Darrell Grey

Working out some new tunes for our video shoot at The Metro East on April 2nd

I have always wanted to add double kick into my playing but never had two Bass drums or a double kick pedal. Just recently the singer in my band gave me his old DW double kick pedal. I’m just starting to integrate it into my playing . It’s going to take many years before I feel comfortable with it and able to play live using double kick. Up until now I have only used one pedal and most of the music I play doesn’t need the double kick, But I have always enjoyed the power and complexity it adds to drumming. i hope to continue learning and developing this into my performance. In the video I’m adding simple patterns on the kick to get started. Fun Stuff!

Practicing some original tunes adding the drum set. It always amazes me at the full melodic and Bass tones that come from The Chapman Stick when Steve is playing.

Sometimes when I’m jamming, my groove ends up in an odd time feel . I think when composing music it can be useful to just let the song flow in whatever feel that is natural, which may result in an odd time other than 4/4 . I think this funk groove I’m playing sometimes is in a 7/4 feel. I can imagine adding a Bass line and some Keys on top . It could develop into a cool song.

I started filming my practices with the band just so I could evaluate how my drumming was serving the music, which in my opinion is the most important job of a drummer. In this video it was just me and James the lead vocalist/lead guitarist and me playing one of our songs. I like to see if my parts and some of my fill choices work with the song. After viewing this I think I may add some changes in the feel and some of my fill choices. Sometimes it’s hard to tell until you review yourself from a video or audio playback. I think it’s a useful tool in improving as a player and a band

My drum teacher Jungle Jim wrote out a cool solo using triplets and polyrhythms. I took some of the patterns and altered them to come up with this cool Latin groove.

What a treat it was to see Micheal Shreive in action with his band Spellbinder at The White Rabbit in Seattle. One of my favorite drum solos, is the solo Micheal Shrieves played at Woodstock back when he was only 20 years old playing drums for Santana. It was cool to get to see Micheal play up close at The White Rabbit. He has such a great feel for Latin Music and also he adds in some very cool jazz licks in between. Micheal and his band of top notch Seattle musicians, which includes Farko Dosumov (Bass),Danny Godiez (guitar) Joe Doria ( Keys) John Fricke ( Trumpet) Had people dancing all night. Such great grooves and amazing improvisation. All the guys in the band performed stunning solos. The band is a regular act at The White Rabbit in Seattle. I highly recommend checking them out!