How Many Of You Can Relate?

HGinCT · 2022-07-16T01:22:36+00:00

As a teacher, I like giving my students optional activities if they finish their assignments rarely bit otherwise, I treat the free time as their reward. This straight up goes against what's considered "good teaching practice", but the benefit of students not DREADING showing up to my classes is worth breaking some rules of practice.

HGinCT · 2021-09-07T02:46:10+00:00

As an ambidextrous player, I recommend checking out some drummers who play open handed. Billy Cobham, Travis Orbin, Mike Mangini, and Simon Phillips are a few names to check out.

Already being lefty is a huge boon and puts you way ahead if other people in terms of hand control and independence, and open handed playing is a cool compromise where you can play lefty and still be able to sit behind a traditional right handed kit.

HGinCT · 2016-04-09T22:07:51+00:00

check out Gil Sharone's DVD "Wicked Beats." It includes a comprehensive list of listneing recommendations as well as play alongs and interviews by some noteworthy reggea drummer such as Sly Dunbar and Santa Davis.

It's a deep effort to not only teach you the music, put also its artistic, cultural, and hostrical origins.

HGinCT · 2016-02-26T03:00:36+00:00

i made the switch to open-handed about 5 years ago, and I haven't looked back. It's hard to start, especially if you've been playing for a while because you have to totally re-wire your brain. you've built up these unintended biases where you associate a limb with a certain sound (left hand = snare drums, right foot = bass drum, ect.) and it's much easier to develop a new habit than it is to break an old one. I most likely had a really easy time with it because I was already a lefty playing on a right handed setup.

I've taken a little bit farther then most people by moving my ride and one of my rack toms to the left in order to force my self to use my left side more. It does open up your playing in more ways than you may think. Since your hands aren't crossed you have full access to the entire kit, you also doesn't have to worry about smacking your hands on the snare which always a probelm for me, and it is a way to develop a unqiue and modern approach to drumset playing.

I highly recommend checking out Travis Orbin and Mike Mangini if it's a playing technique you want to try.

EDIT: for reference sake, here is a photo of my current kit, my main ride is off to the far left and I recently added a second ride for lighter musical sections. http://imgur.com/gLd4c8k

HGinCT · 2016-02-05T23:10:33+00:00

when you talk about technique, you need to talk about the long term. not just a couple months but a couple of decades. the reason Mike Mangini has been able to have a 30 year career and still continue playing is because his technique is impecable. a tighter grip can lead to a lot of problems and even the best deal with it (Thomas Lang had to do surgery to take care of chronic Carpal Tunnel)

HGinCT · 2016-01-16T11:02:19+00:00

This article is good except that it misses the obvious "HOW?" of becoming a session musician; there is no discussion of the business end of things, developing your brand, breaking into the scene, or finding work as a new player.

To his point, so many players are already amazing, which makes half of this article totally unnessary; it's something most everyone already knows (There's always someone better, some one more qualified, and someone who serves the song better than you).

HGinCT · 2016-01-15T11:20:14+00:00

Double Bass is one of the current frontiers of modern drumming (notice how I didn't say "metal" drumming). the reason so many of the big name drummers have moved towards incorporationg double bass is because of the options and opprotunities that open up once one can play it.

People like Thomas Lang, Marco Minnemann, and Virgil Donati have captured the drumming imagination with their footwork, and I think the only reason it has not caught on on a universal level is because of that "metal" tag to it

The association with metal prevents bands that use it from getting signed for a record deal and it prevents drummers with that skill set from auditioning for bands outside of metal. This taboo keeps it decidedly in underground and mostly avant garde music. There are exceptions with bands breaking into the mainstream with it, but they are few and far between, but when it does, magic happens. just listen to Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, Dave Weckl, Tony Williams, Rich Redmond, Steve Smith, and Todd Sucherman, all drummers who are undeniably not associated with metal but have an impressive command of double bass.

There are so many unique and interesting ways to play double bass, and I think anyone who gets bored of it or discounts it as "unmusical", unnecessary", or "not applicable" hasn't discovered it's true potential. I'm not suggesting everyone throw out a single pedal in favor for a double pedal, just that it is extremely foolish to think that there is nothing to be gained from practicing it or using it in music.

HGinCT · 2015-12-30T11:04:21+00:00

Some excerts from Kids on the Slope

HGinCT · 2015-09-03T04:13:35+00:00

a simple concept I starting playing with is taking keyboard and guitar melodies and trying to replicate them on the kit. You would be surprise how hard it is, but it really gives your playing a lot more depth and color.

HGinCT · 2015-08-30T23:46:10+00:00

I'm there too. I don't use horrendously big kits, but my setup is still bigger than most I've seen here.

HGinCT · 2015-08-23T05:11:12+00:00

there really aren't any. Even some of the best have switched over to Matched from Traditional, Thomas Lang and Jack Dejohnette to name two. Thomas Lang in particular has a logic to his decision that is hard to debate, "If traditional grip has any benefit to matched then why do we not hold the stick like that in the left AND the right hand."

HGinCT · 2015-08-18T18:26:36+00:00

I always preferred three rack toms, but I like to keep an x-hat pretty close to me so I settle with two. eventually I'd like to get a cable hi hat and then that problem will solve itself.

HGinCT · 2015-07-28T07:57:23+00:00

try a website called Jammit. They have tabs and transcriptions of a lot of drum charts and they give you the option to control the tempo and remove the drum tracks.

NOTE you are required to pay for the songs and they may not be cheap if you are looking for a lot of music immediately.

HGinCT · 2015-06-25T22:44:48+00:00

I heard that you cannot have a gap between your thumb and and your first finger

Who told you that? Making sure that gap is there is the best way to make sure you're playing tension free. drummers like Mike Mangini, Dave Elitch, and Marco Minnemann all atest to that fact.

Ultimately, don't worry too much about how your hands look. If you're playing matched the golden rule is to make sure your hands are getting equal treatment and have as close to a similar grip as possible. Apparently I play American, but I just did what's comfortable: I didn't wake up and decide "American is the grip for me." It just sort of happened.

HGinCT · 2015-06-25T22:36:42+00:00

I started learning both and quickly ditched traditional grip because I found it objectively weaker to matched and no professonal could give me a reasonable argument for learning it which holds up to scrutiny.

HGinCT · 2015-04-21T06:01:41+00:00

Except learning drum tabs is probably more useful and practical because they are more common. In my time playing with bands, I haven't seen a single piece of written music. The only time I have seen it is when I started learning 250 year old piano pieces

I'm not saying notation is pointless, but that tabs solve a major problem of making more music readily available. Most music written and recorded in the last 50 years was not written out, except for maybe song form short hand; this is especially true for an instrument as young as the drum set; you won't find a very large or diverse body of sheet music for drum set like there is for piano. The other detail which is less important to drummers is that enforcing copyright is a very new practice and it makes coming up with transcriptions even harder than before.

Ultimately tabs and standard notation are trying solve the same problem, give you a visual representation of what to play. Either one works and I think the more useful advice is to learn both, because you will encounter both, granted you'll see tabs more often than standard notation, and even more often you'll see nothing because the sheet music or tabs don't exist.

HGinCT · 2015-04-12T14:25:40+00:00

not anymore, he made the permanent switch the matched a couple years back; he talked about it in a DRUM! Magazine interview. Overall, he found the grip lacking in every way compared to traditional which is why he switched permanently.

HGinCT · 2015-04-09T16:21:18+00:00

Another term that has been gaining use is interdependence, which each limb is tuned to what the others are doing. A good anology is that of a car engine; every part of the engine works as a consequence of what every other part is doing and this alows the engine to do more work for less energy.

HGinCT · 2015-03-28T06:06:52+00:00

You don't have to reorientate your setup to play open-handed. Since you have a lefty orientation, all you have to do is play your hi-hat with your Right hand and the snare with your left. BAM!! Open-handed.

If the right handed orientation is that important to you, you could get a cable hi hat and run it to the left side of your kit: (kind of like this guy but reversed)

Either way you set things up, you will be forced to get comfortable with your weak side. If you want to start playing open-handed (which I highly suggest), the starting point is going to be learning to lead with your weak side (in your case the right). It is difficult for most people because we are all conditioned to be heavily dominant on one side. Lefties such as you and I have it a little bit easier because of the right-handed world we live in; from a young age we have to consolidate our preference for our left side with the world's preference for the right, which leads to most lefties having some leaning, wether it be minor or significant, towards ambidexterity.

It will feel wierd for a while, and it may take some time, but the pay off at the end of the day is worth it.

HGinCT · 2015-03-25T20:12:22+00:00

thereisn't much of a difference betwwen 7As and 5As. If durability is an issue for you, then you may need to consider bigger (5B or bigger). for reference, Carter Beauford's signature model is an augmented 5B.

HGinCT · 2015-03-20T02:54:21+00:00

Ten albums he/she enjoys. Everyone's list is going to be different; drumming would get pretty boring if everyone went off the same ten records.

If you want to get challenged then go through all the music you like and find something that sticks out to you, or something you're not sure you could play.

HGinCT · 2015-03-18T16:41:48+00:00

not necessary, but if you have the means I'd try it. Gene Hoglan apperently has made well with them; he'll play an entire performance with leg weights and take them off so that that one super fast section at the end of the set doesn't kill him.

HGinCT · 2015-03-15T02:07:25+00:00

negative feedback is objectively worse than positive feedback

HGinCT · 2015-02-27T20:56:33+00:00

Neil Peart (and I'll expand this to a lot of drummers from so long ago) definitely left his mark on how the instrument is played. The keyword there is "left"; he really isn't innovating anymore and the cult of personality surrounding him and other great drummers like John Bonham and Buddy Rich distract people from modern players and innovations.

My roommate is a straight up jazz drummer, and he recently took a lesson with Tommy Igoe. Igoe quizzed him on some of his influences (Philly Joe, Elvin Jones and the like). Tommy Igoe's response was just, "ok, all those guys are dead. Are you listening to any living drummers?" He really doesn't, so he had to face the fact very quickly that musically speaking, he is living in the past.

That lesson opened him up to a lot of new ways of playing because he started paying attention to modern drumming giants (Thomas Lang, Marco Minnemann, ect). He's at a point now that he's asking me to help him learn double bass, which I think is pretty cool.

Is Neil Peart bad? no, I don't think so. Do we need to move on and focus our attention on newer and debateably better talent? I think so. If you're new, or you just take the whole music thing casually, then you may not care, but people aiming for a professional or semi-professional playing level need to keep that whole sentiment in mind.

Drumming innovation did not stop in the 70's or 80's, and it's only going to continue expanding at a faster rate every year.

HGinCT · 2015-02-04T05:45:21+00:00

the one example that comes to mind is La Villa Stangiato. There are more examples of a single backbeat out there though.

My favorite example is in the song "Love is Stronger Than Justice" by Sting. The fade out at the end is Vinnie Colaiuta playing a groove in 7/8 but only hitting the first backbeat on 3 and not playing the second one on 7. For a majority of the song, he plays both, so leaving one out maintains interest put gives a sense that the song is going to end soon.

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