Instagram story viewer> @drumlanguage> Posts

Matthew Guggemos

@drumlanguage

16K

followers

2802

following

Drummer/Technologist/Communication Scientist/SLP

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

Some music from our Koji Kondo birthday celebration at @thefinknapa on 8/13/26.
#videogamemusic #nintendo #mario #zelda #videogamecomposer taken in Napa, California by @drumlanguage

25

4

2 months ago

A great @invinciblestarjazz moment with @westcoastsaxophone (Alex Garcia), @bluebonick (Max Bonick), and @scarebearmusic (Jeff Patterson) at @bluenotenapa

#drums #drummer #drumming #videogamemusic #chronotrigger #bassplayers #keyboardist #saxophonist taken in Blue Note Napa Summer Sessions by @drumlanguage

11

2

a year ago

A fun moment from our @invinciblestarjazz show at @thefinknapa — Song of Storms from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time…Coltrane Style

#videogamemusic #drummers #musicians #zelda #coltrane

@bluebonick
@westcoastsaxophone
@scarebearmusic by @drumlanguage

20

0

2 months ago

Good job @drumlanguage !

This one is Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27 No. 1 by Beethoven. And this is performed on piano by Glenn Gould.

There’s so much cool stuff happening in the piece, and it makes you think a lot differently as a drummer when you try to orchestrate drums to classical piano.

Glenn Gould’s pauses and articulations are different and he kind of teaches you new things when you play other styles of music on the kit.

This was part of the challenge at @cdsdrumming, and I had a great time working on it.

@stevelymanmusic

#Drumming #Beethoven #ClassicalMusic #DrumPractice #drumorchestration taken in New York, New York by @drumlanguage

66

9

11 days ago

This one is Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27 No. 1 by Beethoven. And this is performed on piano by Glenn Gould.

There’s so much cool stuff happening in the piece, and it makes you think a lot differently as a drummer when you try to orchestrate drums to classical piano.

Glenn Gould’s pauses and articulations are different and he kind of teaches you new things when you play other styles of music on the kit.

This was part of the challenge at @cdsdrumming, and I had a great time working on it.

@stevelymanmusic

#Drumming #Beethoven #ClassicalMusic #DrumPractice #DrumOrchestration by @drumlanguage

53

3

11 days ago

This one is a Rubik’s Cube for your brain. I put music on just so I can track what the feet are doing.
Start with a group of 9 sixteenths.

Count: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Group it 2 + 2 + 2 + 3: [1 2] [3 4] [5 6] [7 8 9]

Only play the first note of each group: 1, 3, 5, and 7. Leave out 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9. Eight and nine are just space.
Four notes, then a pause of two extra 16ths. That’s the displaced thing.

Three groups of 2, then a group of 3 — but you’re only hitting the first partial of each chunk.

Those four hits get split into a paradiddle between bass drum and hi-hat:

R L R R L R L L

That’s what the chart is. Look at the page and you can see the 2+2+2+3 frame and the foot orchestration.
Hands on top: regular paradiddles in 16ths, one per quarter.
Feet = that weird 9-grid, paradiddled between kick and hat. Hands = normal 16th paradiddles on the same pulse.
Sounds almost like a djent pattern that wandered off the beat. Way harder to play than it sounds. I’m still trying to hear all of it at once.

I learned this (well, I’m still dialing it in!) at @cdsdrumming. Not just chops. Compositional ideas, touch, dynamics, actually playing music. That’s why that community is worth being in.

@stevelymanmusic 
#drums #drumming #paradiddle #drummers #drumtechnique by @drumlanguage

9

0

13 days ago

Revisiting the past with the Black Page.

I have always thought there is something funny and beautiful about the Black Page. A while back, Frank Zappa wrote it for Terry Bozzio after hearing studio musicians talk about gigs they dreaded, the ones where they had to show up and sight read music so dense the page looked black.

Frank wrote it for Terry. Terry worked on it about fifteen minutes a day for a couple of weeks and then played a masterpiece.

This tune is interesting even without the melody. Parts of it sound like a drummer who has not quite mastered playing in time, someone who gets excited and speeds up and slows down during key moments. That’s how it is supposed to sound, lol. It’s packed with nested polyrhythms, a big stretch of three against four chopped into tuplets, eleventuplets, etc. It’s hard, funny, and kind of beautiful.

I worked on it for months to memorize it. I wanted to play it in the spirit of the piece, but I put my spin on it, using a jazz kit with a ride, hi hat, kick, rack tom, and floor tom. I took it out to the beach on the Sonoma coast and kept doing takes until one felt close enough.

It sounds different without all the textures @chadwackermanofficial @terry_bozzio_official @vinniecolaiuta had. The best recordings are those performed by them. But I still like how it sits on a four piece kit!

The tuplets are tough. So are the dynamics, the roll motions, and all the different ways you have to think about the drums. Frank added something real to the drum literature with this.

If you do not know the piece, it can sound like someone who has no idea what he’s doing. If you do know it, it’s deeply satisfying to start it and finish it without stopping.

I’ve been a Frank Zappa fan my whole life. As a drummer I felt this was something I needed to learn. And I like putting old videos back up so I can see the work over the years. This one was a unique point in time for me.

#TheBlackPage #FrankZappa #TerryBozzio #DrumSolo #Polyrhythms by @drumlanguage

30

6

19 days ago

Back to basics.

Really, anything advanced is about how well you have mastered basic, fundamental concepts. This goes well beyond music. Pretty much anything functions like this. You have to know the core skills to truly master a field.

I have been working on Miles Davis’s solo from “Freddie the Freeloader” because it has so much space. He moves the phrasing around, pulls back on the beat, stretches notes, and uses different note durations.

This is really challenging to play only on the snare drum while playing the ride cymbal. The idea is to keep the consistent context of the ride cymbal playing the swing pattern over and over. The kick drum feathers all four quarter notes, and the hi hat stays on 2 and 4. Meanwhile, the left hand tries to match Miles’s rhythms as closely as possible.

It is a really cool exercise that helps develop touch, dynamics, phrasing, coordination, and time. All of these things also help with speed and power.

I have really been enjoying working on things that I have not addressed in quite a while. It makes me realize that you can never stop working on basic musicianship or the fundamental skills of being a drummer. Rudiments, dynamics, reading, time, touch, and coordination. All of this work, over time, creates a strong foundation that allows you to branch off into other things.

I have to thank @cdsdrumming for inspiring me to target these kinds of skills. It’s been a great experience.

Despite your skill level, it never hurts to put the white belt back on.

#Drumming #JazzDrumming #MilesDavis #FreddieTheFreeloader #DrumPractice by @drumlanguage

87

9

21 days ago

I’m playing groups of seven in my feet and groups of four in my hands, so it creates a four-against-seven relationship.

I’m trying something tricky here where I’m playing inverted paradiddles on top, but then I’m playing groups of seven in my feet except that I’m resting on the seventh partial. In the feet it takes eight cycles to line up so that the beginning of the inverted paradiddle, which starts in the right hand, lines up with the right foot. I’m just playing single strokes in my feet, but I’m leaving off the seventh partial of the sixteenth-note grouping. The challenge is trying to avoid flams so that it actually sounds like counterpoint that’s purposeful rather than something you’re barely pulling off.

I’m still working on this one to get the sound levels right, but it sounds cool how everything phases in and out when you play it.

#counterpoint #polyrhythm #drums #drummers #drumsolo by @drumlanguage

8

2

24 days ago

Working on some metric modulation grooves around 3 and 5

#metricmodulation #polyrhythm #drums #drumsolo #drummers by @drumlanguage

5

2

25 days ago

Playing in 7/4. Each quarter note is divided into 8th-note triplets, so the bar has 21 notes.

The feet repeat the same 1-2-1-2-1-2-3 pattern. I play three groups of 7 as right, left, right, left, right, left-left.

The hands play right-left-left in triplets. I change the surfaces they hit, and the groove flips.

And it’s the same pattern with a new texture, but it really changes the feel.

#drums #polyrhythm #oddmeters #drumpractice #drummers by @drumlanguage

8

0

a month ago

I took an idea from @stevelymanmusic called splitting, where you are taking 1 hand and splitting it between 2 surfaces. In this case, I was doing a paradiddle with my right hand between my ride cymbal and my snare drum. And then my left hand is playing all of the 2nd and 3rd partials of a triplet. It.

So those figures are being alternated between the snare drum and the tom in the form of the paradiddle. So every time the ride cymbal hits, the following partials on the snare come next, and then when the snare is hit with the right hand, then the partials are played on the toms. So this is another paradiddle pattern.

And then beneath that, with my right foot and my left foot, I’m playing a paradiddle with each side. So a paradiddle with my kick drum and a paradiddle with my left foot. When you put them all together, it sounds wild. And it’s kind of this way of thinking about music with layers and counterpoint, but there’s a single organizational structure that ties them together, which is the paradiddle.

#drummers #drumsolo #musicians #patterns #paradiddles by @drumlanguage

15

1

a month ago