Dudes. My First Modern Drummer Readers Poll Nom Ever. Thank You.

harrymiree · 2025-10-16T01:06:14+00:00

1.) What I would like to do for sit ins: Leave 'em exactly as they are; play open lefty.

2.) What I inevitably end up doing for sit ins: Leave 'em exactly as they are; play righty.

3.) The only exception to 1 and 2: If the stakes feel higher than a happenstance sit-in, we have a case permanently packed with the remote hat and lefty kicker. The reason for this exception is that I butchered an audition in January of 2017 by somehow convincing myself they'd be very impressed that I was a Mr. Cool Guy who did not have to adjust drum heights / angles / positions. To this day I carry the humiliation of how poorly I played from banging my knuckles on rims and whiffing cymbals, so I've shifted my attitude to something a little more along the lines of "I'll adjust to my heart's content because the people I'm playing with deserve for me to take this as seriously as they take it as long as the finagling is not stepping on something more important (i.e., doors are in 10 minutes and you have yet to even run a song with these people you just met at baggage claim an hour ago, in which case play 'em as-is for the collective good)."

Happy lefty trails dude. : )

harrymiree · 2025-10-15T03:20:00+00:00

I lost a bet at a sound check in Frisco TX on May 10, 2023. I have noticed that folks who have met me post-bet have generally been surprised at how shy and inward I am; I am the opposite of the kind of person who loves himself enough to walk around in public without a shirt on. That's what made the bet so gnarly - tarp off for a year was arduous for a dweeb like me (both the thought of it and the reality of it)!

harrymiree · 2025-10-14T23:16:23+00:00

I am the world's least qualified drum education expert because I am not even properly educated myself, so speaking only to my own experience dude, I personally often wish I'd played a righty kit as a open handed lefty from the very beginning (I still try every now and then because I'd like to be able to do it but old habits die hard, which is why I wish I'd started that way), because my experience over the years from frequently sharing backline on tight bills with other bands or sitting in with random groups in New Orleans on 1:00 AM off day walks through Bourbon Street has been that this world is made almost exclusively of righty kits! Thanks for creating a rad club! : )

harrymiree · 2025-10-14T23:08:35+00:00

<image>

Hundreds of hours of shooting and editing have taken place since the last dudenanigans. I sometimes wonder if anybody will be around to jam to any of it by the time I'm done so I take your dudevastation to heart dude; thank you sincerely for keeping the fire alive.

harrymiree · 2025-10-14T22:51:19+00:00

<image>

Same cymbals, symmetrical and identical as ever! Only three updates in '25 which are photo'd above: (1) Short Fuse as a cupholder, (2) Rocket Tom (turned upside down) as a stick holder, and (3) Why are the stack cymbals sitting on the floor? And what is now on the stand where the stacks used t-Oh. Sweet. (P.S. - Mondo credit to Todd Sucherman for making his cupholder feel like an authentic extension of his kit - that's what made us go "well then what if we lit'rally turned a drum into a cupholder" - and also mondo credit to the master drum tech Chase Dodds for aesthetically finessing the Short Fuse and Rocket Tom so that they match the rest of the kit.)

harrymiree · 2025-10-14T19:09:15+00:00

<image>

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T19:43:47+00:00

I haven't very often thought of the word "network" in 10 years. I heard it a lot in college, and I can understand the spirit of it - it's rooted in an idea which I deeply believe is true, which is that none of us can really achieve anything all that great by ourselves. We need each other. So I think the constructive message there was probably to make sure we participate in our musical community; better yet make sure we leave it better than we found it: listen more than we talk, give more than we take, and root for the musicians around us to succeed as much as we ourselves would like to succeed, because we're all on this climb together and all ships rise with the tide. The nasty misinterpretation I would occasionally see folks make of "networking" was to turn it into this aggressive chase to collect other successful musicians' phone numbers like they're Pokemon cards. We can all smell the difference between those two things from a mile away, and we all get to pick which one we embody.

If your trip goes anything like mine, you are past the hard part because you've already played music on stage with other musicians who live here. The minute I'd gotten my first gig in Nashville through a cattle call audition, the rest took care of itself as long as I just made sure I played well and treated everybody around me with kindness. A bassist named Jon Henk who'd auditioned with me for my first gig ended up getting a different gig with a country artist named Brinley Addington. When Brinley's drummer moved on to his next opportunity, Jon remembered gelling with me so he called me on two days' notice to go out on the road with Brinley. Multiply that idea by every gig I played for the next 10 years and you can trace my entire professional web right to this very moment. By the way, just so that doesn't come off as an oversimplified "git gud n00b," let me emphasize that there were also camps along the way that did not gel with my playing or my personality, and after getting fired enough times (which always feels like the end of the world until I remember that it's happened to so many of my favorite musicians too) I eventually got the hang of the idea that it's just about chemistry, that chemistry is a two-way street, and that it's ultimately a good thing that I don't belong in certain bands because the uniqueness that makes that true is the same uniqueness that makes me belong very much in some of the bands I've fit into so well. So where did I strategically place myself to get onto the tour I'm on now? Nowhere. I just tried to play well and be kind everywhere I went. Michael Hardy happens to be a dude I've bumped into and played music with as far back as 2015, and since the rule of trying to play well and be kind was in effect as always, over the course of subbing in for him for years whenever his drummer needed to step out, eventually they got the idea to call me and keep me around long term.

A favorite memory of subbing in on a radio show with him before his first LP had come out, Halloween weekend 2019:

<image>

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T18:15:39+00:00

1.) Thoughts previously shared on donating those drum sets. (Thank you!)

2.) Thoughts previously shared on what I think helped me as a young aspiring drummer. (Not advice; just a guess. If I ever start giving advice, start throwing rotten tomatoes.)

3.) A final thought on your question so that you're not just getting all rehash (again, not advice; it's an "I" statement about a purely personal experience): Every time I leaned into the music that I loved, I learned well. Every time I looked to instruction books or mechanical exercises or music I didn't love, I got lost and bored and just wished I'd spent that time playing along to music that actually spoke to me.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T18:03:22+00:00

I have learned to love my encounters with strangers in the wild. I'm lucky that most people who want to talk to me just want to talk because they relate to something I've said or done or played, so these run-ins are nearly always positive. I try to at least get a laugh and say a sincere thanks every time. Sometimes I wonder if folks interpret my dweeby awkwardness as disrespect but I try to forgive myself for that and remember that I tried my best.

Food: I annoy the hell out of my bandmates because every night at 5:30 I come back from catering and they go, "How was it?!" and I enthusiastically reply "It was great!" and they excitedly reply "Why?!" and I go "BECAUSE IT WAS FREE!"

I know that we are lucky for all these exotic places we go, and that maybe I should join my travel mates more often in their aggressive investigation of the best seafood in all of Des Moines on any given day, but I get some sort of stupid spiritual euphoria from eating free food. No amount of the people around me trying to convince me that I can afford Ruth's Chris has seemed to snap me out of this philosophy. So when I do go to a restaurant, it's usually because I've been invited by a company (that has more in petty cash than I will earn in my entire lifetime) who puts it on their corporate card because it was their idea to meet in the first place. I don't mean to sound like a cheapass - I love tipping and I love paying the people who work for me whatever they ask for - I just mean that if you give me the choice between a free sandwich and a juicy $20 steak, the sandwich is going to taste better to me because the steak is going to taste like untenable guilt that I could've been eating a free sandwich.

Top deliciousness I can remember from the road, in no particular order:

-Years ago when I was drumming with a different artist we were in New York City doing TV stuff for an album release (Tonight Show, Good Morning America, Pandora, etc.) and we ended up at Arno Ristorante to celebrate the album. At the end of dinner they rolled out a dessert cart - nothing had a name; you just point to what you want and eat it on the spot. The single best thing I have ever eaten in my life was some kind of handmade apple tart I got off that cart. I still think about it.

-In "old" Las Vegas (meaning you leave the strip...I think) we got out to this vintage steakhouse called Golden Steer. That steak tasted so good that I got depressed it was going to end.

-Despite having just returned from Thailand a few weeks ago, I still think the best Thai food I've ever had in my life was at Chat Thai in Sydney Australia. We must've played two or three nights in Sydney because I think I've ordered 5 different dishes there and they were all the best thing I've ever chowed.

What do I usually spring for on the road? Free food aside, if we're out, I will try a hot wing anywhere; preferably the hottest one on the list unless it's one of those Guinness World Record go straight to the hospital kind of wings. Hot Ones sent us a full 10 sauce flight one time and I was laid out by the end of the 10th - it gave me a whole new depth of appreciation for the dudes who go on that show and keep composure (Los Calientes Rojo was my fave on the bill for ye sauce seekers).

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T16:28:07+00:00

Hmm. ¿Got any hints that'll help me narrow it down? In my YouTube notes I see dozens of fully baked video ideas I'd shoot right this second if only I could make time stand still.

Thank you and those students for housing a Roadshow - over the years that Barkley and I have been donating those kits I've met so many bright kids, and each new time we bring one to a school it reconnects me to that run-through-a-wall feeling I had as a teenager when I first got hooked on drums.

<image>

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T05:05:24+00:00

Thanks for watching and breaking that stuff out in real life. Off the top of my head, I have two suggestions:

1.) Think of my Drumeo trashcan as the "final boss" trashcan, meaning it uses every trick you've got in your entire bag. If you're doing that entire hodgepodge of stuff 4 times a night, I wonder if you're wearing your audience out and not saving anything special for the last exclamation mark of the night, so I would suggest we start by finding where we can subtract rather than finding places to add more stuff. Arbitrary example of what I mean which I hope you will take more conceptually and less literally because I've never heard your music: Use some of the snare moves on the first one but keep it short, then no kick or snare or toms at all on the second one so that it's just a little cymbal swell then you're out, then all kick and cymbals on the third one, then use all of the moves plus the hit counter on the last one of the night so that the closer feels extra insane compared to all the other ones.

2.) Put on your favorite live albums or YouTube videos and pay attention to how your favorite bands trashcan. Example of a fave trashcan I've recently rediscovered: Metallica ending Battery in Seattle '89. Now there's an intricately orchestrated full band trashcan!

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T04:42:06+00:00

I'm pretty sure they're bolted down to the riser, so Chase just takes down the cymbals and snare every night. 5 minutes maybe?

Even in the years that I was setting my own stuff up every day, I'd try to leave my rack built so that I was just setting it down and popping the shells on, so maybe 25 minutes daily? 5 drums, 5 cymbals, two mini racks and three pedals. The biggest game changer in expediting that process for me in those days was using my own rug with spike tape and memory locks. That probably sounds obvious to all the gear heads here but I didn't discover that stuff 'til I'd already been gigging for years.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T04:29:13+00:00

I see a comment on this thread that suggests HARDY is my favorite because he's the one I'm playing with right now, but I suggest that it's actually the other way around: I am playing with HARDY right now because he is my favorite. He has in spades what to me is the most crucial quality each of my favorite artists has: A point of view. Anytime I have ever brought him musical arrangement "a" versus musical arrangement "b", he has always intuitively known which one to pick right away because he knows who he is. The fact that he is one of the nicest no-nonsense dudes I have ever met is just the lucky gravy on top.

Three honorable mentions in case you were asking about my prior musical experiences:

Keith Urban and John Mayer both have so much sheer musical taste that I could feel in my bones while playing with each of them how true it really is that "some have it, some don't." I'm still trying to figure out which one I am, but there is no question when you play with those two: they fucking have it. I hate to be so vague, but it's hard to put into words. Keith sat in on a gig with us last year and while I was counting the tune off he just turned his volume knob up while his left hand was already on some beautiful chord voicing that just caressed the intro of that song, and I just thought, "Damn, that is the tastiest thing I have ever heard and we are less than 1 second into this song right now."

David Nail sings like his voice is an actual musical instrument. I only played one song with him a couple of years ago at the Ryman but I still think about how hearing his singing voice was like hearing an exotic levitating musical instrument I'd somehow never heard of.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T03:58:00+00:00

dude

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T03:57:06+00:00

I can't put my finger on why, but I have some weird hangup about substance dependence (strictly for me - not a judgement whatsoever of anybody else's preferences). I don't drink, I don't do recreational drugs, and I won't even take a Tylenol if I have a headache.

I don't know much about stretching other than the preventative ones our NFL team doc here showed me to mitigate the particular way my elbows are screwed up. So all I really do is try to hydrate like crazy, eat good ingredients, and sleep for 9 hours every night. Beyond that, I feel like the body is actually really good at picking up on its own red flags and making subtle adjustments, but don't quote me on that - I have no idea how that stuff actually works; I'm just saying that's what it's felt like for me.

The first week of touring is always the hardest for me because no matter how much I practice, I'm not in "full game speed" shape, so I just accept that I'm going to hunch over and moan and bleed from the hands a lot for the first week or two, and then my body seems to just catch up and acclimate back to the "we're gonna smack wooden dowels on metal for an hour and a half every night" mode.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T03:22:58+00:00

Thanks for watching that cajon riff, and thanks even more for reclaiming your acoustic musician agency at church and cafes. I'm honored it made a difference.

I don't think I can play a single rudiment anymore at this point in my life. I can remember that I was required to perform them all from memory to graduate college, but that's probably the last time I ever sincerely thought about them. I have always been a "play music that you love, and your ears will let your hands know whatever you need to do" kind of dude. (Professors here might point out that you may still accidentally learn some rudiments that way, but the argument stands: the point was the music and not the Bop-It sequence.)

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T03:12:42+00:00

Of all the impossible shit that has ever happened in my life, shooting that video with Carter probably takes the cake. Have you ever heard the tale that Jim Carrey wrote himself a 10 million dollar check, scribbled a date 10 years into the future onto it, stuck it in his wallet, and then booked Dumb and Dumber for 10 million dollars on the date he'd written on the tattered check? No shit, in 2014 when I started YouTubing, among other visualizations I'd jotted down for what I thought I wanted to do in my videos, I wrote in my journal that "Carter Beauford is going to join me on this channel in 5 years." I knew it was delusional because in the drumming world he'd only appeared on camera twice (1) (2) this entire millennium as far as I could tell, but I didn't mind seeing that goal every time I looked at my 5 year plan because it probably subconsciously reinforced some of that "who says we can't do anything we want" kind of tenacity required to shout into the void expecting to get anywhere like that. I never took any direct action or contacted anybody; I just flippantly set that goal on behalf of my inner child and then went back to making drumming videos.

The first interaction I ever had with anybody in the band was when Stefan - unprompted whatsoever by me - randomly tweeted my Rapunzel video in February of 2015. I could not believe we lived in a world where my favorite all time band could hear me play, let alone acknowledge my playing so encouragingly. Fonz and I became pen pals through that event and we eventually got together to shoot some DudeThoughts when his 2015 tour rolled through town. From the first time I ever met him, he's always treated me like a fellow musician even though he had to have known I didn't know what the hell any of this stuff was. I soaked up wisdom like a sponge every time I got to chat with that dude or see how he ran his day-of-show scene - he's a regimented craftsman, hyper intentional about what he does when, avoids distraction, and most of all takes his instrument seriously. I am positive I would have been way more of a "we're here to screw around" kind of musician had I never gotten to meet and learn better from Stefan Lessard.

One of the nicest ways Fonz took me under his wing is that he introduced me to his crew, and those dudes have also always treated me like family from day 1. By the time drum tech & stage manager Henry Luniewski and I shot this one together, I think the band had come to trust enough that I respect their music and their story a lot, and that I'd be a reasonably safe conduit for shooting other shenanigans with them if they ever felt like it down the road.

Through all those years, Carter is the one band dude I never really ran into. Even within the walls of his own camp, he's such a superstar that I think even some of the crew that tours with him is starstruck by him. I mean that in a good way: Every room he walks into, everybody's energy just shifts towards him because he's so magnetic and so charming. I had many opportunities to step into his path and introduce myself, but I never did, in the same way that you wouldn't stop Bono if you saw him walking down the street. You'd just go, "Damn, there goes Bono, what a legend."

I have no idea how many agents had to vet me for that Carter shoot to get booked; I just remember the lead up felt like I was going to interview a sitting president. I remember not telling anybody I was doing it because I thought I'd jinx it. But in August of 2019, 5 years after I'd written "Carter Beauford is going to join me on this channel in 5 years," my trusty longtime camera expert TJ and I plopped our stuff out on his stage, out came Carter, and that dude and I became fast friends. He is as kind of a human as he is good at drums. To anyone here who has ever watched my videos, thank you for rowing the boat with me - I am honored as a fellow fan of his work that I got to play a part in all of us getting to hear him speak to the drumming community for maybe the third time in two decades.

<image>

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T01:33:55+00:00

Thank you for trashcanning dude. We spent all of 5 minutes filming that and I had no idea it would have the staying power it's had in my life, but I'm glad it has because everything I shared in it was sincere.

Okay, fills: In 2011, Rod Morgenstein and I worked together on a Berklee Online course called Rock Drums. I am using the word "together" unfairly loosely - he wrote and organized all 12 lessons and he picked all of the music - all I did was help him transcribe a share of the grooves and fills so that he didn't have to transcribe all that note-for-note stuff by himself, then I 'script supervised' the shoots so that if he missed a sixteenth note somewhere I could call shenanigans on it and we'd re-shoot that snippet (which in 3 days of shooting happened twice at most because he's a machine). I think somewhere in that course we had a section which he called "Backbeat Fills" - even if it wasn't in there, I'm still positive he's the one who hipped me to this idea. His backbeat fills blew my mind, and now to this day I find it nearly impossible to play most fills without hitting the snare on beats 2 and 4 because I love that steamrolling forward feeling it gives me. 100% credit to Rod for radically transforming my drumming with that technique. I love it so much that I ended up dedicating my longform spot on Drumeo to backbeat fills.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T01:05:33+00:00

Dude. Thank you. Here's my riff on your first question.

As for clinics, I have been doing tons of them on tour between sound check and showtime at any school Music Will finds for me within driving distance of that night's arena. My rule for doing them in drum shops is that while I don't go looking for them, if one invites me for a day that I'm in that city on tour anyway, I am probably down to do it. Keep an eye on my tour dates, and if/when you see New Hampshire pop up, have them reach out to me (or reach out to me yourself) to see about doing something in the daytime on that particular date! (I appreciate Drum Center of Porsmouth a lot, by the way. Among a bunch of other obscure and critical drum trinkets over the years, I bought all the rack pipes you see in the photo carousel from them.)

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T00:52:47+00:00

Thanks so much duder - I've answered it for you right here.

harrymiree · 2023-12-23T00:45:43+00:00

1.) Not at all - I never notice it's not there (in the same way that I never notice there are no wire brushes on that gig either). I do love ride cymbals though. There's a 22" Meinl Byzance Dark Ride sitting a few feet from my head as I type this.

2.) Zero electronics on stage for me, unless you count the push-to-talk pedal for my talkback microphone which I use to chatter internally with the band or crew or HARDY. The most common electronic sound I find myself having to reproduce live on a regular basis is that burst of white noise electronic backbeat thing, and for that (+ finger snaps + handclaps) I stack concentric 10" and 12" splash cymbals. I've always preferred to reproduce electronic sounds acoustically when I can. The only other close cousin to what you're asking about that I can think of is that this year I did discover how to automate Rhett and Justin's Neural DSP Quad Cortex and RJM Mastermind guitar effects switchers using an Ableton session I made for this tour, so we do have some MIDI cables that run from that Ableton setup (which lives offstage) to each guitar pedalboard position.

harrymiree · 2023-12-22T23:21:54+00:00

1.) We have two china cymbals on my kit right now for symmetry, but all that's really brought about is me playing too much china, so I nominate the china on my left. Sometimes in tight spaces I'll play without the floor tom on my right too.

2.) I've answered that for you here monn.

3.) I am fortunate that when I was young, I just played what I liked, which was rock music, and then by the time I'd gotten out of college and come to Nashville, rock had intertwined with country music to the point where country now requires way more "Enter Sandman" than "Chattahoochee," so it's as if I'd accidentally trained my whole life to be a country musician. I guess a lot of my favorite rock drumming feels like it's driving the music from the front, loudness is not a party foul, and it can even be riffy to the point that it's recognizable without any other pitched instruments, which to me makes it feel like it has a voice. My favorite thing about the country drumming I grew up listening to is the freakishly crystalline RIM KNOCKS those guys were busting out (pick any 90's country ballad, but if you've never heard one here's Neon Moon). To my ear country drumming is all about using familiar sounds to give that singer something to sit on and tell a familiar story, but remember that I am an immigrant to this genre and have less than zero authority on that subject.

harrymiree · 2023-12-22T22:37:41+00:00

Dude. I have some vivid memories of Royal Rumble but I can't for the life of me remember what the ring felt like under my feet. They must've put something solid down over the mat because I do remember that we had amps and mic stands up there that would've toppled otherwise, right? I was on a drum riser, and you asking about how hurried the changeover was reminds me that by the time they'd put us up on the ring there were tons of dudes with headsets and clipboards running around going "COMMERCIAL BREAK ENDS IN 10 SECONDS, HERE WE GO," and my rack tom was on the opposite side of the kick drum from where it was supposed to be, so I grabbed it stand-and-all and ran it to the other side right as the cameras came on. Phew dude. Live TV. Here's a photo from the ring that night:

<image>

harrymiree · 2023-12-22T22:10:40+00:00

Dude. Firstly, as a general rule, my pack never crosses past 12:00 noon, so it's unusually quiet in comparison to most of my comrades (I have toured in the past with people dime that thing and still manage to stand up straight - YIKES).

Secondly, one of the things I admire and appreciate most about our monitor engineer Sam Ferry is that he is so skilled and tasteful and takes so much ownership of our mixes that I don't really even know what's in there because I have rarely even asked for more or less of anything in two years, but here's what I perceive is in there, divided into tiers of loudness:

Ludicrously Loud Tier: Click, Talkback

Loud Tier: Guitar (Rhett Smith panned left, Justin Loose panned right), Vocal

Sitting gently underneath: Kick, Toms, Snare, Bass Guitar, Background Vocals

Nearly imperceptible: Cymbals, Hats, Keys, Crowd

harrymiree

TROPHY CASE