by jorge » Mon Aug 18, 2014 3:03 pm
Some people are great players but can't teach. Some can teach but are not great players. A few are both great players and great teachers.
Some students can learn from anyone because they are patient and critical about what they choose to learn. Some students need things broken down to them in a systematic clear way. Others can figure things out mostly on their own by watching and listening to great players.
Some of the best players I know are in the last group. They are naturally curious, very patient, smart, disciplined and, most important, dedicated to the drum and willing to spend the time needed to master each of the important things they want to master. They also have access to great players and play with people with good timing, strong sense of clave, and deep knowledge of Afrocuban music. These days, much of this access can be substituted by recordings of great players, with the important warning that the recording provides the groove whether you play great or not. It is very easy to feel that you are playing on time with swing even if you aren't, so you can get a false sense of how great you sound.
Those videos of Jerry Gonzalez do have some useful techniques that you should be able to learn from if you are already at an intermediate level. Probably not so much if you are a beginner in your first few years of playing. He plays his own style, there are lots of other ways to play the rhythms he is demonstrating. In some cases, eg, the Mozambique clip, he doesn't demonstrate the conga parts at all. Don't expect the video to spoon feed you the techniques in a way you can learn them in a few years. In addition to the things I mentioned above, learning Afrocuban music takes time. A lot of time, much more than most people realize or expect.