I know it's been a while, life has been extremely crazy as of late! However I just got off guest playing for the one and only Charlie Lim this weekend, so of course I got inspired to try to write another post. I know the last one was real touchy feely, and I promised I'd write about something that was all about building your chops in this post, so here goes. DRUMMERS THIS ONE IS FOR YOU!
I'm going to give you a few tips that I found really helpful for me, that maybe you haven't come across. Or maybe there's been some tips that sound like urban myths or wisdom passed down from the elders but no one ever took the time to explain to you why these things work.
If you've ready any of the other posts by now, you'll know i'm fundamentally lazy, and am only concerned with technical practice that i KNOW will have a direct impact on my ability to perform So this is not about winning the world's fastest drummer competition, but about being able to play as fast as you need to on the bandstand. I HATE IT when I practice, and can't get something out on the bandstand, so I decided I was going to do the real required work to make sure that my time in the practice room directly translated to better results on stage. These things have worked for me, so I believe some of them should work for you too
OK? Ready? Set? Let's Go
No 1 : When working on ANY Hand Technical Exercise, Practice to a Metronome,and also make sure you're done something in time with your feet.
This is the absolute number one thing to do. Why? Because when we're working on technical exercises, context is the most important thing. I tell all my students this, if you're trying to play something that involves only your hands, and you can't do it with AT LEAST your right foot feathering the bass drum and the left foot stomping the hi hat on two and four, you really can forget about it coming out when you're performing.
More important than being fast, we want our hands and chops to GROOVE. And Groove, regardless of what style of music, comes from the bottom up. There's a reason why marching snare drumlines and new orleans marching drummers may be playing the exact same rudiments, but the music that comes out is completely different. It's because the way that the hands are moving in CONTEXT with how the feet are moving is completely different.
If you can play something up to speed, with a metronome (and there are different ways to challenge yourself on that too) and with the feet moving in some kind of musical ostinato, you have a MUCH better chance of something coming out in a performance setting, as fast (or even as slow) as the music needs it to be.
If you really wanna work on playing through all your rudiments, and having a completely balanced approach to rudimental technique that addresses the balance between all 4 limbs and the groove and feel that they collectively create, do yourself a favour and look for Alan Dawson's rudimental ritual.
Here's the link :
http://www.dontbelazyandjustclickheregooglealandawsonrudimentalrituayourself.com
No 2 : You can Only Play As Fast as you Can Hear
I spend a lot of time actually practicing things slowly when they're new, so that I give myself time to really hear every note of whatever lick/fill/chop that I'm trying to learn. As I get it up to speed, I make sure to be completely honest with myself on how clearly i can really hear every single subdivision i'm trying to play, and if i'm playing at a speed where i can't hear the note in my ear BEFORE it comes out on the drumset, I know i need to slow down and give my ear time to adapt.
It's extremely important to form a ear-mind-body connection with any new material you're trying to learn so that in the moment during a performance setting, you can actually use your inner ear to guide your body to do what it needs to do and create the sound you want.
Wanna know how fast you can hear 8th notes? Set a metronome to 120bpm, and play every offbeat. Keep bumping up the tempo until you can't play the offbeats accurately anymore. That's how fast you can hear 8th notes.
The same thing applies to any material/technical thing that we're trying to do on the drumset, 99.99999% of the time we can't achieve something because we can't hear fast enough
No 3: Yes, Using Rebound is Good. Yes, Moeller is Useful. Yes, Finger Technique is Useful. Now go Practice on a Pillow like all the Greats Did
Unless you want to play a drumset that only is made up of surfaces that offer the exact same amount of rebound as your practice pad, you're going to have to get around to the fact that playing the drumset and having drumset chops means navigating all kinds of surfaces that have different levels of give and rebound and still being able to play with good time and good tone, while blazing as fast as you want to. I'm not saying ONLY practice on a pillow, but I have never met a drummer I respected who didn't spent some time practicing on a pillow (or his leg) and absolutely NO ONE who has ever worked on a certain amount of technical exercises on a pillow has ever regretted it (or told me, anyways).
Does Jojo Mayer have seriously sick chops using Moeller and Rebound and the like? yes absolutely. Can he also pull off everything playing on a pepperoni pizza? Yes, Absolutely.
Unless you're going for absolute top speed musical applications where playing as fast as humanly possible is the point, 99 percent of all technical drumming can be achieved with good strong hand technique that can use and take advantage of, but doesn't RELY on rebound to make it work. And that's the only way to be able to blaze and be completely musically free to play any kind of melodic line you want on the drumset across all kinds of surfaces.
Of course, also practice on a pad, and learn full strokes, and utilize rebound, and moeller and what not. But understand that these things help you to CONSERVE energy when the parts of the drumset allow you to take advantage of physics to do so. Sometimes, to be able to play what you want, you also need to be able to just muscle it out.
No 4: Displace Everything That You're Working on by the Subdivision that it's Based on. Now Change the Subdivision. Now Displace That. Now Reorchestrate. Rinse, Repeat.
Ok so let's say we wanna work on our paradiddles. We all know what it is right? Blaze through it like there's no issue right? Ok. Let's see how far we can put this through the wringer to get maximum effect.
First thing I want to do is to create a melodic line. So if for example, I move my right hand to the floor tom, and play a paradiddle, and get my feet moving with the bass drum on quarter notes, and left foot on hi hat on 2 and 4, I get something like this
Most people if they're comfortable with this, should be able to play this because the melodic phrasing of this orchestration is very similar to how they initially worked on the paradiddle. However, one we shift the whole paradiddle over by a 16th note, that's when most of the uninitiated fall apart.
I'm using a free drumset notation software, which for some reason when i try to put in the hi hat on 2 and 4 with the left foot with this displaced paradiddle makes it come out all funny. But i can't complain cause it's free (just like i guess you can't complain cause this is free! haha). So please do me a favour and just add in the hi hat on 2 and 4 anyways even though it's not notated
So most people when they try this displaced paradiddle, while still keeping the feet moving as they should have difficulty at first. Even though if we're breaking it down into pure mechanical motions, we can say "hey you're just starting a paradiddle on the 2nd 16th note on the bar". So as long as they could play the paradiddle in the first example, from a pure muscular ability standpoint they should be able to play the second example at the same speed as the first. However, because the displacement of the paradiddle has caused a new melodic line when heard in the context of .4/4 time, and also there are new coordinations to be learnt between which hand needs to learn with which foot at which time, it does take a while to learn this displacement. And the next displacement. and the next displacement.
We do this because it gives us more flexibility in terms of the coordination between our hands and our feet, and this gives us the ability to start and end our phrases anywhere we want in the bar, causing us to be able to hear the same thing from multiple different angles which only serves to STRENGTHEN the clarity of how we hear something which gives us a much better chance of using our inner ear to tell our body what to do in a performance setting.
To take it even further, we can keep the orchestration, and the sticking, but change the subdivision.
Same mechanical motion, different subdivision. This again causes different coordination patterns than need to be learnt, and because the paradiddle feels like a grouping of 4 or 8 notes, we play it based on a subdivision based on 6, we start having to get used to a polyrhythmic feeling of 3 over 4.
Now because this is based on sextuplets, we can also displace the starting of the paradiddle by a sextuplet at a time.
This process can be (and should be) applied to ANYTHING we are trying to learn to build maximum flexibility with the phrase and also the build as strong an ear-mind-body connection as possible to the material.
5. When Performing - Try very hard to hear what you want to play clearly. and make sure there is only one possibility in your mind
Practicing is great, and if you've gotten this far in this article, I believe you spend a considerable amount of time practicing (or at least READING ABOUT PRACTICING tsk tsk tsk.)
One of the main problems that can creep up is that if we're spending a lot of time practicing when it's time to perform we're trying to grasp too many possibilities in music at one time. It's impossible to hear more more than one musical idea at a time, so while this seems like a simple concept, when I trained myself to do it, it changed the way I perform completely.
When I perform, I make sure that in my mind's ear, when it comes to my own part, i hear only one possibility of what to play, and I hear it so loudly and clearly that it drowns out all other possibilities. Only then do I know that I have the internal conviction that will cause my inner ear to tell my body what to do to make that musical idea come out on the instrument clearly and convincingly.
Ok, that's it! Sorry if you were looking for some tips on how to have the fastest single stroke amongst all your friends ... but work on these things and I promise in time you'll be able to play as fast as you need to in the context of playing music ... or at least as fast as you can hear in the context of the music you're trying to play.
All my Best,
Wen