Magnetic Groove: Book, Online Course, and Brand

Magnetic Groove is a multifaceted personal project centered around my own passion for drumming, and music education. I designed a full course in drumming, aimed at teaching intermediate players the secret nuances, perspectives, and philosophy for playing the drums with a focus on groove.

The main idea behind this course is that a solid drum groove functions like a magnetic field, which exerts a powerful influence on all other musical parts, pulling the entire band into a unified rhythmic alignment. The target market is younger to middle aged adults who are passionate about drumming and possess a certain degree of knowledge and skill, yet struggle to understand the secrets of groove, pocket, and feel.

Magnetic Drumming is inspired by my own experience as a working drummer, learning how to craft the perfect grooves for every musical situation, and what really matters to the music and audience. I learned how to focus in on the nuances of drumming, like setting up a strong sense of dynamic hierarchy within a groove, and bending the perception of time by controlling the subtleties of beat placement, swing, and groove feel.

This project included writing and designing an instructional book, as well as designing, recording, filming, and editing to create a video course, and building a website to house the video course and use as an all-around landing page for Magnetic Groove products.

The Website

The Book

The Video Course

The website was designed as a landing page for all Magnetic Groove products and content. The navigation includes links to social media, an about page, contact page, and user login functions. The website is the home for the Magnetic Groove video course, and also includes links to purchase the book.

The website is also aimed at providing information about the Magnetic Groove course, and my story about why I created this course. Visitors can click on buttons with various calls to action, such as learning more about the course, purchasing the course, starting the course, and purchasing the book. Website Link: https://www.magneticgroove.com/

At the time of writing, the book is still in the prototype phase, and will be published soon. The prototype uses a spiral bound design so that readers can easily lay the book flat while practicing and reading.

The book contains about 130 pages, organized into 6 main lessons with 7 categories of practice material. I wrote all of the material in the book, and designed all of the visuals, including over 40 unique diagrams containing illustrations and written music notation to explain the concepts.

I used Adobe InDesign to create the main document, while using Adobe Illustrator to design the diagrams and MuseScore to write out the notation. I was able to export the MuseScore files as vectors, and bring them into Illustrator to combine with other visuals to create the final diagrams.

Some of these files are also used for the video course, modified to explain the concepts using motion graphics.

I recorded the audio and video content at the professional quality recording studios at SUNY Oswego, with the help of students in the recording engineering program. Some video content simply has me sitting in front of a soundboard, talking about drumming concepts, while others show me performing examples and demonstrating specific techniques, such as hi-hat foot control.

Recording took place over 3 different sessions. I used multiple camera angles including an above view, front view, and side view. The sound engineers used a simple microphone setup, with a kick drum microphone, snare drum mic, and two overhead condenser microphones. Eli Gerebera worked as the main engineer, and took care of mixing and mastering after the recording sessions.

One of the recording sessions included a colleague of mine on bass guitar, Jason Lane, to demonstrate how the drums and bass work together as the rhythm section to set up the rhythmic framework for the rest of the ensemble.

We also demonstrated how to achieve an appropriate groove style for different genres and musical situations. These examples are accompanied by notation so that students can follow along and learn the parts exactly.

This part of the video course was extremely important for the overall product, since understanding the concept of groove on the drums requires understanding groove within a musical context with other instruments.