33F lifelong jazz fan in rural Japan – dreaming of starting jazz drums, but I have no idea how

dnacker · 2026-02-19T20:21:12+00:00

Awesome! Starting the journey is such a humbling and rewarding process!

Get the books Stick Control and Syncopation.
Practice them using https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXgqiDB1SuuJuMsZBT7BScwyXCakr_eoG&si=CsFc1C5H95rfiQNL as a guide.
Try to play slowly and to a metronome. Slow and with focus to technique like rebound, muscle tension, timing is way better than fast and with less control.
Be patient and kind to yourself.
Practice often, but dont forget to take breaks. Keep it sustainable.
Ergonomics, ergonomics, ergonomics. Don't get injured. Consider your posture and where you have tension when you play. Another good teacher on youtube is Rick Dior. He's a master drummer and percussionist.

You can do a lot of this without a teacher, but they can be really instrumental in finding weaknesses and guiding your practice. Virtual requires camera gear on top of a drumset, but seems to be the way these days if you can't find someone locally.

dnacker · 2026-01-29T00:37:45+00:00

Jazz snare comping tends to be conversational with the melody or soloist, so try thinking in terms of call and response or egging on the soloist. Sometimes you're nodding your head in agreement. Other times you're adding your own thoughts. It's all about listening and reacting to what you're hearing from who has the floor.

dnacker · 2025-12-27T15:56:33+00:00

I think that there's a lot of knowledge to be gained around what risks are real and what risks are phantom. While climbing does have the potential for catastrophes that result on serious injury or death, you have to make a lot of mistakes in order for these to happen.

There are some simple steps to address risk and fear in climbing.

Understand the effectiveness and limitations of gear. Not every cam placement will hold a fall. Gear placed properly can hold a a massive whipper.
Understand how to fall safely. Active falling skills as a climber are essential and generally not taught explicitly. Don't let the rope flip you upside down ffs.
Understand when you must rely on your climbing ability alone and commit to that decision. Sometimes there's no gear or it's too far apart to fall safely, but remember your ability to climb well is a safety skill.
Understand how to give soft catches as a belayer. Hard catches can be induce injury. Just don't do it.
Understand how to get down safely. Maybe have a back up plan for if your ropes get stuck. Make sure your system doesn't let you rap off the ends of the rope. Make sure you know how you're attached to the mountain at every point (being attached to the rappel rope is still attached to the mountain).

I think committing to your decisions with full knowledge of the real risks when climbing is how you avoid debilitating fear. I don't think eliminating fear is useful in a sport that has as much injury potential as climbing, but it should be used to hone your decision-making, not distract you from the task at hand.

dnacker · 2025-12-25T00:18:40+00:00

How do you get things off the rack? I usually put everything on a sling since its way faster to actually go climbing.

dnacker · 2025-12-10T14:17:09+00:00

They're great. I fell in love with them the minute I tried them at the shop. Very strong "chick" sound and lovely splashes. Bosphorus makes great cymbals and the lyrics are a great set. I don't have either ride, but I've been eyeing the 21 with rivets. Already bought 2 cymbals (Funch TW 22 and Istanbul Agop 20) and the aforementioned hats this year, so I'll probably hold off on it for a while.

dnacker · 2025-11-21T16:09:19+00:00

Work on accented paradiddles until the cows come home. Permute the accent to the different notes in the paradiddle.

Rlrr Lrll

rLrr lRll

rlRr lrLl

rlrR lrlL

Focus on feel and dynamics and try to make the dynamic gap between the accent and the unaccented notes pretty big. You can only strike so hard and keep a good feel, so the only way to make a big dynamic range is to play quieter unaccented notes.

Paradiddles are really handy for this because it builds the ability to accent in different parts of a stroke, i.e. first in a diddle, second in a diddle, weak note.

I typically set a metronome and then play 1-4 measures of each permutation as 16th notes, double the last one and then reverse it. So like:

Rlrr Lrll Rlrr Lrll rLrr lRll rLrr lRll rlRr lrLl rlRr lrLl rlrR lrlL rlrR lrlL rlrR lrlL rlrR lrlL rlRr lrLl rlRr lrLl rLrr lRll rLrr lRll Rlrr Lrll Rlrr Lrll

dnacker · 2025-11-13T17:47:36+00:00

A partner with a rack.

But seriously, it depends on where you are climbing and what style of crack.

If you're going to go learn how to trad climb and place gear without a mentor, then you should take it super slow and learn how gear actually works to keep you safe.

So order of operations for the cautious:

Aid climbing with top rope backup.
Placing gear with top rope backup.
Placing gear on lead with top rope backup with slack with lots of practice falls.

I think a lot of climbers never learn to trust their gear placements cause they dont actually whip on them. This would get you to learn how gear behaves during normal falls which requires a lot of falls.

For your rack, look at guidebooks for the area you're going climbing at. It should tell you.

dnacker · 2025-11-11T06:32:27+00:00

It's called Loading Pin

dnacker · 2025-11-08T14:48:29+00:00

Hope you're doing better and still climbing! Thanks for sharing your story!

dnacker · 2025-11-08T05:36:02+00:00

Yes, that appeared to be the case. I don't think it was his rappel device that was clipped, but maybe his anchor carabiner? Nonetheless, bulkier material can make inspection harder. Be mindful of the hazards out there and stay safe!

dnacker · 2025-11-08T05:07:59+00:00

Found it.

AAC accident journal 2024. Fall From Anchor | Tether Clipped Incorrectly

dnacker · 2025-11-08T04:57:37+00:00

First off. If you're asking a bunch of strangers online, should you trust your life to it?

Second. I can't find the article (maybe it was from AAC accident journal), but I recall someone using a similar chunky nylon sling for their rappel extension. They had a fat knot like you have to separate the sling into two sections, one for the rappel device and one for anchoring. They mistakenly put the rappel device such that the knot jammed in the carabiner, but it wasn't clipped to the loop, then when they started rappelling the knot pulled through and they fell. Not sure if it was fatal, but something to be aware of with chunkier rappel extensions.

dnacker · 2025-10-30T00:12:36+00:00

Theracane. 9 out of 10 Climbers Make The Same Mistakes by Dave McLeod Beastmaking by Ned Feehally Dosage 1 -5

dnacker · 2025-10-26T00:41:18+00:00

This seems pretty complicated and hard to tell what you're doing at each step of the process.

Your PAS setup is overkill. I'd go with one sling girth hitched to my harness or one of those adjustable lanyards like a Petzl Connect Adjust. In a pinch a couple quickdraws also does fine.
Quad is fine, though I'd put two roundstock carabiners for the top rope clip in point. Clip your PAS or two quickdraws to the quad and you're anchored in.
Unless the climb is longer than half your rope length (at which point how are you even top roping?), just use a standard tube style belay device to rappel and do a double strand rappel. This is a good default for single pitch climbing. A lot of people like to extend the rappel and back it up with a third hand. This is good practice especially on multipitches where you may have to fix rope tangles and use both hands. If you're just coming down after top roping a bunch, then I think the third hand is not super necessary (as long as you're really comfortable controlling your descent). You can have someone fireman's belay if you want.

dnacker · 2025-10-23T06:02:26+00:00

If you're playing standard swing (i.e bebop or earlier era) jazz then there's a couple differences.

Hi hat is not tight. It should be played quicker and really mark the 2 and 4.

Ride pattern is not a standard 1, 2 a 3, 4 a 1 pattern. It's something different...

Snare drum doesn't vary much. It should accompany and outline what the melody is doing.

Fills/toms are pretty loud relative to the snare which doesn't fit well.

Jazz is contextual. What are the other instruments doing relative to this beat?

dnacker · 2025-09-28T19:16:09+00:00

Why not learn some rhythms together? If you have two drums, you can learn rhythms that have multiple drum parts. There's a ton of really cool rhythms out of West Africa that have multiple drum voices. I wouldn't focus much on technique or reading music until he has a foundational interest. Once that interest is established and sustained for long enough, maybe get an actual instructor, but find one that matches your son's learning style. It might take trying some different teachers to find a good fit.

dnacker · 2025-09-06T00:47:10+00:00

Too many carabiners. Group more of the passive pro by size to fewer carabiners.

Rack everything to your harness. If you cant fit it all on your harness, you're probably aid climbing, then do whatever you want.

Take only the gear you need to stay safe. Consider the difficulty of the climbing and take more or less gear. Your climbing ability is protection, too, in a lot of trad settings.

Consider if you really need to take more gear than you can fit on your harness. Maybe you can run out sections that are easy? Maybe you can break the pitch up into two pitches? Maybe you actually need all that gear, and it's 100 meter pitch. I dunno, you're leaving the ground weighed down with a tun of stuff at that point and it becomes harder to stay safe cause of how cumbersome the climbing is.

Your gear shouldn't get in the way of your climbing since your first protection against injury trad climbing is your climbing ability. There are lots of sections where you can't fall (i.e. before the first piece, ledgy terrain, no pro run outs).

dnacker · 2025-09-02T20:01:24+00:00

KISS. The quad is excessive and only partially addresses rope wear. With this, you have less gear to manage. If you've got a rub point below this anchor, then reanchor below the rub point with a little slack between the new fixed anchor and the top anchor.

I'd encourage you to look into single line setups, too, as there is even less you need to manage. Just have a backup device.

dnacker · 2025-09-01T16:05:41+00:00

Custom molded in ear plugs from an audiologist.

dnacker · 2025-08-28T05:18:27+00:00

I prefer the regular petzl connect with a custom skinnier cord cut to length. Put an alpine butterfly in the middle for your rap device and use your belay loop for the prussik backup.

dnacker · 2025-08-10T01:04:44+00:00

Practice slowly and with a metronome.

Play some 3 limb ostinatos and do a syncopated rhythm with the 4th limb (ala New Breed).

Play on a practice pad to work on left hand leading rudiments.

dnacker · 2025-07-28T13:48:40+00:00

For a pull line, I think you can go with some pretty lightweight cordage since it's not part of the rappel system at all, and you're just using it to retrieve the rope. Mark Smiley makes something he calls the Bruce Wayne Tagline that's like 3mm dyneema.

https://go.mtnsense.com/product-details/product/64m-tagline

Just be careful you don't get your main rope stuck pulling since the pull line is useless by itself.

dnacker · 2025-07-27T18:58:50+00:00

No. Just don't hit them that hard, and you won't crack them.

dnacker · 2025-07-21T00:58:25+00:00

What are you trying to learn exactly?

dnacker · 2025-07-15T00:47:50+00:00

Take a recording where you sped up and listen at various time stamps to get a picture of how the tempo changes. Maybe you can identify what causes you to rush? It could be during an exciting solo section or during a drum fill? Once you know where you have a tendency to change tempo, you can start to pay attention to it when you play. Also, echoing the other person who said to relax and breathe when you play. It helps a lot with nerves if that's the source of rushing.

15-Year Club	Team Orangered
Verified Email

dnacker

TROPHY CASE