It shouldn't feel any different , and it definitely shouldn't be reversed notes, because that's a reversed beat... If your not actually leading with your left correctly I wouldn't say you're playing left lead, sounds more right hand lead just in a different position. And no it's not learning how to play a left handed guitar. I'm pretty sure we established that is completely different.
Problem here is that you're talking
shoulds and
shouldn'ts when it's more a matter of what
is. The feel
is different when I switch up. Also, I never said I was leading with my left; I'm riding with my left, and even though it's taken control of the pulse by virtue of its role, I'm not convinced that that makes it left hand lead, since I still lead with my right when playing fills, but I think we're getting into semantics with that at some point.
Lastly, I don't know who the "we" is in your last sentence. Would that be you?
...It would actually be self-sabotaging to take up some of those things, because working on them takes time away from all of the important, totally mundane stuff you have to be able to do really well in order to be any kind of musician.
How is it that you're keeper of the definition for what a musician of any worth is? That just blows my mind.
There's also plenty of more stuff than that which you'll be able to do if you just practice the one thing a whole lot more. The real limiter on most people's playing is not "can't reach enough stuff to hit", it's "doesn't practice enough", and "practices the wrong stuff."
I don't get that, man. Seriously. Okay, I'll bite - what if what the one thing you're doing is just that: one thing. What if, say, there was
another thing? The "real limiter" on most people's playing, IME, is lack of imagination and follow-through.
It's only free to roam the kit if someone spends a lot of time learning to play really well in that orientation. This extra freedom people are advertising is strictly hypothetical until they've done that.
Really well? How about just good enough to say what you feel like saying? Imagine one day you think of a little open-handed thing to do that's kinda nifty and sounds cool. Next day, you have a brainwave on how you might add a little something to the first thing. Day after that another one, and so on until eventually it might appear to
someone else as if you'd mastered this whole thing, when in reality they're only glimpsing a snapshot in time of you on your journey of discovering new ways to make this idea even more useful and interesting.
There's nothing hypothetical about how I've been using it, and nothing hypothetical about what others have done with it, including Steve Smith on a mega-selling pop smash hit, which itself wasn't some trivial little drum trick - it was integral to the sound of that song.
But what I do when I need(?) to be roaming the kit, is move my right hand to the ride cymbal. I guess conceivably there could be an occasion when I really need to play a lot of tom toms while also playing specifically the hihat, and not the cymbal, but no way am I ever spending any amount of practice time preparing for that eventuality-- there's too much other stuff to learn, and polish.
Ride cymbal? Conceivably maybe perhaps an off-chance occasion where hats might possibly be the more appropriate choice? That's just lazy, man. What do you think that Steve Smith part would have sounded like had he opted for the easy RH 8th note ride pattern on the ride cymbal instead? A lot less interesting or compelling if you ask me (stale, in fact), though I suppose you could make the case that he was being unprofessional by being inappropriately interesting and siphoning glory from the singing talent. Perhaps that's why they fired him! Cool part either way.
That's what I don't get. All of the complaints re: normal playing and the claimed advantages re: OH playing can be remedied/acheived with zero additional hours of practice by just never playing the hihat with your RH. If you do that, and get a remote hihat, the rationale for OH playing evaporates.
What I don't get is someone who claims to be this professional (and a teacher) taking such a narrow view of what drumming should be to everyone else by not only encouraging lazy short cuts that do nothing but defend a status-quo on the art form, but also by discouraging any path that seeks to push its boundaries.
Todd, I know this isn't the first time we've tangled, but your view on what others should or shouldn't be wasting their time on just gets my hackles up. I wish I understood what your angle is cos I'm really curious. Do you like drumming?