DRUMMERS: Advice for a beginner

Learning the standard 40 drum rudiments is a great for developing facility, independence, and endurance. That said, too much focus/over-reliance on them can result in stunted creativity down the road (but, like, years down the road). I've seen drummers (even one accompanying Evan Parker) whose fills and phrasing were essentially just quoting a handful of the standard rudiments.

And anyway, heavyweights like Sunny Murray and Keith Moon didn't learn/study them (but other heavyweights like Andrew Cyrille and John Bonham did, so who knows).

i really don't think there's a good argument to be made for avoiding the rudiments, doing so certainly won't make you more creative. just think of them as sticking ideas, adding words to your vocabulary.

that said there's always time to check them out, you can work on one for a while and then go back later for another one. i don't think it's necessary to learn rudiments before working on basic drum set coordination and rock beats, which is sort of a different thing.

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.

otm. Yeah Keith Moon and Ringo immediately comes to mind. Most bands I've been in the drummer was the goofy member.

The thing about drummers not being real musicians is supremely eye-rolling. Every musician should try to make an effort to learn drums. My favorite piano/bass/guitar lines are all when the piano/bass/guitar is played like a percussion instrument.

lol, not being a drummer I didn't realize that rudiments were a concrete "thing", so listen to Jordan more than me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aZPHXyGP3Y

ooh that's a good one! bookmarking.

ha, some are much more useful than others (like, some i use all the time and others i think i've never played in my life):

http://swband.wikispaces.com/file/view/The_26_Drum_Rudiments4.jpg/45465647/The_26_Drum_Rudiments4.jpg

First page of stick control:

http://www.scritube.com/files/limba/engleza/music/64_poze/image008.jpg

FWIW, I have had debates about what he means by "repeat each exercise 20 times" but I think he means repeat each whole bar phrase 20 times. That makes it take a while to get through a page let alone multiple pages, which always made me wonder a little how the book is intended to be used. Nonetheless, great exercises if you can tolerate boredom.

sorry, whole TWO bar phrase

alright, i printed that and can take it downstairs
seems worthwhile and i like really boring things sometimes

yeah, there can be a zen to it, and also sometimes I do it along with music to keep it from being deadly. Focus on having a "good stroke" and don't try to play too fast.

update: i love page 1 of that book! i taped it where i can see it and have been using it every day to get warmed up. i think i might get the rest. it's really relaxing and i feel like i'm learning by the time i get to 17-18 repetitions.

in other news, trying to read the parts of my library books about reading music, that part is pretty fun -- question: this is what my book says about the industry standard. still true? worth memorizing?

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5501/9174120845_2a1172dea3_c.jpg

Yep, still true, probably worth memorizing. Also, you may see an "o" over the hi-hat which means, oddly enough, to open it for that beat:
http://drumming.timsparlour.com/transcriptions/rs.jpg

yep - and one last fairly common thing you'll see is the accents that look like this:

>

that just means to play it louder than the other notes.

ok, then this is what i will attempt to learn
i have another book (this one http://books.google.com/books?id=Q7S68Hq5nLoC&lpg=PA46&pg=PA54#v=onepage&q&f=false) that seems like it will be fun to play with once i learn how to read.

there are so many different skills involved in learning this thing! i can play 1 song now, the whole thing. beat palette keeps growing, slowly.

thank you for the advice, folks. it really helps to know that i have a place to ask questions!

All those rudiments! I drilled like hell on those for an all-state competition once. I did ok -- I got a 97 on my long roll, felt like a drum ninja. But it was really years of playing before I realized how much I still depend on them for just basic physical skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0tMwlcoJmM

I don't know about drumming but Stewart Copeland seems like the coolest person alive.

Man that guy definitely needs to loosen up! Stewart otm! He rules.

He's right, but more practice also can allow you to be looser, if you practice right. Develop your wrists and you don't need to tense up your shoulders.

i.e. sometimes the tension is overcompensation

question

i just finished watching "Rob Carson SCV snare drum: rare footage from the 1970s!" video and am wondering:
are those rudiments things that all drummers can do? i understand the stick flipping is showmanship, but the rest, is that standard issue drummer toolkit?

in other words, is Rob Carson an especially good drummer or is that what is expected of all drummers?

if it's the case that all drummers can do that stuff, i definitely need a teacher!! good god.

You do not need rudiments, but rudiments will make you better, and you can do them anywhere.

I can't do all that stuff anywhere near the speeds he does it. I was never a very good rudimental drummer, and you can be a fine rock band drummer without being one.

it's so weird because i'm trying to immerse myself in all kinds of beats and drumming and little subprojects and whatnot, and i keep wavering between "wow, i could totally do what that guy is doing, like right now downstairs in the basement i must be born to do this hello destiny" and "there is no way i will ever be able to do this why do i even try because that person has magic hands and i have useless knobby pieces of trash"

this thread/reality checking is helping me equalize those two extremes. i have never been very good at realistic self-assessment in anything, why start now. sorry for the emotional tmi.

that's ok, what you also need is patience. All this stuff takes time, no matter how much or how well you practice.

i'm terrible at patience too. this is my chance to work on it! this whole experience has me feeling a bit irrationally embarrassed. nothing new.

And it's not just about learning "how" to do a thing (a triple ratamacue, a certain beat, or whatever) like it's a video game move where you press a certain button combo. There's infinite nuance to everything you play on an instrument. So you have years ahead of you during which you'll gradually get your feel tighter, your accents sharper, your sound more the way you want it, etc. I would try to keep that in mind when you get into the "whoa, I just played the same beat Keith Moon played" etc. high. Which we all get sometimes, fwiw. I mean, you may very well be "born to drum" or whatever, but that doesn't matter, because you still have to practice to realize your born-ness.

those are moments of delusion! i know full well in the cold light of history that i am not born to drum or i would have been doing it sooner. i think i'm just trying to make myself feel less shitty.
my successes so far include not giving up yet, being able to play 1 song pretty much ok from start to finish, practicing every day. i do not aim high.

I mean, I was very much NOT born to drum, fwiw. I think I completely sucked at drums from when I started in middle school to when I stopped in high school. Then I stopped and only played guitar for a few years, then I started again in college and something started to click for me. In my case I think it was partly a matter of confidence and guts. I was just too timid to really throw myself into drumming, and I learned to do that later. Even then, it was a few more years before I really felt like a solid drummer when I played with bands, and only then was I really able to come up with creative stuff, like parts that actually improved a song or gave it character.

That Rob Carson video is cool. What's good about it is it shows you how you can build from really simple stuff into things that seem complex but are still built from the same blocks.

And no, not many drummers get that good at all the stuff he's doing. He won a world snare drum title when he was 14!

And I think Hurting's suggesting something important, which is that you have to find your own way in, what feels right for you. I've played with guys who were technically much better musicians than me, but they liked having me on drums because they liked the feel of my playing. They didn't care that I wasn't doing flashy stuff every 4 or 8 bars, they were more interested in the groove.

I doubt Mo Tucker ever learned a single rudiment in her life, but she knew what she wanted drums to sound and feel like.

lol stewart copeland in that video is *exactly* like i imagined him to be

ok, i'll buy that. i am more interested in the wider field of rhythm/variety of rhythms than i am technically flashy accents. i was just wondering whether those rudiments were a ticket to entry or something, and everyone CAN do them even if they choose not to in their every day playing. i like kinda loose groovy drummers, generally speaking. like i said, i just want to sound as good as ralph molina.

I doubt Mo Tucker ever learned a single rudiment in her life, but she knew what she wanted drums to sound and feel like.

1000 times this

Ralph Molina is one of my favorite drummers, in fact "it sounded like the drumming on a Neil Young record" was probably the best compliment I ever got (although I don't always go for that style). He's a really good person to listen to carefully and repeatedly for what he DOESN'T play, imo. Notice exactly when he hits and doesn't hit the kick, snare, etc. When I try to copy his beats from memory, I almost inevitably add extra hits, because he's so much better than me at keeping things simple and essential.

Also a good drummer to practice along with, b/c lots of simple, medium tempo tunes to play with.

i love him so much! he so cool and unflashy and reliable and loose. he seems so comfortable. that poor guy stewart copeland was trying to help was so sadly uptight. i felt bad for him.

thanks y'all -- this helps. see, this is why asking questions is essential! i could have stewed about it, but i did not stew.
brb tattooing born 2 drum on my shoulder

I once heard Iggy Pop say in an interview something like "People thought we didn't have chops because we couldn't play Johnny B. Goode note for note. But we had chops too man, they were just different chops."

That's the thing about "technique" -- there are many kinds of "technique" and rudiments just represent a certain kind of technique. They were developed for military drumming and adapted to many uses in rock and jazz drumming, and they're useful inasmuch as many of the drummers you want to sound like used them as building blocks, so knowing the building blocks helps you do what they did. But what ultimately matters is building your speed, strength, time, feel, mobility on the kit, creativity, coordination, ability to vary sticking, etc. Rudiments are a tool for this, but it's not like drumming is a single language and rudiments are the exclusive vocabulary.

A "technical" drummer that comes to mind who doesn't seem to rely that much on rudiments is Ed Blackwell, who's on all those Ornette Coleman records. He probably knew them, because every drummer coming up when he did learned them. But he developed a style that relied more on african drumming, and you don't hear the typical rudimental fills in his playing as much as in most jazz drummers, and it makes him stand out in a good way.

All this might be too much to think about right now anyway. Just work on gradually developing time, feel, endurance, control, and have fun.

And the guy in the Copeland video WAS uptight! But I've found that the trick to not getting tensed up when you play is to practice in a slow and relaxed manner so that you really develop your control. Tensing up, for me, is usually the result of trying to play faster than I've really built myself up to play comfortably.

that's ok, what you also need is patience. All this stuff takes time, no matter how much or how well you practice.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Monday, July 1, 2013 12:12 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm terrible at patience too. this is my chance to work on it! this whole experience has me feeling a bit irrationally embarrassed. nothing new.

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Monday, July 1, 2013 12:16 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As the cliche goes, it's not what you play, it's what you don't play. Patience seems like a pretty good song for drummers to study, re: "not playing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBEo5ZGGsO4

we had chops too man, they were just different chops."

Reminds me of what Neil Young says to people who tell him Crazy Horse "can't play": "Well, they can't play with you."

Stewart Copeland is less a thin guy than he is a narrow guy

re: rudiments

i was loling at djp upthread when he assumed that "the rudiments" referred to the common use of the word, aka learning the very basics of a certain skill, and he was like "of course you gotta learn the rudiments, duh!" (paraphrasing).

don't get me wrong, the rudiments can be useful just for showing you new techniques, but they were originally created for the purpose of educating orchestral snare drum players, not drumset players. it's important for concert/orchestra snare drum players to learn the rudiments because some of the same patterns will often show up in the sheet music. rudiments were always a part of the audition for all-state orchestra and stuff like that.

they're not totally useless for drummers either, by any means. learning how to play a good flam (letting one stick lightly hit the drum a barely perceivable amount of time before the louder, main strike) is a great beginner-intermediate move for a drummer, and the same for drags (same as a flam, only with two quiet hits with one hand just before the main strike of the other hand). and things like paradiddles and paradiddle-diddles can be incredibly useful and cool sounding when you learn to spread them out across multiple pieces of the kit, rather than just staying on the snare drum.

so don't totally forget about them, and maybe think about focusing on a few of them a year or so down the line. but when you're just beginning, imo the main thing is just to establish a level of comfort and familiarity, even if it's just with a single beat. something you can play smoothly and calmly while you do multiples of 27 in your head, or whatever. (phil rudd had a lot of success with his one beat!). that seems miles ahead in priority than being able to play flam paradiddles at mindbending speed.

d'oh, forgot to finish my first paragraph, but i was going to say that i was loling at djp because it makes perfect sense! but The Rudiments are not actually the rudimentary elements of drumming.

I did have a funny thing happen a few years ago. I ran into a guy I knew at a bar, and he was talking to this other guy who was a saxophone player. My friend somewhat exaggeratingly introduced me as "a drummer," and the saxophone player goes, "Oh, really? Lemme hear a double paradiddle." I rapped a few out with my hands on the table and the sax player was like, "Okay, you pass."

This was literally the only time since high school band that anyone has asked me for a rudiment.

(It gave me an idea for a scene in some movie where a guy's trying to sneak out of Nazi Germany as a member of a jazz band, and the Nazi border guard starts drilling him on rudiments and the guy's all nervous and sweaty because he's not really a drummer ...)

The Sound of Torture: the True Story of the Von Trapp Family's failed performance

"Das is nicht eine flamadiddle!"

so long, farewell
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