JP Bouvet on Teaching Improvisation, Learning Songs, and Bandleading

I’ve been meaning to catch up with JP Bouvet since I first saw his clinic videos around 2015. At the time I was gearing up to do my own first clinics, and I had no idea what to do or say.

JP had been on my radar, of course, since the Guitar Center Drumoff, and the Berklee Chops video.

But recently, he’s been putting out some really thoughtful content about improvising on the drums. Of course that caught my attention, because it’s something I’m super focussed on as well.

And, as you’ll hear, he and I arrived at a lot of the same conclusions after examining the landscape of drum instruction. In the years since the Drumoff, JP has thought more deeply about how to play interesting things on the drums, what’s going on in his own head as he improvises, and how to communicate that to students, than practically anybody else I’ve spoken to.

JP and I also get into bandleading, learning songs quickly, and whether or not you should sing what you want to play - a bit of seeming disagreement. (But was it really? ;)

Hope you enjoy this conversation with JP.

Chapters -

1:20 - how has his approach to improvisation changed 8:40 - when to start students improvising? 16:10 - how do you entice students to go deep enough without making then bored? 22:20 - why does so little drum instruction focus on improvisation 32:20 - is JP SURE students should never sing what they want to play? 36:35 - our collective ire toward some conventional wisdom 37:57 - how did JP get into bandleading 42:04 - how does JP learn complex songs so fast?