Creative Coordination Views

General Goods

Thomas Lang: Creative Coordination and Advanced Foot Technique is a colossus. Most DVD-based instruction courses offer two or three hours of tuition at best; this provides seven. In addition, there is a comprehensive book included, and a play-along CD, which puts this product up amongst the more impressive multimedia products on the market. Predictably, the cost is accordingly high, and is well above the level of most drumming DVDs. However, if you can afford it, this will give you enough material to work on for weeks or months, which is more than can be said for its cheaper competitors.

The focus of the course is clear from the title, and this is an honest description. 'Creative Coordination' here means developing key skills such as accuracy, timing and stamina, which can then be applied to any style of playing. The 'creative' part comes in later on, when Lang encourages students to apply their new-found skills to a range of music he has written. He even goes into detail, explaining his composition process, so that you can see how he is applying his abstract technical skills to his performance. This is a great idea, and helps you to think more musically about your playing.

You may be wondering why Thomas Lang: Creative Coordination and Advanced Foot Technique has not received one of our top reviews. Although it is a strong product, its main failure is that it specializes too much on a set of skills without providing enough background and supporting material. It is likely to be a useful course for many drummers, but this focus means that it will not suit absolute beginners or those who are looking for a complete course. However, for those who do have previous experience and want to take their playing to a new level, Creative Coordination and Advanced Foot Technique is definitely worth looking at.

Creative Coordination is a three-disc set presenting Thomas Lang's cutting- edge approach to 21st Century drumming with particular emphasis on foot technique and coordination. In a step-by-step approach that starts slowly and simply, Thomas lays out a clear and concise method for working up to the kinds of fast, complex and challenging beats that are pushing the boundaries of contemporary Rock, Metal and Fusion music.