DRUMMERS: Advice for a beginner

(sorry)

i've already outlived him by 5 years! i think we're out of the woods there.

keith moon and i share a birthday, so i am assuming that means that i will be great within a month or so

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Friday, June 21, 2013 6:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If you take amphetamines hourly from now until then, you will be.

actually I think one of the hardest things about imitating Bonham off a record is the slap back echoes -- so much of it sounds like ghost notes that you wind up playing a bunch of extra hits

I recommend practicing on pillows, tbh. Play along to songs, bashing to the beat. It's great, because there is no rebound, so it builds strength while you're working on your time.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 21, 2013 5:54 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was also the Dave Grohl method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPiG7HVt5lM

i don't wanna collapse, going to stick to regular coffee as planned

btw n/a, danm -- you guys may go into the basement, jordan too
just no strangers yet

well, i don't really seem to know what i'm doing for about 14 seconds, but this is my first tiny (1 min) recording so i can remember what i've been practicing
i def need a metronome!
http://snd.sc/130Uj8C

Sweet! I might need a drummer for my NIN precover thing - what are your rates?

Not bad, seriously. Single strokes sound pretty even, although it's hard to hear through soundcloud, and your time and feel are good for a beginner.

A suggestion: try slowing that beat down a good amount. In particular because you're playing a syncopated beat with the snare on the first and fourth sixteenth notes, it would help to play it slower so that you can really tighten the snare hits and get them exactly in the right places. If you don't already know how to count out sixteenth note patterns, I can post more on that and bore you some.

i have trouble slowing down -- i just get faster and faster til i have to stop for a second (that's when i do the fills) and then i try to resume normalcy after that.
thanks for listening! i am trying to get comfortable with the idea of this and i just decided to jump in the deep end.

when i'm playing the standard 4/4 (is that what it's called y/n) rock beat i sound pretty normal i think, but this one was new for me. i don't worry that i'm going to forget that one because it's like every song ever, apparently.

questions:

do i need a smaller crash cymbal? the one i have always sounds so final.
do i have to wear shoes? i alternate between shod and unshod.

not sure if i know how to count out 16th note patterns or not. i think i have trouble integrating words and music? like when people talk through dance steps i find it really distracting.

I'd hold off on worrying about the size of the crash cymbal for now. it's something that you'll naturally develop a feel for as you go, and the kind(s) of cymbal(s) you need depends on what kind of music you're playing.

shoes? just wear whatever makes you comfortable! i usually go barefoot or with shoes, and avoid socks only.

being able to count out patterns verbally is useful, i'm sure, but i've never been able to do it that well. more important is just developing an intuitive feel for where the subdivisions are in the beat, and making sure your hits are striking directly on those subdivisions. just curious - can you read music? not notes on a scale like B flat or C sharp or whatever, but rhythms like quarter notes, sixteenth notes, half rests, etc?

"do i need a smaller crash cymbal? the one i have always sounds so final."

I <3 this question. But no, you don't "need" any cymbal. In fact I really, strongly encourage you to trust your ears and avoid any gear dudes who tell you you have to have x or y on your kit. Go hang out in Guitar Center and just hit different cymbals for half an hour and see what sounds good to you. But don't sweat nailing down the exact right gear in the beginning either, that will come gradually.

If you think of a 4/4 measure, it can be divided into sixteen sixteenth notes:

//// //// //// ////

where each slash is a sixteenth note. So in the beat you're playing, the snare hits are on the x's:

//// x//x //// x///

Learning to hear that, and to do it at a slower speed, will help the beat sound tighter and less sloppy when you play it faster. Does it make sense the way I wrote it?

You can also do it as 1-e-and-a 2-e-and-a 3-e-and-a 4-e-and-a -- that's a standard way drum teachers teach it. In that case, the snare hits would be on the bolded syllables:

1-e-and-a 2-e-and-a 3-e-and-a 4-e-and-a

this might take some time to get, don't worry if it doesn't click right away

in case you can't see the bold, it's the "2", the "a" immediately following the 2, and the "4"

i used to kind of know, but have forgotten most of the vocab and retained none of the skill
maybe that would be another thing to get from the library when i go -- they have a lot of simple instructional books

xx//xxx/ makes more sense to me than the second one, which makes my brain feel like scrambled eggs

i do not have the inclination to load up on gear, so no worries about that. was just wondering because it sounded kinda weird to me
one of my trusted chilx friends helped with the snare so that's all better too :)

maybe that would be another thing to get from the library when i go -- they have a lot of simple instructional books

yeah, i'd totally recommend it! drummers actually have it relatively easy because we don't have to learn tons of notes, scales, and keys, and we don't have to pick up a totally new system like guitarists do with tabs. but having a firm grip on the basics of notated rhythm will reaaaaaally come in handy, over and over. also, once you get just the basics down (quarter notes/rests + eighth notes/rests) you'll be able to go through exercises that teach you new rhythms.

My handy guide to cymbals: cheap cymbals sound bad, expensive "hi-tech" cymbals sound bad, expensive regular cymbals sound better, vintage cymbals sound even better, and cracked cymbals sound the best

ha, i'm with you all the way up to the cracked cymbals. well, i guess some cracked cymbals sound good...depends on the crack! but definitely don't go cheap on the cymbals. there are lots of budget lines that are tempting because they'll sell them in a package set for $300 or something and it gets you something like 2 crashes and a ride. it's a much better idea to skip out on that entirely and just buy one really nice vintage cymbal. if you take care of it, a good ride should last you forever - it's worth it! plus you'll sound really good.

yeah obv depends on the crack and the cymbal. But sometimes a crack in a vintage cymbal gives a cymbal a great character while also massively lowering the price tag.

But yeah, I think spending on cymbals is more important than spending on drums. You can take a cheap steel snare and do a lot to improve the sound, as long as the hardware is well constructed and not going to fall apart -- try different heads, different tunings, etc. And a lot of the stuff about maple vs. birch vs. whatever wood is just fashion, and what's more expensive one decade will be cheaper the next. But you can't change a cymbal.

i'm an attorney with a 16-month-old living in an apartment, makes it tough

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, June 21, 2013 2:49 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, i feel you, i can't practice in the house, just on a pad. so the only time i actually play drums is on a gig.

LL, the "1-e-and-uh" vocabulary that hurting mentions is pretty useful, at least if you have to communicate with someone else about a rhythm. like you can say that a given snare snare hit falls on the "uh of 2", meaning that it's on the last 16th note before the 3.

maybe it would help to say that you're playing 8th notes on the hi-hat in that beat you recorded, so those would be counted "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and". if you played twice as many notes in the same space, they would be 16th notes and you would add in the additional syllables to count them.

xp

ok that helps
otherwise it just sounds like "number noise noise noise" to me!
i think the idea of this has sunk in just enough to let me take it to the step of learning a few more technical things, if not only so i can communicate with people. that's a good motivator.

The thing about learning that stuff is that it's not just about communicating, it also opens up creativity. Because if you just hear that beat and try to approximate it without having a way of "breaking it down" so to speak, you can get stuck in a rut just imitating that beat. But if you have a system for understanding where the hits on the snare, hats, kick drum are, etc., you develop the freedom to say "Hmm, what does it sound like if I move the snare hit to THIS sixteenth note instead" -- that will come later, but it's good to build a foundation for it.

I don't think you need a metronome at all; the tempo at the end is pretty much what it is at the beginning (but don't listen to me; I can be anti-metronome sometimes).

Also, Hurting2 & ZS otm re: cymbals. It sucks that good vintage cymbals can be expensive, but yeah, they'll last forever.

I've never played unshod, never tried, never will, and I wince in pain whenever I see close-ups of Grant Hart's bare feet on his pedals in old Husker Du videos. But whatever's comfortable.

xpost to hurting
otm

although the communication part is vital too! when i listened to your recording the first thing i wanted to say was "make sure that the snare hit lands squarely on the last 16th note of the second beat in the measure, and when you get really comfortable with it, try ghosting it!" (ghosting basically means playing a particular note a lot softer than the other notes)

the communication part is vital to me if i want anyone to teach/help me beyond this initial phase, imo
just like i can't talk about sentence structure to someone who doesn't know what a verb is or how to identify one

vital not just to me, but to any learner
i just need a way to communicate with other people who do this thing

The fun thing about playing to a metronome, or click, or any song with a steady beat, is the realization that the 1-2-3-4 is always there, whether you land on it or not. Once you internalize the constant 1-2-3-4, you'll get better at hitting it head on. Like, listened to "Temptation" by New Order. There's a constant pulse of the beat, played by a drummer and machine synched up, but eventually Morris begins to deviate and play around and over the robot beat. It's a cool effect that emphasizes the relationship between human (feel) and machine (beat).

that is a good point. i downloaded a metronome app but i have yet to use it because it seems kinda confusing.

i thought of another analogy for learning the lingo that has helped me decide to at least put some effort into learning -- have you ever noticed that when people (on ilx, since that is our shared territory) talk about dialect/regional accents on ilx, they never (or VERY rarely) use IPA notation to describe sounds? instead it's just back and forth and back and forth "is it like this? like this? how about this?" when this = /ə/ and it's very simple if you just know the vocab? that's how drummers must feel when i try to explain to them what i'm doing. i want to use fewer words and communicate more effectively!

http://ipa.typeit.org/ btw

goin crazy on the cymbals like ʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃʃ

(thank you for that link btw)

that's the sound represented in the first phoneme of the word "shit"
cymbals sound more like /tʃ/ (the first phoneme of "cheese")

haha

hey now I know my phonemes I was just making a joke SHEESH

:)

When I was 10 my drum teacher used to say "Play me a roll. Now play me a bagel." It took me many lessons to realize that was a joke.

Sounds like you hit a few clams.

that's /klæmz/

/ʃiʃ/

;)

i think i might secretly love notation systems

ok so i went to the library -- because of a municipal snag that i forgot about, i couldn't go to the library where i know most of the books are. the library i could go to had two books that seemed even remotely appropriate, one of which starts off with a series of "funny stuff" that is an entire page of jokes about why drummers are hapless losers who want to "steal your girlfriend". i did not get off on a particularly great foot with the book, but so far the advice about practicing is making sense to me -- there are various kinds (fun, endurance, learning new beats/patterns, reinforcing what i already know) and the best results can arise from combining those types of practice with actual playing of music with other people. i'm getting closer to the idea of that.

so today i tried to work on the snare and it was pretty fun. i made another recording but for some reason i can never hear the bass drum (recording on my phone, lo fi in the basement like a good 21st c midwesterner). i slip up big time around 30 sec but clearly i need to work on endurance because i get antsy after like 2-3 cycles through the same pattern.

what is it, the bass player gets all the girls and the drummer smokes all the weed or something? I never actually got that one, but it's a classic bit of musician "humor."

There are good drummer jokes though.

Let me just try and think of some

http://gimp137.tripod.com/myfun.com/id18.html

Q: What do you call a drummer who doesn't wear a bra?
A: a male drummer

Lololol

I have seen half of those jokes done as viola jokes

God those are terrible jokes.

IME drummers tend to be a little dorkier/geekier than the rest of the band. Maybe something about not having to be out front vibing with the audience.

also the dark heart of truth inside corny drummer jokes is that we're afraid we're not 'real' musicians

LL you should do up the bass pedal clamp like I mentioned the other day, then you can really wail on it and you'll hear the drum!

ok
i can hear it with my ears, just not on the recording

we're afraid we're not 'real' musicians
really?! that's absurd.