Late last spring back in May (of 2017), I had a day off in Boston. I had long considered looking up Gary Chaffee to see if I could get a lesson from him. Gary is a renown drum teacher who served as the Chairman of the Percussion Department at the Berklee College of Music who has taught literally thousands of students. Many went on to have successful careers including several of the worlds best such as Vinnie Colaiuta, and Steve Smith.
Gary continues to give private lessons and I couldn’t resist reaching out to this national treasure to see what I could learn from him. Fortunately, he had a spot open and we set a time to meet.
I arrived a little bit before the designated time and I could hear he was wrapping up another lesson. Shortly after, a drum student walks out and we spoke briefly. He mentioned that he just drove down from Canada on his motorcycle for a lesson and the guy before him came from Europe! Wow! He said “You’ll have fun”.
Of course I was a little intimated and slightly scared about meeting perhaps one of the worlds greatest drum teachers but I’ve made a fool of myself many times behind the kit so what the heck... I figured I’d just go for it.
To make a long story short, I had a two hour lesson with him that day in which I played for him, he quickly analyzed my needs, and introduced me to a whole new concept and approach to drumming. I’m 49 years old, playing drums since I was 15 and he manages to open the door to brand new concepts and an approach for rapidly being able to apply what I’ve learned. I’ve dabble in many of the concepts before but here he laid out a method of practically applying a large amount of material and opening the spout of creatively. He doesn’t teach drum licks, he teaches concepts that can be used to develop your own creativity. And the beauty is everything he teaches can be applied to the concept of playing Grateful Dead music in a more creative way. ... which is what my goal is every night when I hop behind the drums for a DSO show.
My first goal is always to listen deeply and play and respond musically and appropriately to the musical ideas that my fellow band mates are playing in order to make a greater whole. As the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts meaning that when we all dial in to each other, the chemistry of the band makes something greater than what we can create as individuals. Much of the time it’s about getting out of the way and letting the music take you over. Sometimes if you don’t get out of your own way, you can trip yourself up (not in a good way). The idea is to let it flow out of you.
Gary’s concepts, I soon learned, allow me to do just that. .. turn on the flow of creativity. It took a bit to assimilate the basics into my playing but six months and many lessons later it’s starting to flow naturally and I feel I’m just on the tip of the iceberg of possibilities.
Thanks Gary!
Gary has a lot of books and videos available. If you have the basic concepts of drumming down, I highly recommend his stuff. I have since gone on to talk to other players and great drummers like Rodney Holmes who mentioned that he studied out of Gary’s books.
.... If I had only got into the stuff in my teens or even my twenties. Oh well.... still a lot of time left to learn and play. Many great drummers are still playing well into their seventies. Steve Gadd comes to mind ...As does Bill Kreutzmann :)