my drum set say about me”, etc
Present on Reddit lately, and finding, as social media goes, it’s not too bad. The regular drumming forums now seem to be about a dozen old guys without a lot of actual interest in music, struggling to find things to talk about. Facebook has a lot of musicians, but the site itself is a black hole. Reddit is a mix of people in their first weeks of teaching themselves the instrument— a lot of those, actually— but also good number of more serious students, and knowledgeable people. There’s a lot of the usual stuff, but thre’s some flexibility. I haven’t run into any actual internet-drumming-lore-as-dogma people yet.
So giving real answers isn’t a total waste of time, there’s some interchange, there are people there who know this site, who will actually click a link. On the forums there are people who are stunned to find that I write an OK site, even as they’ve been reading my comments for years.
These are some answers I gave to some questions, that I thought were worthwhile on their own.
INDEPENDENCE
Thinking of the rhythm of the individual parts doesn’t help— or it barely helps.
Figure out the combined rhythm of the entire drum set part you’re trying to play, and play it as a four-way sticking, including unisons between hands/feet, like:
R = right hand
L = left hand
B = bass drum
H = both hands in unison
R (circle it or underline it) = right hand/bass drum in unison
…and so on, as needed. Take it slow enough you can think your way through it.
STYLE
You’re really not supposed to have a style, I don’t think that’s a great way to look at it, especially early on.
For finding your actual own thing, you need some freedom from whatever dumb idea you thought of for what you “should” be, or want to be— your “style.” To find out what you actually are, you need to be able to drift from that.
For anybody, in any art form, it takes doing a lot of work, and a variety of work, and burning out our first dumb ideas, our first motivations, and working with whatever is left over, wherever that puts us. You may still do your original thing, but it’s going to be in a more mature state.
Or you can end up in the total opposite of where you started— like the painter Audrey Flack— she started out as an abstract expressionist, throwing paint around, and ended up as a photo realist.
FINGER TECHNIQUE
What are you doing it for?
TIME SIGNATURES
First, it just tells you how big the box is— how many of what kind of note fit in each measure.
Bottom number = what kind / top number = how many
It’s also trying to tell you how to count the piece— usually in 4, 3, or 2.
And what kind of subdivision of the beat— simple 8ths (a la Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), or triplet feel (a la Pop Goes The Weasel).
Most often: 2 or 4 on the bottom = simple 8ths / 8 on the bottom = triplet feel
Deciding how to count it, then: 2 or 4 on bottom = count the top number / 8 on the bottom = count the top number divided by 3
If that’s still too abstract, just memorize:
4/4 = simple 8ths counted in 4
3/4 = ” ” ” in 3
2/4 = ” ” ” in 2
2/2 = simple 8th feel counted in 2 (half notes are the beat, quarter notes are a subdivision here)
6/8 = triplet feel counted in 2
9/8 = ” ” ” in 3
12/8 = ” ” ” in 4
COUNTING 32nd NOTES
Usually you don’t count 32nd notes at normal tempos, when I do count them, I add a ‘da’ between the normal 1e&a syllables. Some might prefer to use ‘ta’, whichever is easiest to speak quickly.
Spoken: 1 da e da an da a da
FINDING MUSIC TO LISTEN TO
Talk to somebody, see what they like, go to a record store, see what they’re playing, ask them what’s good. Stream an independent radio station.
LEARNING SONGS IN LESSONS
That’s not how lessons work with good teachers. Teaching parts to songs is hack teaching.
You’re supposed to be learning to read, and working on snare drum technique, and learning styles on drums, and all the supporting stuff that goes into that. And working on general facility, fill and solo materials.
GINGER BAKER
I guess he set a template for rock drummers, playing creatively, with a lot of drums in there, and doing a solo feature.
I don’t listen to his playing for pleasure, it’s a little bit like Bam Bam from the Flintstones. John Bonham is a heavier player, and not a jazz drummer, but has a much better musical sound and touch, and groove.
As a jazz drummer Baker was mediocre. Having seen the movie [Beware Of Mr. Baker] I didn’t detect anything redeeming about him as a human being. I think that about covers it.
Had to get in another shot at Ginge. Follow me on Reddit for more, it’s reasonably worthwhile, in a way.
I am happy to help you with any of the materials on the site, and with anything else drumming related— contact me for private lessons, online world wide, or in person in Portland, Oregon. All levels of players, and all people, are welcome.
Email Todd | Call or text +1(503)380-9259 | Chat on WhatsApp
Hmmm, I wasn’t aware of not approving any on-topic comments made by a human. I get a ton of spam comments every day, it’s possible I deleted it accidentally.
re: Mr. Bond’s music, I was commenting what I was hearing there, which was very bad. I listened to a couple of other things that were marginally better. I trust you that he did some jazz gigs, but that doesn’t really mean anything re: his actual abilities. Bad players have done jazz gigs, and there have been other saxophonists who got over by squawking like that, in a small scene.
re: Ginger Baker the man– I’d be delighted if he was secretly a great guy.
re: Ginger Baker as a jazz musician– At this point in life I trust my ears, I know what I’m hearing. There’s no reason he couldn’t have been capable at it, but he never developed past teenager stage with it– the way his career developed, and maybe his personality defects, made that impossible. Judging by what I’ve heard.
re: Ginger Baker vs. John Bonham — I really can’t get interested, beyond the few words I wrote about it. Both players are exhausted for me, Bonham less then Baker. There are a hundred other drummers I’m more excited about.
Well, if it was an error I apologise for the relative belligerence. It’s not my favoured nature online, I prefer to have a nuanced discussion and find some common ground, but I really didn’t like the tone of the way the broader critique went in article (with the some folks don’t know what they’re hearing ending being the cherry on top), beyond any personal opinions on the players/music themselves.
Regarding Bond/british scene in the late ’50s/’60s…I’m ambivalent on him myself as an Alto player, outside of a few performances, so not particularly interested in defending his chops, but his performances with the Rendell Quintet (Roarin’ is a really good LP) are on a tighter leash, are generally deserving of respect outside of stylistic preferences, and were genuinely innovative for a young player circa 60-61(though alsocontroversial at the time, as these things often are). He sounds like a rawer version of the McLean of 2-3 years later when he started going more outside and could craft some interestingly angular, bluesy lines, but he didn’t develop and largely abandoned the instrument when he went R&B. the more conventionally formidable Heckstall-Smith became their lead tenor sax player.
The British jazz scene by the start of the ’60s was NOT genuinely small by any means. It had plenty of commercial struggles outside of commercial work that would limit it’s growth, but by then it was probably the biggest in Europe and if compared to the states then the concentration of talent around London would easily compete for volume of proficient players gathering in any one city anywhere outside New York. It’s issue in the ’40’s/’50s was innovation, not quality/quantity of players…everything was still largely based on following and mastering the trends from the states. From the mid/late ’50s it still produced a steady stream of great modern jazz work, even if lots of it remained only nationally (or centered on western europe) known for a long time outside of some of the serious jazz collectors in the states. It produced not just high quality jazz, but some genuinely innovative stuff by the later half of the ’60s, especially in larger ensemble, guitaristic and free-ish areas.
On Baker, who i certainly don’t think was ever a great guy, just a more decent and complex one than he seemed latterly (that spoken word East Timor track shows his fundamentally decent humanistic side well, imo)…people like what they like and I’ve little interest in trying to change minds, but I’ve never liked exaggerated mockery of anyone and that’s what I see with comments like reducing his entire approach to “bam bam flintstones” (which is all fine as a humorous deduction of a few minimalist tracks with Cream) and quite a lot of the online attitude around him in recent years, to the point of an outright diminishing of historical achievements and the effective qualities he did have as a player.
I understand Baker’s later life persona makes him an easy target and I’ve little time for it myself, but he seems to flick a swich in folk who really should know better that takes them back to over the top shittalking like they were 18 again, yet some will easily find the appreciation for the strengths of other similarly creatively/technically less than flawless players/characters that are even more problematic like Bonham (a multiple violent assaulter of women/men and even attempted rapist if that air stewardess story is remotely true) . There’s whole swathes of Baker’s work out there with various bands that all had their own sound, even within Cream there’s stuff that is markedly different from the tom-heavy minimalist stuff he favoured at the time…not that Baker was a chameleon, and he always kept a through line with the way he used minimalist fills and tom orchestrations, which seems to be the sticking point for many with his approach (personally I appreciated his use of space, commitment to developing a style that well within the limits of his dexterity, and found an earthy musicality in it), yet his actual groove approach changed quite a lot at times, especially after he moved to Nigeria to study with the percussionists there and got more into funk/afrobeat.
I’ve known more than a few folk who might not like/be ambivalent on his ’60s playing that liked a lot of the ’70s-early ’90s work (up through the laswell/helleborg era) a lot. Though I don’t think the later “return to jazz” era was successful at all (other than some of the less conventional tracks), but that’s because it wasn’t really one…it was one of those impromptu “lets throw some folk from different genres together and see what comes out” sessions that were still popular at the time. I had always suspected Laswell was behind it, but I doubt Baker had played any substantial jazz time on the kit since the early ’60s. He put out an album with the late Ron Miles at the end of the ’90s while living in Colorado, and that was a band he had played and rehearsed with for a while beforehand and is a better, more coherent attempt at integrating the style he had been playing in the ’80s with some modern jazz, though I still think it only works about half of the time. His career was over creatively after that as far as I’m concerned.
Apologies for the length. I tend to rambling easily.