Drumclinic Virgil Donati

[Carn]

aangezien ik al een post hiervan heb gemaakt op een ander (engels) forum, pleur ik em hier maar neer in het engels:

Hey all,

I just came back from Virgil Donati`s clinic, and it was pretty nice! not really a clinic where you pick up a lot of stuff, but it was good in general, and it is always fun seeing a drummer like that.

One thing that amazed me was the big amount of questions about double bass playing (oftenly asked by the metalheads);

(for Question, imagine a really bad accent)
Q: "Do you use the heel toe method?
A: "No, i just play the pedal from my ankles, just start slow and smooth, and build it up"
Q: "Why not the heel toe method?"
A: "Because I never learned it"
Q: "But i can do it!"
A: "Good for you!"

Another metalhead:

Q: "Do you fitness for your muscles?"
Virgil: "Huh, what do you mean?"
Q: "do you work out to play drums"
A: "No, not really, i just try to keep healthy and be fit"

About pedal tension:

Q: "do you keep your pedal tenstion high, as with many rock and metal drummers?
A: "No, its more medium to light actually"

so yeah, I think he kinda shattered some current metal-fairy tales about needing big muscles, high tension pedals and heel-toe technique to have some fast feet

another one:

Q: "What do you think about drummers like Mike Portnoy?"
A: "Does it matter what I care?"

There were some transcriptions to pick up, with some challeging exercises (mostly in the spirit of double hihat pattern where a bass+snare beat is played over), and some more info about the song "Alien HipHop", which has a challenging double bass groove (all in triplets) and some nice tricks in it.

The most important thing that he had about the "hands" was that people often forgot to build up wrist muscles.

In the end, it was a nice clinic, he was quite a funny guy, great drummer to see, but didnt really "add" something educative.

ps: if anyone wants the transcriptions, i`ll scan them!