It's all in the hands!

Hey fellow drummers!

Incredibly sad news recently that Dom Famularo had passed away after a battle with cancer.

Often referred to as “Drumming’s Global Ambassador”, and widely known for his positive energy and unique teaching style, he received numerous awards and accolades for his contribution to the drumming community.

I’d had the fortune of meeting Dom a couple of times, once at a drum clinic and once at the UK Drum Show. Both times I left feeling inspired, encouraged and eager to learn.

He will be sorely missed; the drumming world has lost a hugely influential and significant figure.

RIP Dom, and condolences to his family and friends.

We do have a bit of a connection with Dom in this newsletter as I’m reviewing the ToneAlly, which Dom was a big fan of as well as being good friends with the inventor, Tony McNally.

As well as that review, I’ve got some drumming diaries 📆 and some YouTube selections 📺️ 

The last few weeks have been particularly busy. Whilst I’m not a “full time” drummer, I class myself as a dedicated enthusiast, which means that I have had to get creative when it comes to maintaining my practice schedule.

The first challenge was being away for over a week with work. I’m always tapping anyway, but in terms of maintaining some form of practice with sticks in my hand, I have this neat little pad from Ahead that can be strapped to a leg for practice anywhere. (More generally, it’s also really good for a quick pre-gig warmup behind the kit in a pinch…).

Metronome and a pair of sticks and that’s me good.

To be honest though, this time I didn’t bother with the Korg as there’s a load of great metronome apps available. However at home - call me an old romantic - I still like to use a physical variant.

In terms of material, I usually have a bunch of stuff available on PDF that gets synced across my devices (obsidian.md in case you’re wondering) but if there’s something in particular I want to take with me I’ll usually just snap a copy on my phone a few days before leaving, then sync it over.

I have had a great drum teacher for a long time now (Dave Lourie, since you’re asking). Despite all of the available online resources, I still believe that it is invaluable to have someone who you can sit in the same room with who will get to know what direction you want to take and what you’ve got going on, consider your learning style, hold you accountable etc.

Whilst I consider “in person” lessons as my primary learning device, I have always augmented that learning with an online subscription.

Until fairly recently, that resource had been Drumeo. However, last June when it came to renewing, I could not justify the cost. I simply hadn’t used it that much.

When I started to analyse the reasons why, it came down to the overwhelming amount of content and the lack of clear study path. Whilst there are tracks that can be followed, I never really found a clear route through the content. I have nothing at all against Drumeo, it just ended up not being quite right for me.

In the last few days, after some thought, I decided to give Mike Johnston’s lessons (mikeslessons) a try in order to complement my in-person study.

I’ve followed Mike for a while on YouTube and always liked his clear and enthusiastic approach, as well as the fact that he seemed very genuine. Looking at his offering, I liked the fact that there was not so much content, but what was there offered a very clear direction that always focused on practical application.

The “sessions” idea is fairly unique too (as far as I know), which gamifies learning by requiring you to send a recording of your playing to be approved by Mike before you can move forward to the next session. I’ve not tried this yet, but I will.

I’ve only been a member a few days, but early indicators are pretty positive that the site is a good fit for me. I’ve got no affiliation with Mike, so I’ll post an unbiased review once I have spent some more time on the site.

In the past, I’ve spent a bit of time with the legendary book “New Breed” by Gary Chester. It’s a book that can keep you going for years, but like most people I worked through a swathe of it before (probably) saying “this is crazy!”, with the intention of coming back to give it serious attention.

Fast-forward a couple of years and it’s back on the radar. I really need to iron out some wrinkles with my weaker hand and independence and I reckon this can get me back on track.

Wish me luck!

I recently visited Tony McNally to collect a ToneAlly Design 5 Delux. A really lovely guy, incredibly knowledgeable and generous with his time.

I’m always focused on improving hand technique and have been wanting to try out one of these tools for a while now.

The unit itself is designed to promote good hand alignment and stick travel by providing channels (“alleys”) for your sticks, regardless of the grip type you’re employing.

Vertical stick travel is the most efficient use of energy and provides the most rebound, so I can see why there’s a need for something like this. I had a problem with “slicing” (non-vertical travel) for a while myself, which was impacting my playing.

I’m an American/German grip player but I do practice French grip for finger control, and I’ve dabbled with traditional grip. I think I’m going to spend some time on my trad grip with the ToneAlly and see how I go.

The pack comes with a couple of rubber stoppers to help training with stick heights too, as well as markings indicating ten heights that you can adjust these stoppers to. So far, I’ve found this a particularly useful feature and discovered that my heights were not as even as I thought they.

In particular, the discrepancy was more noticeable at higher tempos where the heights would really get out of whack, so I now have a challenge on my hands (no pun) and a useful way to gauge progress.

The lower settings are a particularly tough challenge - get some time spent in this stick range and you’ll notice some improvement in your ghost notes! 👻 

One observation is that the rubber inserts can’t be used to physically guide your sticks in the same way that the dowels can - touching them with the sticks causes them to ride up the channels (sorry…”alleys”), so you’ll need to be conscious of playing under them, but they still serve their purpose.

The ToneAlly comes with a rubber pad section that has a nice click to it, and in the version I am reviewing it is removable if you have a preferred surface. I have a meinl marshmallow pad that I wanted to use with the ToneAlly but to be honest, I found playing with pad section removed a little clunky and awkward. I suspect it is my technique and I’m going to persevere in order to see if I get used to it. It’s not a huge deal as I’ll stick with the supplied pad in any case, so this is a minor gripe.

The product comes as a flat pack, but is very easy to assemble, just slotting dowels into the base and head of the unit. You can use wood glue for a permanent fit, but I found the parts to be a good snug fit and I have not seen any need for that in my case.

One final minor gripe is that I found the pricing quite expensive “on the face of it”. However, you can see the craftsmanship that has gone into producing each one (by hand, Tony informs me!) and I think with anything like this you have to weight up the value in terms of what it can do for your playing.

Overall, I found the ToneAlly to be a very useful addition to my arsenal and something I’m going to be spending a lot of time with. Whilst it would be tempting to consider this as something that would mostly benefit beginners (and I think it would be a great accelerator) there is definitely room for highlighting, ironing out and finessing the minor discrepancies in more advanced players.

I do a lot of pad work and so I’ll be making good use of this over the longer term and will be interested to see how my playing changes.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the UK drum show; I had a ticket and was excited to go, but ended up needing to go on a work trip instead (Palma and Madrid - so…”swings and roundabouts”).

I’ve been catching up on some videos though - looked like another fantastic get-together, with some big names from the drumming world and innovative products on show.