyi and Liam Horgan in August, this time supporting the always amazing Caligula's Horse. Also joining us on the mini-tour are mates in Opus of a Machine. C-Horse will be playing their latest album in it's entirety as well as a second set of fan requests, while we'll be playing the track 'Terraform Diminution' for the first time live. There's some very tricky parts in there but I'm looking forward to laying it down on stage!

A couple of months ago I put out the below tutorial video which demonstrates a few different linear 32nd note paradiddle fills. The PDF is available to download for free in the Transcriptions section of my website.

Over the past few months I've been working on a series of tutorial videos which go through different broken 16th note rhythms and fill in each rhythm with kick drum in the gaps. I combine each rhythm with every other set of broken 16th note rhythms and apply them around the kit to form fills. Essentially these form the fundamentals of linear drumming. I'll be releasing these videos in the next week so keep an eye out!

VOROS STUDIO FOOTAGE & PSYCROPTIC/ARCHSPIRE SUPPORT

Howdy all! I recorded the drums for the new Voros EP last month - 4 flat out tracks of death/thrash/prog metal! Here's a snippet of one of the songs which channels a bit of a Mastodon/Brann Dailor vibe. Lot's of busy fills! There's also some metric modulation happening in this track where the the 16th note feel morphs into a triplet feel without changing the underlying speed of those notes. This gives the illusion that the actual tempo of the song has changed. Check out the Voros facebook/instagram + my instagram page for more studio footage.

On the 25th of August we'll be playing this massive show as part of the Psycroptic/Archspire (US) Australian tour. The EP will be released in October with the launch shows to be announced soon.

NEW IVANYI PLAYTHROUGH VID + DRUM TRANSCRIPTION!

I'm very proud to release this pro-recorded Ivanyi playthrough and associated drum transcription! The video features 3 camera angles plus kick cam, recorded at Moon 33 Studios.

I chose this song because it is one of the most varied and challenging Ivanyi song with changes in feel from straight to swung, plus 4/4, 6/8 and odd time bars.

If you're interested in learning this song, grab the transcription here: http://liamweedalldrummer.com/transcriptions

The download includes a guitar pro file so you can hear the parts being played and slow down the tempo, as well as two PDF files, one of which includes written notes to help you learn the song more easily. 

Thanks for the support!

WHAT I’VE BEEN PRACTISING RECENTLY (FOCUS ON INDEPENDENCE)

I definitely don’t get as much time as I would like to practise without having to work on band stuff, but here’s what I have been working on over the past few months:

I’ve been trying to improve my independence between all 4 limbs, which I’ve generally been doing by picking a foot ostinato (repeating pattern) between kick and hi-hat, then running through various rudiments and sticking patterns while keeping the ostinato going. For example, I could be playing HKK (H=hi-hat foot, K = kick drum) either as triplets or 16th notes, then run through singles on the snare matching the sub-division of the feet, first on the snare, then moving around the kit. Then I would play double strokes with the hands, followed by inverted doubles (RLLRRLLR), triple strokes, single, double and triple paradiddles, para-diddle diddles, then groups of 5 and 7 with the following stickings – RLRRL & RLRLRRL. Then play them all again but leading with the left hand! Then of course try to improvise around the kit with different stickings and rhythms. It’s tedious as hell but the payoff is pretty satisfying!

Sometimes to be able to play one of these exercises, I’ll have to start with just the first few notes on the hands while playing the foot ostinato, then literally add one more hand at a time. It’s also been necessary to write out a few of these exercises so I could actually see where the feet and hands line up.

I learned this approach to working on independence from a lesson I had with Sydney drummer Peter Drummond late last year. He is an absolute king when it comes to playing creative solos using 4 limb independence and the lesson was hugely benefical. I would highly recommend seeking out the best drummers in your country and hooking up a lesson whenever they are in your town or vice versa.

Pete Drummond (currently plays with Dragon and Thirsty Merc)

You can also play a groove on the ride and snare while keeping a foot ostinato going - see the below video from my Instagram feed to see an example of me demonstrating this. In the video, I change the hands so that the groove changes from a triplet feel to a 16th note feel, all while keeping the foot pattern the same. This is called implied metric modulation, where it sounds like the tempo has changed, but really you have just changed to a different feel within that tempo i.e. changing the sub-divisions. 

The simplest way of trying these independence exercises is to just play a ‘walking’ pattern with your feet – kick on 1 and 3, hi-hat foot on 2 and 4. Once you can play different stickings and/or rhythms with the hands over this kick pattern, try playing the bossa nova/samba foot ostinato – K HKK HKK HKK etc. The rhythm is 1 2+3 4+. If you haven’t played a bossa or a samba before, start with these rhythms as it will help make you more comfortable playing the foot pattern.

Some books worth checking out on this concept include Creative Control and Creative Coordination by Thomas Lang and Extreme Interpedendence by Marco Minneman. Thomas and Marco are the masters of drumming independence along with Virgil Donati.

Other things I’ve been working on:

Improving my dynamics and ghost notes on the snare, especially while keeping 16th notes going with my right hand on hi-hat or ride. Having to keep the volume down to neighbours is a good incentive to work on this!

Working towards better improvisation at different tempos. Trading fours with myself (soloing for 4 bars then playing time for 4 bars), keeping the same sub-division i.e. 32nd notes, 16th note triplets, quintuplets, playing linear phrases only i.e. only one drum/cymbal at a time. Maintaining the same sub-division is actually pretty difficult as I have always placed an emphasis on rhythmic variation while soloing.

Nick Bukey fills (www.nickbukeydrums.com) – This guy has online fill lesson packages available to purchase along with free videos and PDFs which you can download. I’ve learned a bunch of the 32nd note and 16th note triplet linear fills that he has available on his site. The longer fills can be quite challenging!

Exercises from Instagram – Drummers like Sebastian Lanser, Anika Nilles and Elliot Hoffmann all post excercises which I like to try. As well as exercises, every now and again I’ll try and copy solo/fill/groove ideas from drummers on Instagram as well.

That’s it for now, stay tuned for some new drum videos coming very soon! 

Don't forget to subscribe to be notified whenever I post new content (about once or twice a month).