Virgils Exercises

[Lucius]

Just curious as to how many of you are attempting Virgils left hand left foot paradiddle and right hand right foot double paradiddle and vice versa and so on, exercises, and how succesful are you with them? :D

[quitou]

They're not too difficult in my opinion....Those exercises are very similar to the ones presented in Marco Minnemann's extreme interdependence book, which I have been going through for 5 or 6 months now....so the layering that Virgil had on the sheets I can play with no real problems (obviously not at insane speeds, but I can play them regardless)....with this in mind, I will tell you that when I first got Minnemanns book, it was a nightmare for me....I couldn't play anything in there....and I still have alot of trouble with alot of the stuff in there....but I work on it a bit everyday and I'm getting more and more accustomed to this crazy independance idea....

[bootdogs]

The Warm-Up stuff was so simple, yet really really hard at first. But it's a lifelong study, and it's great to have interdependence. Marco's book is a must.

[quitou]

When going through those exercises, I recommend going really slowly at first....like VERY slow....and pay very close attention to how your limbs are moving in relation to eachother (ie. which ones land together, which ones don't, etc.)....slowly you will get the pattern kinda memorized in your head and you'll feel more comfortable playing them....hope that helps!!!!:)

[quitou]

If anyone is interested in taking the layering idea from the Virgil worksheet and working with the concept a lot more, I highly recommend getting Marco Minnemann's book....basically what he does for a lot of it is present tons and tons of patterns to play and then a whole bunch of melodies to play over top of the patterns....it's basically like the layering on Virg's exercises, but almost an entire book devoted to that kind of stuff....he also talks alot about moving the hihat around in grooves to add a new dimension to your playing....then he shows specific grooves that he has played in songs....and the book comes with a cd that gives examples from throughout the book and it even has the tunes that Marco shows the grooves for, so you can play along with the songs....

And, I think this was mentioned a while back on this borad, but Virgil even has a little write up in Marco's book....Virgil says that at the moment, it is the most important book on that subject (interdependence)....

[swedendrummer]

the hardest part for me is to fit the sixteennotes patters whith the sixteen note triplets...whats your weakness of the book?

[quitou]

Toughest part for me so far is playing the triplet meoldies over the sixteenth note patterns....I'm sort of starting to get more comfortable with it now, but it is still not super clean....for some reason I find this harder than playing the 16th note triplets over the 16th note melodies....I guess everyone will find different parts to be more difficult than others

my weakness in the book is everything though....it'll take quite a while to get really comfrotable with all of the comcepts in there....

[Drumblast]

This book is excellent. And you have to thank Rick Gratton for putting it all together, as well as writing the warm up exercises.

This is my favorite book. I like to work thru it at my own leisure. But mostly, i try to incorporate his ideas in my own grooves. Kinda like interdepending your beats. Gotta make something your own.

But this book really opens you up, having that extreme independance technique. All the exercises send you in a forward direction, giving you a sense of accomplishment.

[Brobjer]

I find it better working on the rhythmical parts than on the ex. double bass techniques. Gavin Harrison's book "rhythmic illusions" is an exellent book and I believe it's is one of the top-priority book of getting the same rhythmical abilities as Virgil has for example. In the book you'll work with illusions of all kinds.
Virgil has by far some of the best techniqual abilities I've seen, but it is really his rhythmical sense that impresses me.

- Brobjer

[MaltBuddow3]

yeah... I've heard Marco's stuff and it hurt my brain. He's great. But, like Brobjer, I really love Virgil's sense of time and rythm. I love it when he takes his hands completely out of the groove for two or four bars and then jumps right back in. Does anyone know if Virgil still does the Power Drumming workout?

[Brobjer]

Yeah, right on Malt!
I haven't seen Power Drumming yet (!) .. I want a copy of obsessive rhythms =)

Ciao folks!