Gordy Knudtson - The Hand Whisperer

When Gordy Knudtson was gigging in the late 70s, he was using almost exclusively traditional grip, and suffered an injury he says caused doctors to doubt he’d be able to continue playing.

Desperate to “work around” his tension, Gordy switched to matched and did one of the great deep-dives on hand technique. You could say he “John Dahaner’ed” drumstick mechanics, but it’s more accurate to say John “Gordy’d” jiujitsu.

One of the points I bring up with Gordy is that just as before and after Danaher, plenty of practitioners embodied solid mechanics, if you watch the hands of any of myriad great drummers, from Joe Morello to Philly Joe, to Tony Williams, to maybe Tony’s most famous fan, Vinnie Colaiuta, to modern technicians like Dana Hawkins, it’s clear there’s no shortage of drummers putting mechanical principles into practice.

But it’s probably also true that Gordy has extended the understanding of what’s actually happening when these greats play more than anyone at least since Murray Spivack, and, just like Danaher, made it more efficient for beginners to learn.

As you’ll see, Gordy also gives me something of a “free lesson”, showing how I could extend on my technique. Video of my thoughts and experiments on this in the pipeline for sure. There’s been much chat around this on calls with my coaching students.

Chapters

0:10 - unintended back story 1:49 - my background with Gordy 3:10 - does Gordy think the big dynamic variation in his gigs contributed to his technique 5:57 - is there a value to playing gigs that stretch your dynamic range? 11:21 - weird gigs in our pasts 13:42 - Gordy continues outlining the origins of his approach 22:11 - why every double stroke is by definition open-close 33:56 - the paradox of many great practitioners but few codifiers 45:05 - Gordy's assessment of *my* interpretation of his technique