Performance Breakdowns with Vic Firth Artists

Let’s face it: there are some artists who perform at a level that’s practically incomprehensible to mere drumming mortals! While you can certainly appreciate the pocket, the nuances or even the complexity of what’s being played – while it’s being performed – usually it’s on such a completely different level that it requires many (many) repeated views to even begin to pick up on everything that passes by. And even if you have the luxury of having the transcription on the screen with the performances, unless you can speed read music notation, it can also pass by so quickly that you’re left with a sense of amazement instead of comprehension!

That’s where this “Learn the Music” performance breakdown series comes in. We’ve selected excerpts of some of our favorite performances and not only have downloadable transcriptions available for you to download, but have added the notation on the screen, along with ‘beat indicators’ synced with the audio, video and the music.

THEN, we slow the speed down to half tempo so that you can REALLY hear the nuances and read the music.  Instead of the (generally) terrible audio generated with many ‘on the fly’ computer-aided software tools, we’ve taken care to make sure the audio is clean and clear, even at half speed. Once you’ve grasped the performance at 50% tempo, we deliver it again at 75% – fast enough to start getting a more musical overview of the performance, but still slow enough to follow along and understand what’s the artist is communicating!.

Finally, you’ll see the performance up to speed one last time. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have a whole new appreciation and comprehension of the musical artistry of the performance – and (hopefully) can take some of that and apply it to your own playing.

We hope you enjoy this series and come back frequently to catch up on new installments as we add them to our “Learn the Music” library!