Percussion can be fun, cool and very impressive. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world and is cooler than most instruments, after all, how many rock star trombonists do you know of? It will take months or years of practice and dedication to master them. Like any other instrument the drums are hard to learn, as there is more to the drums than just hitting something with a stick. If you get disappointed or discouraged because you can't play them very well, don't give up! With time, practice, and experience you'll get better. Then you can show off to your friends.
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1.Learn all the different types of drums. Obviously you will be looking at drums, but there are different kinds of drums that make up a set. Keep in mind that there are different brands, sizes, sticks used and different tunings amongst of other more slighter modifications will affect the overall sound of each instrument. Here is a list of drums that you will find in almost every drum set you see:
-Bass Drum - The big one on the floor. It's not called "bass drum" for nothing; this drum usually makes a very low pitched booming sound when struck by the mallet (the weight at the end of the shaft attached to a foot-pedal controlled by the drummer's right foot). Many drummers these days use a foot pedal with two mallets, played with both feet- respectively. This is referred to as "double-bass". A lot of the time its referred to as the kick drum, to avoid confusion when sound checking, "can I hear the bass?" "the drum or the guitar? Most of the time the bass drum has a pillow inside for dampening.
-Snare drum - This one is usually located to the left of the drummer and played by with the drummer's non-dominant hand stick (right hand should be on the high hat if playing a beat with the high hat and left hand should be on the snare). Typically it is known for its crisp "click" sound followed by a "resonating shuffle" sound effect when struck directly on the skin (the pad covering the drum).
-Cymbals - There are many different kinds of cymbals, varying in type, shape, and sound. A cymbal is a round, metal object that resonates when struck. The four most commonly used types of cymbals are the high-hat, the ride, the splash, and the crash.
*The high-hat is a pair of cymbals mounted on a foot pedal. The foot pedal is usually played by the left foot and controls the cymbals bringing them together when pressed and apart when released. You can strike the cymbal when it is apart or closed, and you can shut the cymbals with your feet at different rates of speed; each creating a different sound.
*The ride creates a more subtle sound than the other cymbals because it is used to play very repetitively throughout most music. The cymbal will usually resonate from one strike to another.
*The splash is a cymbal that creates a metallic "splashing" sound, similar to the sound a water splash makes- which dies quickly after peaking.
*The crash is similar to the splash, but usually generates a loud and long, sustained sound. Listen for the crash at the end of measures in pop music or especially in periods of heightened drama in orchestral music.
*Finally the china symbol. It is curved at the edges and sounds like a gong. This is most commonly used in classical music.
-Tom-Toms - There are many types of tom-toms but the most common three are the Floor Tom (the deepest of the three), the Mid-Tom (the medium of the three), and the High-Tom (the highest pitched of the three).
2.Figure out the best way to hold your sticks. There are two main ways:
-Hold them in a fist about an inch away from the bottom of your sticks, then point your thumbs toward the tips of the sticks (the tips that you play with). This method is the most popular one used by almost every drummer.
-Hold them like you are holding a pen or a pencil. In numerous jazz bands, the drummer will hold one of his/her sticks/brush like this to create a different feel when striking the snare drum.
3.Drum with hands if you don't have drums. Count eighth notes like "1&2&3&4&"and try your best to say it steadily. Drum these eighth notes with your first hand.
4.Continue with your first hand, but now, whenever you say "Two" and "Four," tap the table with your other hand.
5.Now for your right foot.
6.Continue tapping with both hands but now whenever you say "One" or "Three" tap your right (or left) foot.
7.Take a lesson with a local teacher and see if you enjoy it.
8.Go to the local drum stores and bang on stuff.
9.Do your research for a drum set if you are interested in drumming before you spend the money on a set.
10.Talk to the people at the stores and they should steer you in the right direction.
11.Start out with a cheap, new set or a used set until you finally decide if you are going to stick with it. A three-piece set is adequate to start with.(High hat, snare and kick drum)
12.Have your drum teacher or the people at the store give you a hand or some pointers on how to hold the sticks, how to hit the drum properly, how to adjust the drums to fit your stature, and how to set up your kit at home. you can also find a lot of this information for free on the internet.
13.Try a variety of drumsticks; there are a lot out there, but there is no right or wrong stick.
14.Buy a metronome. If you can't afford a metronome, you can find a click track somewhere which is a recorded metronome that you can play in your stereo, on your Walkman, or on your computer while you practice.
15.Pick up a video or book, and make sure you type the name of the item in a search on the Internet to read some reviews on the material before you spend your money on it. Not all of the videos and books help somebody that is new to the game, even if they may say that it is made for beginners.
16.Keep in mind most music consists of playing a beat and then using fills when they make sense musically. Play for the song, not for yourself.
17.Practice playing beats first, most books and videos will focus on the most basic of beats.
18Learn to practice properly.
-Put the metronome on at a slow speed.
-Play while relaxed; if you notice any tension, slow down the metronome until you feel relaxed.
-Use your hands to play the simple beat stated above; what you are doing here is playing 8th notes with your right hand and keeping the time on the high hat.
-Make sure you count out loud when you are playing, eventually you won't have to, but do it while you are learning and when you are practicing.
-Now, instead of hitting the drum on the "Two" and on the "Four" with the left hand, hit everywhere else.
-Have a good time and learn to play with your hands and listen to the sound you are making.
-Just using your hands, counting out loud, and playing with the metronome or click track will get you started to get into the groove and be able to freestyle.
19.Try to develop a groove and get used to playing evenly, while counting out loud and while playing with the click.
20.Learn how to close the high hat with the left foot when you play with the hands; it makes a different, shorter sound. This is the position that most drummers use the high hat at most frequently.
21.Continue playing only with the hands; go back to the original beat
22.Play straight eighth notes with the right hand.
23.Use the left hand and hit the snare on "Two" and "Four"
24.Lift your foot off of the high hat here and there to get used to the sounds you are making. You can open it all the way, open it a little and hit the high hat in different places such as the outside rim, or the bell at the top to get different sounds.
25.Get used to the sounds the high hat makes and get used to opening the high hat while you keep a steady beat and count out loud.
26.Return to the regular beat again and add in the right foot on the "one" and "three".
27.Get used to playing that and then freestyle.
28.Develop the right foot by playing it at the same time you hit the high hat to help develop the muscles.
29.Try to play with the right hand and foot at the same time, left hand free styling, or with all limbs at the same time to really get your muscles used to moving.
30.Get used to the hard part with drums: getting your limbs to do different things when you want them to and still be able to keep time even and have the drums make the sounds you want. At first it will be easy because you will be moving the limbs at the same time but eventually you will have to get used to moving one limb up while the other is moving down.
31.Play the same thing above only using the hands but instead of hitting the snare on the "Two" and "Four" hit the high hat and when you are lifting your right hand off the high hat move your left hand down to hit the snare. you are basically playing the snare drum in between each hit of the high hat. While you are doing this count out loud "One e and a Two e and a Three e and a Four e and a" continuing to hit the high hat with the right hand on the "One and Two and Three and Four and" but hitting the snare on the "e's and a's" ( the a is pronounced as "ah" or whatever)
32.Make sure you are still using the metronome to make sure the beats are even and make sure you continue to count out loud.
33.Learn this difficult skill when you are playing the drums, but instead of just the hands you have to incorporate both feet and instead of making one movement up while one movement down you may have to double or triple or even quadruple one movement with a limb while the other limbs do something else in another direction. A good example of this is the difference between a "single" stroke and a "double" stroke. If you strike the drum with one beat from each alternating hand, you have a single stroke pattern. However, if you strike the drum with one downward movement from each alternating hand and let the stick bounce on each alternating stroke to get two hits per stroke, you have a double stroke pattern. This is what enables a drummer to perform very fast rolls and patterns. By studying and practicing the 26 American drum rudiments, you will be well on your way to mastering single, double, triple and quadruple stroke patterns. Start just on a snare drum. Once you are comfortable with the stroke patterns, make sure you practice them on multiple drums within each pattern. This produces some very awesome sounds that will leave your audience stunned.
34.For example, count the same beat we have been using so far ,eighth notes, and on every beat close the high hat with your left foot and open it on the offbeats, or "ands". Hit the snare drum on the twos and fours to make a basic rock beat. With your right hand keep 8th note time (one and two and three and four and) on the rim of the snare or on a ride cymbal if you have one.
35.Try to play the kick drum with the right foot. Experiment with various beats with the right foot while keeping the rest of the limbs locked in the main pattern. This is where it starts to get tricky. Don't worry though, it gets easier the more you play. You have to get your limbs used to making movements that are independent of each other. There is no quick way to do this. Just take your time and think about what you are doing. If you break it down into one beat at a time it makes things a lot easier.
36.Learn drum notation and about time signatures.
37.Learn there are only a few ways in which each beat can be broken down to. We will be talking about a standard 4/4 beat.
-Put your metronome on at about 60 bpms, each of these clicks will be a quarter note pulse that will help guide your understanding of rhythm. I will put brackets around each of the beats so you know what have to be said out loud to the metronome. You can say these at first and then play them with your hands until you figure out the rhythms. You can go to the Vic Firth website listed below and others to hear what each of these sound like. Remember that each click of the metronome is one beat, each of these subdivisions take up one beat so you will be tapping your hand or speaking the words faster and faster as you go along.
-Learn about quarter notes, usually the main beats, and there are 4 of these to each bar. they are counted "[1] [2] [3] [4]" count to the metronome each number will fall right on the click
-You have quarter note triplets that are not used that much in rock beats but you will find them in drum fills and used in percussion lines found in school bands. Basically a triplet is where you play 3 notes in the time you usually play 2. you can have quarter note triplets, 8th note triplets, 16th note triplets, 32nd note triplets.
38.These are hard to understand, but for quarter note triplets you must do the opposite of subdivide and think in terms of half notes. Count 1-la-le evenly in the space of the half note. For eighth note triplets it's the same, but with three notes split in the space of a quarter note.
-We have our friend the 8th note which there are 8 of these to each bar. counted "[1 +] [2 +] [3 +] [4 +]" (the "+" sign = the word "and") remember to count out loud and use a metronome to make sure you are even.
-We have a cool sounding beat with 8th note triplets. They are counted "[One-Trip-Let][Two-Trip-Let][Three-Trip-Let][Four-Trip-Let]" or any three syllable word. Play this along with the metronome each click on the metronome is a beat and each beat is subdivided.
-We have 16th note beats that you played earlier when you were learning to move your hands in opposite directions. Counted "[1 e + a] [2 e + a] [3 e + a] [4 e + a]"
-We have 16th note triplets which I count as [1 trip let and trip let] [2 trip let and trip let] [3 trip let and trip let] [4 trip let and trip let]
We have 32nd notes which I count as "[1 e + a + e + a] [2 e + a + e + a] [3 e + a + e + a] [4 e + a + e + a}
-Remember that each of the subdivisions have to fit in time with the metronome. each click will be quarter beat and easy to keep time by the time you get to the higher subdivisions you will be counting faster or playing faster but the numbers you say will always land on the clicks of the metronome.
-We also have 32nd note triplets that require a lot of subdivision to count and are pretty much too fast to say out loud, but if you want to hear some 32nd notes and 32nd not triplets, then listen to the song "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix. These notes are hard to play correctly because you need to be able to play them evenly, making the same sound on the drums with each hand and be able to move around the drum kit playing these notes in time with the rest of the song.
39.Rests are used within the song where no sound is made during the note. listen to some of your favorite songs and use a small subdivision such as the 8th or 16th note count and you will see that during a lot of the fills you will hear spaces where there is silence when you are counting. Welcome to the rests.
40.Learn with regards to the subdivision of beats and rests through practice with just the snare drum. Check the tips section for a list of snare drum rudiment books that you can find for pretty cheap and that will develop your understanding of the beat subdivisions and beat subdivisions with the use of rests as well as building up your skills with both hands. Your goal is to be able to make even sounds with both hands. When you play an accented note with the right hand it should sound the same when you play with the left and when you make a normal stroke with the right it will sound the same as the left and vice versa and so on. An accented stroke is when you strike the drum harder than the other strokes (usually on the rim of the drum, also known as a rimshot). Accents give a very dynamic effect to the music. In music notation, accents are shown by the mathematical "greater than" sign (>).
41.Learn to do drum fills.
-Count out loud and play with a metronome for drum fills.
-Start with the basic beat as before "1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +" and play as you did before with right hand on the high hat and left on the snare. Use the right foot on the kick. Repeat as you warm up. Now continue counting out loud and just play "1 + 2 +" and then stop playing with you limbs and just finish counting out loud "3 + 4 +"repeat. it should sound like "Boom tic Pap tic" now on the "3 + 4 +" do anything else for example start with moving every limb at the same time on the "3 + 4 +" you can hit the crash (if you have one) on the one on the following bar and you will have pulled off your first fill.
-Be creative and do every combination you can think of while counting the "3 + 4 +" some will sound good to you some won't (don't forget to open the high hat) some basic ones can be all snare alternating hands. Two kick and then two snares. Two snares and two kicks. You get the point as long as you keep the time it doesn't matter what you pick as long as the time stays even.
-Now we go back to the subdivisions of the beats as I wrote above. Continue to play the "1 + 2 +" as you did above. Now pick a couple subdivisions of the beat as written out between the brackets above for the "3" beat and the "4" beat" such as "[3 trip let] [4 e + a} play note while counting out loud and use all limbs at the same time as you did above. Repeat. Congrats, now you have played a more complex fill. Now continue to use the same subdivision you picked but do different things with each hand. you will soon be playing fills you only dreamed of.
-Now pick other subdivisions for the "3" and 4" beat you can go "[3 +] [4]" or "[3 +] [4 trip let]" or "[3 e + a] [4 +]" or whatever. Is it starting to get easier yet? As long as the notes are played evenly and within the time you have lots and lots of possible combinations for the fills.
-Now one thing to remember is that you don't have to just play the [3] beat and [4] beat as fills. you can play the whole bar as a fill picking any of the subdivisions for each beat and combining them such as "[1 e + a] [2 trip let] [3 +] [4 trip let]" or whatever you picked. say the subdivisions out loud then play with all limbs and then play around with using different sounds and sound combinations for the subdivisions. Don't forget your kick drums when doing the fills to give them that extra "oomph".
-Another thing to remember is that you don't have to start a fill at the beginning of a beat such as: count " One and Two" and play it like you did before with the right hand on the high hat and the left on the snare but when you get to the " and three and four and" play the fill starting on that and instead of waiting for the "three" beat. so if you do a basic 8th note fill it would be [1 +} [2 fill] [fill fill] [fill fill] or play "One and" and then a fill during " two and three and four and" sorry its hard to write out but read it over and over while you play and you'll figure it out. basically the fills have to fit within the mathematical subdivision of the bar.
-One thing also to remember when playing fills is to try and continue to hit the snare on the " two" and "four" while you do whatever craziness you want on the rest of the notes as to continue to keep the time to the listener.
-Now for the curve ball, throw in rests to the subdivisions and that's it.
42.Have fun practicing and remember practicing is the work and the show where you get to show off a little is the payoff. Also, don't give up on this tedious task of perfecting the drums. Instruments are hard to play which is why there musicians get the attention they do.
