Benny Greb Md

MODERN DRUMMER • JUNE 200952

German drum star Benny Greb has a lot to talk about these days. Notonly has he been steadily climbing the ranks as one of the world’spremier clinicians—he’s been a huge hit at major industry events

including the Cape Breton and Montreal Drum Festivals, Meinl Drumfest,Australia’s Ultimate Drummer’s Weekend, and the pres-tigious Percussive Arts Society InternationalConvention—but Benny’s also kept himselfextremely busy teaching, writing and pro-ducing his own music, doing sessions,and touring with various bands fromGermany and Europe.

The twenty-eight-year-old drummer has been such a workaholicthat he decided to put aside the first three months of 2009 for some personaltime, which he spent hiking across the countryside of New Zealand with hisgirlfriend. “For the past eight years, I’ve had no more than three or four daysoff, so I’m squeezing in as much vacation as I can before getting back tononstop work,” Greb explained from a Southern California hotel the daybefore disappearing into the land of The Lord Of The Rings. When he returnedhome to Hamburg, Benny had very little time to reflect before hitting the roadfor a six-show tour with the funky guitar trio Jerobeam, a month-long excur-sion with the German singer-songwriter Stoppok, and a lengthy run of clinicsand appearances promoting the release of his incredible two-disc instructionalDVD, The Language Of Drumming: A System For Musical Expression.

In the beautifully produced Language Of Drumming, which was filmed ina variety of gorgeous locales from the Swiss Alps to a Bavarian forest, Greboutlines a systematic yet creative practice method that draws a direct corre-lation between the essential elements of drumming and the basics of spokenlanguage. In the opening section, Benny explains a “rhythmic alphabet” thatconsists of all of the possible 16th-note and triplet subdivisions within onebeat. The first lesson involves clapping each “letter” of this alphabet whilesinging a quarter-note pulse. The drummer then takes viewers down a clearpath toward complete musical fluency by demonstrating how rudiments andvarious stickings can be applied to these letters in order to form “words” and“phrases.” Disc one concludes with a captivating discussion/demonstration(in the Syntax chapter) that shows ways to use the basic vocabulary inodd-note groupings to create more advanced, tension-filled phrases.

The second DVD puts technique aside and focuses on creativityand musicianship. Here Greb offers logical exercises for practic-ing improvisation, as well as demo segments on ways toexplore different drum sounds and specific systems fordeveloping a strong sense of time. Benny closes histhree-hour lesson with an incredible open solo thatperfectly illustrates how stunning displays of tech-nique can be simultaneously musical, tasteful,and emotionally thrilling.

The night before he left for his three-month sabbatical, Benny sat down withus for an hour so we could dig a little deeper into some of the fresh drumming concepts he presents in his DVD.

by Michael Dawson

Reprinted with permission from Modern Drummer Publications, Inc. Copyright 2009.

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THE LANGUAGE EXPANDEDMD: When did you start working onThe Language Of Drumming?Benny: I started preparing the DVDabout three years ago. The material is acombination of things I’ve come up withover the past ten years mixed with great

systems that I picked up along the way. MD: What inspired the idea of breakingdown drumming in a way that’s similarto how we learn to speak languages?Benny: Early in my career, I would getfrustrated because I wasn’t able toexpress myself the way I wanted. I

didn’t want to play one-bar fills exactlythe way I prepared them each time.Playing that way is similar to whathappens when you use one of thosecheap foreign language books to learnbasic sayings. You learn something like,“Can you tell me the way to the trainstation, please?” But you don’t reallyknow what you’re saying. If the otherperson doesn’t answer you like it saidthey would in the book, the conversa-tion can’t go any further. Many druminstructional books and DVDs functionthat same way. They try to give you

licks that always fit, like, “Play this fillfor a Latin song,” or “Here’s the rockgroove.”

In real life, you have to bring muchdeeper knowledge, experience, andsensitivity to every situation. So I devel-oped a system that’s like learning alanguage—in terms of defining letters,words, grammar, and syntax—so I couldexpress myself freely on the drums. It’ssimilar to what happens when I say theword say. I don’t need to think s-a-y. Ijust feel the word and say it. I’m usingletters to create words that express anemotion. I wanted to develop a similaremotional connection in my drumming.

“THERE IS NO IDEAL DRUM SOUND……only suitable sounds for specific situations. Some people have this thing about letting a tomring for as long as it can with no muffling. That’s one sound, but in some cases it’s not right for thesong. You have to learn about all the possibilities and how to change from one to the other very fast.

“I’ve learned that it’s important to tune drums not so that they feel great to play, but that theysound great. On my solo kit, the floor toms are really low—the 16" is almost dead—and the snareis muddy and deep sounding. This gives me a lot of bass and punch, but with enough tone so thatI can play melodies.

“The bass drum tuning really depends on the room. I’m sometimes surprised by how tightly Itune it in the studio and still get a deep and full sound. But I usually start with the heads almost aslow as they get, and then I’ll tighten a couple screws one or two turns.

“With the toms, the bottom head is a little bit higher than the top. I try to get a full range of tun-ing, so the 16" floor tom is as deep as I can make it and the 10" is as high as it can go while stillsounding deeper than the snare drum. You have to balance the toms and snare a little bit so thatthere’s a melody between them that makes sense.”

Drums: Sonor SQ2 Vintage Beech in white pearl finishA. 18x22 bass drumB. 5x12 snareC. 61/2x13 snareD. 8x10 tomE. 14x14 floor tomF. 16x16 floor tom

Cymbals: Meinl1. 14" Byzance extra dry hi-hats2. 18" Byzance extra dry crash 3. 8" Byzance traditional thin splash4. 20" prototype ride5. 12"/14" Generation X Trash hats6. 22" Byzance extra thin jazz ride (used as crash)7. 18" Byzance extra thin jazz crash (not in photo)

Hardware: Sonor 600 series stands and Giant Step pedals

Heads: Remo coated Emperors on tops of toms, coatedAmbassadors on bottoms, coated Ambassadors onsnares, clear Powerstroke 3 on bass drum batter, cus-tom front head by Drumsigns.com

Percussion: Meinl bongos, cowbells, and shakers

Sticks: Pro-Mark 5BG (Benny Greb signature)

BENNY’S SOLO KIT

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After all, music is a language. It can makeyou laugh, it can make you sad, or it canmake you dance. And the drum was one ofthe earliest tools used for communication,so it made sense to me to think of it thisway—it makes everything so much easier.

MD: The practice process you outline onthe first disc of The Language OfDrumming is precisely organized andstructured. Was there ever a point where

your playing sounded systematic?Benny: It was the opposite. My playingsounded a little stiff when I tried to tran-scribe what other guys played, or when Ithought, This is a Latin beat, or This songis jazz, so I should play the standard jazz

thing to it. You have to spend some timelearning all of the letters [basic rhythms],which requires some thinking and ana-lyzing in order to gain the vocabulary. But

once you learn them, you can forgetabout how you form the words and justuse them to express ideas. You’re able tojust play and react to the phrases thatyou’re hearing because you’ve practicedevery possible combination. My systemalso involves improvisation exercises that

help you focus less on what you play andmore on how you play it.MD: Would you suggest that someoneworking with your DVD practice the tech-nique exercises from disc one and theimprovising methods on disc two at the

RECORDINGSJerobeam How One Becomes What One Is, Confidential Breakfast

/// Stoppok Sensationsstrom /// Ron Spielman Trio Absolutely

Live /// Strom & Wasser Farbengeil, Gossenhauer, Spielt Keine

Rolle /// Benny Greb Grebfruit, Brass Band (summer ’09)

FAVORITESThe Beatles Revolver (Ringo Starr) /// Chick Corea Children’s

Songs (no drums) /// John Mayer Trio Try! (Steve Jordan) /// Glenn

Gould Bach: The Goldberg Variations (no drums) /// Kraftwerk The

Man-Machine (Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider) /// The Police

Reggatta De Blanc (Stewart Copeland) /// Aphex Twin Drukqs (pro-

grammed) /// Oscar Peterson Trio We Get Requests (Ed Thigpen)

/// Tower Of Power Soul Vaccination: Live (David Garibaldi)

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same time?Benny: Yes, because you can practicethe improvisation exercises regardless ofyour skill level. If you can only playquarter notes, you can still make somemusic. Just play quarter notes aroundyour kit and explore different ways tophrase them. The difficulty level of theimprovising exercises is based on whichrhythms you decide to use.MD: How have you incorporated thesesystems into your practicing?Benny: I’ve kept a practice diary foreight or ten years, so I know exactlywhat I’ve practiced on which day, atwhat tempo, for how long, and howmuch I liked it. I go back to my diary tofind out what sounded good, as well aswhat I can improve on. I always try todo equal amounts of practicing andplaying. So if I have three hours tospend behind the drums, I try to do oneand a half hours of practicing and oneand a half hours of playing. MD: What’s the difference betweenpracticing and playing?Benny: Practicing is the process of fig-uring out new things and gaining abil-ities that you didn’t have before.

Playing is just playing, improvising,and grooving along to CDs. As soon asyou try to figure out a fill that a drum-mer played on a CD, then you’vemoved into practicing. But playing isreally important because that’s whatit’s all about. If you practice and searchonly for what you can do better, thenyour performances become stiff. Youhave to leave some time to play andlet the music flow automatically.MD: Are the improvisation exercises onyour DVD considered practicing or playing?Benny: They’re more playing, becauseyou’re not thinking about what youplay as much. But you still have tocontrol what you play. It’s like havinga relaxed conversation but still beingaware of what you say. The oppositewould be that you’re not able to con-trol what comes out of your mouth.That’s never a good way to communi-cate. I try to use that principle when Iplay. I’m always very focused and Ialways try to perform the best that Ican, even in rehearsal.MD: Have you tried extending the letter,word, and syntax systems to groupingslike fives, sevens, and nines rather than

just fours and threes?Benny: Yes. I had a crazy time where I practiced Frank Zappa’s “Black Page”and played in a Zappa project with a big orchestra in Germany. But there’s a tendency for some drummers—especially young ones—to work onadvanced things like quintuplets andsextuplets before covering the basics.All great drummers have one thing incommon, though: They can do simplethings really well. So I wanted to focuson ideas that are useful and can beapplied in many different musical situa-tions. MD: One thing I’m having trouble with isclapping the alphabet at faster temposand making sure I’m perfectly accurate.How do you suggest I develop that?Benny: You have to zoom in and prac-tice the letters slowly at first so youcan clap the rhythm exactly in timewith the subdivisions. Those figureshave to become subconscious so thatyou know exactly where the clap hasto go, even when you stop counting thesubdivisions. It becomes more of a feel-ing than a math equation. Once you’veplayed it enough, it gets saved in your


emotions and you can trigger it likethat. [snaps fingers]

PRACTICING PRECISION MD: Your phrasing is always very pre-cise, even when you’re improvising.How do you maintain that level of focusand control?Benny: I always fight to keep myself dis-ciplined. I have to be sure that when Iget on the set I don’t just doodle aroundand improvise. I have to practice first. If Istart by playing freely, I have so muchfun. But when I’m done I just want to gohome. There’s a saying that time-man-agement professionals use: “If you haveto eat a frog, don’t look at it too long.And if you have to eat three frogs, eatthe biggest one first.” [laughs] MD: What is the “big frog” for you these days?Benny: A big frog for me is being able toplay a groove to a click without any vari-ations for ten minutes or more. It’s amental exercise that’s almost like medi-tation. I just turn on the click and play agroove as well and spot-on as I can andget into the zone. I don’t want my minddreaming away; I want to focus on whatI’m playing. So focus and concentrationare big frogs for me because it’s very dif-ficult to play something with full concen-tration where I’m thinking about differ-ent parameters like dynamics, soundquality, how my hands feel, and how I’m breathing.

BUILDING DYNAMICSMD: You play with a lot of dynamics,even within basic grooves and fills. Doyou consciously think about shapingphrases all the time?Benny: I love internal dynamics. It goesback to the idea of concentrating onthe how of what I play. Within that,there’s so much to practice. I used tothink, I have to play a fancy hi-hatthing here. But now I think more like,Okay, that’s the drum groove. It’s quitestandard, but HOW should I play it? Assoon as you start thinking like that,hundreds of possibilities become avail-able. The most obvious but useful thingto do is explore dynamics. MD: What would you suggest to ayoung drummer who plays with littlecontrol of dynamics?Benny: Think about the instrument. The

drumset consists of wooden shells withthin plastic drumheads plus some metalplates, which we hit with sticks. Doesn’tit make sense to hit the metal plateswith less power than you use to hit theplastic drumheads? I learned this fromwatching Steve Gadd. When he does atom fill, he plays with a lot of power. Butwhen he ends the fill with a crash, hedoesn’t hit the cymbal as hard as he hitthe lowest tom. A lot of times when peo-ple talk about technique, they only men-tion the obvious things like speed, orcrazy independence. But having a goodsound and good internal dynamics is atechnique too.

Also, if the balance of the kit is off, likeif the bass drum isn’t loud enough com-pared to the snare or hi-hat, some drum-mers tend to think, I’ve got to hit thebass drum harder. But why not play thehi-hat and snare softer? Or if you don’thave enough distinction between yourbackbeats and soft ghost notes, don’t hitthe backbeats louder; play the ghostnotes softer.

SOLO STRUCTURESMD: How do you approach structuring a drum solo?Benny: I like to have a framework ofwhere I want to start, how I want to end,and different stations that I want to go toin the middle. Sometimes I leave out astation here or there if it doesn’t feelright that day, and I’ll improvisebetween each section. I try to get freerwith my framework each year, and therehave been shows where I’ve tried tohave no preferences at all. But even if

you don’t want to have any preferences,there are always things that you comeback to. I was fighting that for a while. Itried to have a jazz approach of alwaysexpressing myself and not playing any-thing prepared. But I’ve relaxed on that alittle bit, since I realized that I have somegrooves and melodies that I love to play.

I often start a drum solo by playingvery little—maybe using a small group ofinstruments or playing very slowly—sothat I have ground to build upon. Onesignature thing I do is this double basssamba figure with two hi-hats and amelody. I get the samba pattern goingwith the feet, and then I play the basicmelody with the right hand. Once that’sestablished, the left hand plays solo ideasand adds a backbeat. I enjoy doing thatat the end of my solo, because it’s veryhigh energy. But if I play the samba inthe middle, I’ll break it down so I canbuild up something else. So basically Ihave a few set things that I want to play,then I try to make it musical by usingcontrasting parts, dynamics, differentstyles, and other things. It’s not witch-craft. Bach explored these concepts along time ago.MD: Do you have any parting words ofadvice?Benny: Buy my DVD! [laughs] I wouldjust like to say that it’s important toknow the tradition and try to be creativeat the same time. That’s the biggestthing: Know what came before andcreate the future.


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Benny Greb Md