DRUMMERS: Advice for a beginner

the biggest difference I notice is when I am either playing fast or playing a fairly complex pattern.

I'm left handed and I've always been suspicious of the "teach left handers to play right handed" thing. I know I could never do it. I play open-handed, with the hi hat squished in awkwardly as far over to the right behind the snare as I can get it without the snare getting completely in the way of my left foot.

although tbh I do always fantasize about there being a better way, like I wish I had one of those wire-driven hi hats so I could separate the pedal from the hats

my drum teacher had one of those! It's a similar mechanism to a bicycle brake iirc

The downside of being left handed and playing open is that you end up being far more familiar with the work of Carter Beauford than you might have liked, haha.

do you use trad or matched grip, Dan?

matched because I am a plebe

you can't really do the opposite and cross your left hand over to the floor tom while playing the snare with your right hand!
this is what i was doing and it was really weird but i just kept doing it

also pretty much ignoring everything that runs opposite to what my teacher says from this point forward -- it's really good to have an irl point person whose job it is to help me. i'm not used to requiring that sort of help, but i'm appreciating it atm.

Whatshisname from Faith No More plays hats/ride with his left hand and set up on his left w/ the rest of he

Shit sorry, phone post...

Anyway his kit is set up pretty standard otherwise iirc. I think followong the teacher's example is good but eventually you'll probably find something to adapt to your own preference.

speaking of help, i'd like to thank everyone itt for helping me get up to speed and go to my first lesson with a better idea of what i was talking about than my teacher expected. it's always unusually pleasing to me to know more (about anything) than people expect me to know,

ok there is a lot of misinformation on this thread right now. what i want to stress is, LL, if he wants you to play right-hand lead, DO NOT DO IT. i don't want to stress you out by contradicting your teacher, but this is what i was talking about upthread. i'm a lefty who was taught to play righty and i regret it to this day. at least for me, my right hand will never have the speed and endurance that my right hand does no matter how much i practice, so i had to teach myself to switch to left-hand lead for certain things after playing drums for 10+ years. i think i'd be a better drummer today if i just learned how to play left-handed in the first place, so i have a lot of passionate ~opinions~ about this.

you can't really do the opposite and cross your left hand over to the floor tom while playing the snare with your right hand!

sure you can, it's a little awkward but nbd. it's not a good enough reason to decide to lead with your weak hand! riding on the floor tom is much less common than riding on the hi-hat or ride cymbal, and if you do it a lot, you can always choose to add a floor tom on the left side or a snare on the right side.

ok, i'll talk to him about it! he's a reasonable person. i'll see how my practicing goes this week and if i just feel like it's wrong, i'll know. i think?
i understand that you don't want me to make a fatal mistake and also are not intentionally trying to stress me out. i am definitely stressed out about this enough as it is! obvs.

and this isn't the point either (the point is that you should lead with your strong hand, because you'll need to play many more notes on the hi-hat/ride with that hand), but you can just as easily argue that leading with your left hand on a righty kit opens up the toms to your hand hand.

here's some lefty swag for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnd7pAAEywo&feature=player_detailpage&t=108

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8eTS2EFoDw&feature=player_detailpage&t=108

(ignore/embrace the smooth vibes)

A drum kit is not a piano! It consists of a bunch of pieces that you can assemble however you want!

otm, let's not act like the drum kit was designed to be played in any particularly optimal way, it's an unholy conglomeration of percussion instruments meant to fit the musical needs of the moment/person.

http://kermitvonmunster.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/1930_slingerland_trap_kit.jpg

UPDATE

1) I have been practicing my paradiddles and moving around the kit. That's pretty fun and I totally see the value of warming up. This part is repetitive, but also meditative. I look forward to introducing new patterns and alternating with old ones. I can kinda see how this works now!!

2) In addition to that I am practicing one song so that by Friday I will be able to go through the whole thing without major screwups. Getting there! I have been recording every day but only posted day 1 and day 4 on soundcloud because the other two days were dull. Actually, they are all dull but I want to have something to look back at and laugh in a year. It's my Flowers for Algernon sound journal I guess.

3) The righty/lefty experiment is going strangely well, I think? I have been playing the song with my right hand on the cymbal and left hand on snare (crossed over) and now after doing it enough times (so many times!) I feel pretty much the same both ways. I'll see how it effects things when shit gets more complicated. Right now it is def not complicated at all.

That's all for now until Friday. Overall I am pleased with my progress from the beginning of the summer, when I had no drums. Now I have drums and can (+/-) play 7/8 of an actual song, with the parts counted out and everything! Not sure I got the end part right tbh but who cares. The other good news is that I am really enjoying it, so even if I am not blowing the world up with my skills I am definitely feeling positive about the experience (this is essential to continuing to try to improve, ime).

the end

otm, let's not act like the drum kit was designed to be played in any particularly optimal way, it's an unholy conglomeration of percussion instruments meant to fit the musical needs of the moment/person.

Yup, in fact I like to remind myself that its roots are basically as a kind of gag/sound efx rig for vaudeville, so the idea that there's a single, formal way a kit should be set up is laughable. If anything, drummers are lucky to have an instrument so easy to customize.

i agree with that and hope to someday know how i want to customize my setup
it's fun to play an instrument with no regard for orthodoxy

Do you recall I ventured that my recordings might be useable? Well I've tried my best and ... they're not. Fortunately I had the foresight to record some isolates on each piece of kit, so I can sample these and put together a live track of sorts.

It's absolutely fascinating breaking it down to this extent though. I can understand the degree of control you need to play properly now, precision in timing and touch. With me, every hit is different - I get all pleased when I find a few bars where neither tempo nor volume vary much, but that's sadly rare. Also my touch is so heavy, I realise - it's like divers at the Olympics, you want a splashless impact in a tight circle, not the belly flop I've been favouring.

man, i hear that
kinda depends on what you're looking for in terms of style though, right? isn't there room for all kinds of players, olympic divers and cannonball jumpers alike?

this is what i have been telling myself at least

otm, let's not act like the drum kit was designed to be played in any particularly optimal way, it's an unholy conglomeration of percussion instruments meant to fit the musical needs of the moment/person.

Yup, in fact I like to remind myself that its roots are basically as a kind of gag/sound efx rig for vaudeville, so the idea that there's a single, formal way a kit should be set up is laughable. If anything, drummers are lucky to have an instrument so easy to customize.

Yeah, I agree, but that's exactly why it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that there's a right-handed or left-handed way to play the drums. It all seems arbitrary and you end up using both hands anyway. It would be ridiculous to say that everyone should always have the hi-hat on the left. But I think it's equally ridiculous to assume that you should always play the hi-hats with your dominant hand. Or that you should even play them at all!

I think it's equally ridiculous to assume that you should always play the hi-hats with your dominant hand. Or that you should even play them at all!

It depends on what you want to play, or be able to play. I know drummers who only use the hi-hat as a cymbal and never use the foot pedal, which I think is a waste, personally, because the hi-hat is such an interesting and versatile instrument. But if you want to play a standard rock back beat or the punk-rock/hardcore "polka beat" then using the weak hand on the hi-hat is a handicap for being able to play your best.

i agree with that and hope to someday know how i want to customize my setup
it's fun to play an instrument with no regard for orthodoxy

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Wednesday, July 31, 2013 5:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A teacher of mine, who was a trumpeter/composer, said, "I'm stuck with the trumpet. I can't change its design. But you drummers, you can have anything in front of you...and you all have the same shit."

So I replaced my snare drum with a tympani, got rid of my ride cymbal, added a second hi-hat (top cymbal a 6" pingy thing, bottom cymbal a 6" Icebell), and replaced my toms with rototoms.

icebells are rad!

looking forward to my lesson today! last week's nerves are p much gone. that feels good!

john blackwell's solution playing left hand lead on a righty kit is to only cross over when he hits the snare with his left hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxmbuVC5z_4

or not, if he wants to save his right hand for the toms (and then go right hand lead when he's playing the ride):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiLGFYJfEC4

so yeah, you can do whatever you want, as long as you can play what you want to play. and if you want to play some form of western pop music, then it's likely that there will be one hand 'riding'/keeping time and the other hand playing backbeats/accents.

i wonder if ergonomics people would make good drum teachers

The number of times I apologized today is so astronomical that there's no point even trying to count that high. I was a mess! My eyes started leaking. By the end everything was ok but it only took 2 lessons for a minor meltdown (I didn't require a trip to the bathroom).
I don't even know where the bathroom is.

Anyway, I learned the right way to play the song I was practicing and will keep at it. This is part of the process, at least it is for me :-/

If you got upset, then it matters, keep at it. I never had lessons for bass or guitar, I self taught by playing along to songs I liked. I found out what pressure was when I played my first gig and couldn't really hear myself that well, it was awful, it was like every school exam at once. The comfort of playing along to records in my bedrooms was shattered. Having the pressure literally scares the song into you.
I'm on the right playing bass here. I never did forgive the girl for standing in front of the camera.
http://youtu.be/fIFqWoNIFoI

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fIFqWoNIFoI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I give up, can't even link a youtube video.

LL I'm sorry about your lesson! I mean, I'm glad that you came out of it learning something and ready for the next one, but I'm sorry that the experience was painful! I totally understand if you don't want to share, but what was it that got you down? Was it just getting out of time and having to stop and start?

(sorry, not trying to pretend like I know exactly what you're going through and have the answer, I just want you to know that it's really, REALLY normal - even expected - to be messing up a bunch with timing for a long time).

I'll explain in more detail when I'm not on my phone but you're both right -- I got upset because this matters to me and also I'm v hard on myself and also prone to emotional outbursts, both positive and negative. Mostly I'm embarrassed to have lost it. More later.

The great thing about getting upset about playing drums, imo, is you can beat the shit out of the drums to take out your frustrations.

well mostly i wanted to crawl into a corner and disappear, but it's good to know that the option of bashing is also there

here's what i think happened -- 1) my dogs and i were attacked by a neighbor dog earlier this week. my nerves, in general, are a mess! 2) i was hungry and that compromised my emotional response and 3) i was put on the spot and i froze and that embarrassed me. i'm really more interested in figuring out new ways to react than i am in dissecting why this happened, so now that i've eaten dinner, i can say that i am going to honestly try to funnel my energies back into trying harder rather than fearing another freakout.

also my teacher emailed me and said he was sorry if he pushed me too far in one direction or another and i appreciated that.

i'm not going to try to spin this incident positively or negatively, just accept that it happened and move on. that's really all a person can do.

Beat the shit out of your drums for half an hour. It doesn't matter at all if you play well, just that you make them pay.

<3 not_goodwin's video. I wonder what that girl is doing now?

I blame the camera operator! Shoulda tapped her and pointed ----> this way. You don't seem nervous at all!!

xxpost, probably ruining some other video somewhere.

xpost, that wasn't the gig I was nervous at, that was the one where we'd decided we'd had enough of each other and split up. That was the last gig with that band.

Why did she keep bending down? You were there, you can tell us.

For her drink I think, I was a little busy. She was a friend of the singer, cherida or sherida i think she was called.
All the footage and photo's from the gigs were lost, I basically have nothing from this band. :(

Sorry to hear about the eye leakage! not_goodwin OTM re: upset=it matters.

i wonder if ergonomics people would make good drum teachers

― Philip Nunez, Friday, August 2, 2013 2:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They totally would; probably better than most drum teachers.

can i just

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

i would say something about my lesson today and how it went better but it was cancelled/rescheduled ;_;
this wouldn't be a big deal normally but i've been super looking forward to it all week
oh well

there was a lot of discussion of that clip recently, like on the Do the Math blog and in an interview related to that documentary about Ginger Baker being an asshole.

(i skip to the blakey parts, but whatever. his 6/8 beat right in the middle is nice.)

while you're waiting for your next lesson, LL, can you provide a critical update on your progress playing at home on your own? it's just fun to hear about. :)

WHY SURE! Thank you for asking.

1) I am having little to no trouble adjusting to new hand assignments. I don't think I was ever very strong with the left hand anyway, so it hasn't been bothering me at all to practice the other way.

2) Of the few things I know, I'm TOTALLY getting better at them. Endurance is up to 5:45/6 min -- goal is 10 min right now, but I don't think it's far off. My counting is also getting much better and in addition to recording some things for posterity, I'm trying to write them down too because I'm basically useless unless I write stuff down.

3) That song I thought I had practiced and knew how to play for my last lesson but actually did not know? Totally got that now.

4) Getting a little tired of practicing the small # of things I can do, would like some more challenge (even if it's a complete failure) so I have a new idea that occurred to me while listening to a Roy Montgomery song. It's probably sacrilege, but what if I just made up my own drum parts and played along? I listened to the song a bunch more times while walking to/from the market this morning, and I think I have some ideas. Going to try it this afternoon after cleaning up the insane weeds in my backyard.

This is the song, it's beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DAVNZMx-Lk

oh, know what else i can do now that i couldn't do before? count down 1-2-3-4 in my head and start with all three limbs doing the thing i want them to do. i can't do it every time, but i can do it.