DRUMMERS: Advice for a beginner

there's a compelling reason to use measures, at least (I do agree that the bar concept has no real place in the realm of the drum kit)

It's kind of like learning to read a language.
i know, that's why i need help! i need someone to walk me through it a few times, so i know what it looks/feels like. i'm the kind of student who asks a lot of questions (not a surprise, i guess) and if there's no one to ask i quickly feel lost/incapable.

i have made a little bit of progress with left foot. both feet are actually getting better, tbh. i was just fiddling around today and found myself playing what sounded like "panic" or "metal guru" -- what's that beat called? is there some sort of online database where i can hear snippets of familiar drum sounds/patterns/beats and learn what they're called?

i'm really looking forward to taking lessons now. aside from finding a teacher willing to work with adult beginners, is there anything else i should know about finding someone to work with?

the logic to writing drum parts out on a staff is so that it makes composing for a group easier, because you can use the same paper/notation software and have everything lined up on the page.

Reading and sight-reading drum parts is easy because you don't have to worry about pitches, it is just "which thing do I hit and when" (and to some extent "how" but ...)

Just remember: the snare is where "c" is on the treble clef. It is the center of the kit.

reading music shouldn't stop you from progressing. it might help you understand the relationships between different rhythms in a systematic way, if that's how you learn, or it might not. it never really helped me - i had to do the reverse, figure out how the rhythms i already knew (or had learned by ear) were represented on the page.

many xps

and what Jordan says might be a good step to learning. It definitely helped me to write stuff out that I knew or that I wanted to play.

the "Panic"/"Metal Guru" rhythm would be a shuffle rhythm

here is a video I found 40 seconds ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh9d3gpT-8I

well, there's kind of at least two different ways to look at "reading music" for drums. on one hand, there's the traditional ability to sight-read: you can pick up a music book you've never seen before and just play the music that's on the page. developing that ability takes time. like others have said, it's like learning a new language.

but there's also the more granular ability to look at an individual rhythm and be able to figure out what it means. like, you might not be able to just look at it and play it instantaneously, but you can look at a set of notes and (maybe after studying it for a few seconds, at first) understand that a certain group of 16th notes are played twice as fast as another group of 8th notes, etc. that's a more basic ability that can be developed much more quickly and it's very useful as you start out. the "learning another analogy" might be that while you can't sightread a full paragraph of Spanish and understand what it means, you can look at basic words and sound them out phonetically.

just reread all of that and i'm pretty sure that none of it makes sense, sorry!

Have you started trying to play just one line, on say, the snare, just so you can master the rhythmic notation? I think that's how I went about it. And once that was easy, I started reading/writing stuff for the whole kit.

i'm extremely systematic when it comes to learning languages, so i understand about chunking phrases and whatnot -- that makes sense to me. but i'm also an auditory learner, so it would help to have someone model and then show me the parts. like i need to have a human there saying "listen to this, then look at this"

xp re shuffle beat oh i can totally do that! what i've been trying to do is to go from 1 -2- 3 on bass drum and snare until i can play all variations/combinations and alternate between them.
like boomp ch ch boomp ch ch boomp ch ch
as well as boomp boomp ch ch boomp boomp ch ch

this is the progress i've made. when i started i could only do one bass drum boomp
now i can easily move between 1 and 2 with a fixed pattern

as far as mastering something on the snare, i have been trying to work on establishing patterns and remembering them. that's about where i'm at atm.

i have no idea what i'm doing

3 bass drum boomps kind of makes my brain fall apart though :(

are you very familiar with time subdivisions? whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, sixteenth notes, dotted notes, triplets, etc

oh and eighth notes. obviously. and all the other fractional powers of two.

moderately
i know what they are but i have never used them -- like, i can identify the difference and define them, but have never found myself with the opportunity to put this knowledge to use. i haven't played an instrument regularly since i was...12? sad, i know.

i played the piano and clarinet as a kid though. and tons and tons of dance classes. but that's it, really.

a lot of reading/writing music is math. I have been trying to come up with linguistic parallels for learning to play written drum music, and not coming up with any good ones. And I think a lot of that has to do with the aspect that is mathematical.

ugh that is why i need help
i have dedicated a portion of tomorrow to sending emails and looking for someone to help me. if anyone can recommend a patient person in chicago who would be willing to deal with me, webmail works!

A simple exercise for learning the various notes would be this:

Use a metronome or metronome computer/phone app -- use headphones if you have trouble hearing/feeling the pulse

Start at a slow speed - like 80

Keep a 1 - 2 -3 -4 beat with the kick drum (to the tones of the metronome)

Then with the snare:

Do 8 of each of these:
1 - 2 - 3- 4 (quarter notes)
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and (eighth notes)
1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a (16th notes)

like i never could have learned about phonology without a teacher, but since i had someone to teach me i can use IPA and talk about phonemes and syllable structure and whatnot.
just like knowing how a language works and using it are two separate skills, i need someone to help me with the former so i can practice the latter.

i am a-ok with what you just described, fortunately! i do that to get started and put myself ~in the mood~ because it's easy and i know i can do it.

i'm not sure if i'm over- or underestimating my abilities at this point. i need an assessment or a placement test. (this is so analogous to my job that it kills me tbh)

are you very familiar with time subdivisions?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9Ycq64Gy4

conform or be cast out! yes, i know that.

La Lech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

this will be very helpful to you, I think

this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_value

nb you will never see this ever

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Longa.gif

unless you're hanging out in my tree house. that is the official flag of the burgeoning nation of the tree rebellion

ok, after listening to those wikipedia time signature samples, i am doing ok with simple and compound. i can do those. maybe not reliably for 10 min straight, but i can reproduce those patterns pretty easily i think?

maybe what i should do is practice identifying them and then playing them so i can talk about this more coherently

unless you're hanging out in my tree house. that is the official flag of the burgeoning nation of the tree rebellion

posts that put a smile on my face

http://knoxville.craigslist.org/muc/3926515417.html

poll please

no tank tops just seems tyrannical

also no drinking any beverage onstage

i've been to two different drum teachers and they both used this book
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49158857/A-FUNKY-PRIMER

I hate this book! but it must be good or fundamental or something.

xp I think my favorite is "No sheet music or music STANDS" -- just the utter contempt conveyed by the capital letters there.

Dude played with Pablo Cruise (known to fans simply as "the 'Cruise") -- I wouldn't question him.

xp

'no drum mics' - ever?

'no drum heroes' - good title for my autobiography

We could be drum heroes, just for one day.

i...i would wear shorts
and you...you would be my onstage beverage

xp Philip - never seen that book! I got recommended "syncopation for the modern drummer"

I used this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-Modern-Drummer-Independence/dp/0757995403/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1373575960&sr=8-2&keywords=Jim+Chapin

It was a mindfuck, but an incredibly helpful and valuable one.

when I felt the exercises in the syncopation book were too simple, I would try doing them with my feet.

oh yeah the syncopation book was the other required text. i hated that, too! i guess i just hate practicing.

aggh i just emailed the person i want to be my teacher
hopefully i don't sound like a boob
i have been suffering through some ridiculous and powerful fits of self-doubt about this endeavor and the only way to proceed is to force myself to move forward
eek

in the meantime, i have been working on endurance. it's my favorite of the types of practicing, i think.

ah yes, the chapin book. I always found it confusing whether those dotted eighth - sixteenth patterns were supposed to be played straight or like "swing" notes.

I haven't used the Chapin book, but they should be played straight, right - ONE-e-and-UH TWO - rather than swung. Unless the passage is marked "swing" or "shuffle", I always assume it's straight.

Then again, it's been a few years since I regularly read sheet music, so maybe I'm missing something.

I would tend to agree, but it's just weird to start out a book with an exercise like this:

http://www.drummerworld.com/Drumclinic/pics/jimchapin1a.jpg

(I mean I think that's actually several pages in, but it starts with exercises with that top pattern in the right hand)

i always read those as swung, because it seems like it's clearly representing a jazz swing pattern in the right hand and giving you left hand patterns to practice against it.

Right...BUT, then why does he also have pages that use a similar pattern built on triplets?

One of my drum teachers told me this question was "controversial" among drummers.

A teacher of mine who had been active in New York the 60s said that the Chapin book originally had the right-hand figures as quarter note - two eighth notes. Drummers were reading them literally -- not swinging them -- and suddenly there was an influx of decidedly non-swinging drummers in NYC.

(dunno how true that is, because any drummer playing straight eighths like that probably wouldn't get hired, but my teacher swore it happened)