Hello readers. I feel obligated to apologize for not posting much this month, and the obligation comes from my sincere gratitude for you all, who visit and subscribe to this blog and often tell me how you appreciate and enjoy what I write. So thanks for that, and sorry for the sparse posts lately.
In an attempt to make up for it, I’ve got a youtube playlist for you of a clinic I did last month. Fair warning: it’s pretty long. There are over a dozen videos and they are all 5-10 min. The second half of the playlist isn’t in order of the way the clinic happened, and a lot of the clips are from the Q and A time, so some of it will seem random. I just watched it myself and I have to say that I CANNOT BELIEVE how often I say “right?” at the end of my sentences. Wow. Go ahead and laugh at me for that. And, feel free to post any questions regarding the stuff I say. I’m always looking to refine my perspectives and being challenged by others’ questions is a great way to do that.
The Steve Goold Blog 
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December 20, 2010 at 9:47 am
Joel Wiens
Awesome! You could easily substitute any instrument (including someone’s voice) for the drums and say the exact same stuff. Less is more!
December 20, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Bill R
Nice work. Thanks for making these available. At least you didn’t say “umm” all the time. All right? 😉
December 21, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Audio Logic Systems
Great to have you back!
January 18, 2011 at 8:24 am
Dan Hembree
Steve,
Incredible job with this clinic! This is a GREAT resource for drummers breaking into the world of worship drumming, or a re-focus for others. Everything you said is spot on!! There are elements to worship drumming that are certainly unique to the genre.
Dan
January 18, 2011 at 6:29 pm
stevegoold
Thanks, Dan!
January 21, 2013 at 1:53 am
Tyler Shenk
I just found this post on your blog, which is cool because I found your blog a month or two ago as a result of finding and loving these Youtube videos. Thanks for both! I haven’t found like you who loves Jesus, plays music through the drums with your kind of focus and artistic depth, and also shares their ideas and resources for the world! I am extremely grateful that you take the time to share this stuff with people you don’t even know!
But I’ve got a question (which I’ll try to keep short) about your idea of Mind vs. Ear vs. Habit:
How do you determine what ear suggestions to not play?
For example, if your ear suggests that you speed up through a fill into a driving a chorus, where do you draw the line between breath of song and too-much-faster? You recently quoted Steve Jordan as saying “Brown Sugar ends 20bpm faster than it starts… does that matter? Would you change it for a take that stayed steady?” 20 BPM is a lot haha.
Another way to ask this question might be “where’s the balance between creative rawness and authentic expression with technical mastery of one’s instrument and the pursuit of perfection?”
Dave Grohl gave a Grammy acceptance speech on the superiority of music that’s human over music that’s perfect in reference to some of his pop peers’ use of auto-tune and other such studio fixes. After all, could a piece of art that is perfect be truly creative?
Of course, the polar opposite of analytically-determined technical perfection is sloppiness. But I think there’s gotta be a balance in between; we can probably all agree that Steve Jordan’s playing is truly better than that of a middle schooler thrashing his first drum set without any metronomic consistency, dynamic contrast, musical vocabulary, etc., etc. … can’t we? If so, how do you draw that line? When might “genuine, spontaneous, raw, and good” become “not thought through, sloppy, and bad,” and similarly, when does “technically mastered, virtuosic, and great” “stale, too-perfect, devoid of creativity, and offensively un-artistic”?
January 21, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Steve Goold
Great questions man. And thanks for your encouragement on the posts and stuff… I really love doing it so I’m always pumped when people seem to get stuff out of what I do.
Ok, I don’t have a ton of time to answer right now, so check out this post and tell me if it clarifies or alters your question at all.
January 23, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Tyler Shenk
Thanks! Great post! I’ll have to let those ideas bounce around for a while before I know for sure, but I feel like that answers my question pretty completely.
June 30, 2013 at 11:44 am
Tyler Shenk
I was reading this interview of Rick Rubin and it made me think of your bit in this Church Drumming seminar about keeping the suggestions of your ear in check by putting your mind in control. At the end of this interview (which is a great read, start to finish), Rubin seems to suggest the opposite. Referring to the analytical part of the brain that checks for being in-tune and not too loud, he says, “You have to shut off all of those voices and look for these special moments—these moments that you accept you have no control over. So much of my job is to not think—to be open to what’s there, and then use my intuition to see where it takes me.” Am I interpreting one of you wrong, or do you really disagree with THE Rick Rubin? haha. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, you might really enjoy this interview.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/06/26/rick-rubin-on-crashing-kanye-s-album-in-15-days.html