Beginner questions (may contain stupidity)

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I've posted on here so I'll quickly bring you up to scratch. I'm 21 from England. Got into the drums a few months ago after buying a basic Yamaha DTK500K E-kit. Had a couple of lessons but haven't come out of them knowing anything I didn't know before!

Right, my first question is regarding quarter, eighth notes etc. I've seen some online tutorials where some examples of the drum notation will read this:

1 + 2 + a 3 + 4 +

Does the random 'a' note in the middle still make the drum pattern eighth notes? Same example if you also added an 'e' after the 3?

Secondly, what are your opinions on games like Rock Band? Reason I ask is I am absolutely awful on it and sometimes something as daft as that would dampen my spirits when I want to pick up the sticks and progress my drumming skills. ("Wow, he can't play Rock Band so he'll never make it on real drums")
I know it's silly but seeing some of the drum patterns on screen like that is quite daunting.

Finally... does it REALLY matter if you hold your drum sticks wrong? (thumbs up, palms not facing ground)

Peace x

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Originally Posted by Vampires

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I've posted on here so I'll quickly bring you up to scratch. I'm 21 from England. Got into the drums a few months ago after buying a basic Yamaha DTK500K E-kit. Had a couple of lessons but haven't come out of them knowing anything I didn't know before!

Right, my first question is regarding quarter, eighth notes etc. I've seen some online tutorials where some examples of the drum notation will read this:

1 + 2 + a 3 + 4 +

Does the random 'a' note in the middle still make the drum pattern eighth notes? Same example if you also added an 'e' after the 3?

Secondly, what are your opinions on games like Rock Band? Reason I ask is I am absolutely awful on it and sometimes something as daft as that would dampen my spirits when I want to pick up the sticks and progress my drumming skills. ("Wow, he can't play Rock Band so he'll never make it on real drums")
I know it's silly but seeing some of the drum patterns on screen like that is quite daunting.

Finally... does it REALLY matter if you hold your drum sticks wrong? (thumbs up, palms not facing ground)

Peace x

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1.) 2 +a would be an eighth note and 2 sixteenths

2.) Rock band is not a determiner for how good you'll be on real drums

3.) "Wrong" is subjective. There are drummers that play palms down, others that play palms up and even other that are missing a whole arm and somehow still manage to play the drums.

Vampires, Drummer already nailed it for you. It was a great response!

Ditto on drummers post. Oh yeah. There are no questions that are considered dumb on this site. Welcome back.

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Originally Posted by wolvie56

Oh yeah. There are no questions that are considered dumb on this site.

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There are a bunch of us here that are complete newbies. You should read some of my posts if you think you are asking something stupid, then you'll feel better.

I had to laugh when you mentioned Rock Band and the correlation to real life. My daughter was a Wii bowling phenom. We called her Spare Rib because she never left a frame open. When she was 7 she wanted to join a real bowling league so we signed her up. Her first game was a five. Her second game was a 12. They finally switched her to bowling lefty and her last game was a 36. She was very disappointed. But I am happy to report that three years later she is averaging 126.

I think that what you are doing on the video game is really different timing and muscle control than real life. I haven't played Rock Band drums, but if it is anything like the original, you are more reacting to given notes than playing them. I think you'll find you are much better on the real thing. Good Luck!

Hahaha!

Rock Band is more like a modern day Simon Says than trying to play an instrument!

Slash got so frustrated with it he through the guitar controller and broke it.

Thanks for your input all. :)

One thing I've learnt during my 'experience' with the drums so far is how complex it is and it's definitely not as easy as it looks. Beat A can be picked up in a few minutes and it's a very well known beat. There's not much to the foot and hand coordination as the hi hats are played with the bass.

However, this is what gets me - and I need to use Rock Band as an example as it's charted! Clicky!! Those extra bass pedals in the middle of nowhere get me right before or right after a hi hat/snare etc. And yep there's much much harder out there but I'm still grass roots. Learning something like this on my kit - what advice could you give me? And a bonus question - is that 8th notes?

ive learned that when you start drumming you start with 1+2+3+4+ with snare on 2&4 and bass 1&3 then go on to 1+2+3+4+ with bass on 1,2,3,4 and snare on + after 2 and after 4 so like boom...boom tap boom...boom tap and so on and so is how I learned

"Reporter: Well, you’ve got my number now. Feel free to give me a ring if you’d ever like to jam in New York.

Paul McCartney: What do you play?

Reporter: I play the plastic guitar in Rock Band.

Paul McCartney: Oh, cool. I bet you’re better at it than I am. My grandkids always beat me at Rock Band. And I say, Listen, you may beat me at Rock Band, but I made the original records, so shut up."

What more is there to say?

Dave Mustaine (ex-Metallica and Megadeth leader) got beat by a 6 year old playing a Megadeth track on Guitar Hero.

I played rock band for two years before I jumped onto a real kit, boy was I in for disappointment when my "expert" abilities transfered into an uncordinated awkwardly gripped mess. I needed lessons BAD, and I got them from a teacher who for the first two months pushed me to learn proper technique before I get into the fun stuff. The years of rock band actually hindered my ability to play real drums and eventually I grew out of it.
Proper technique will be a pain in the arse for a while, but as long as you hold the principles closely they become second nature. If your teacher isn't teaching you how to read music after a couple lessons than ask him to do so.

I tried playing "come together" on Rock Band at a friends house...................played it many, many times in real life, but on the game, I messed up pretty badly. IMO, the parts were wrong.

But, I do think it is a great way for young kids to experience music and increase their desire to play

I cant play rock band to save my life.

If there was just, like a version of rock band, without the silly scrolling tracks, where I could just play what sounded good...

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Originally Posted by drummer

"....2.) Rock band is not a determiner for how good you'll be on real drums..."

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This +1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000 times!

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Originally Posted by Jack Keck

"Reporter: Well, you’ve got my number now. Feel free to give me a ring if you’d ever like to jam in New York.

Paul McCartney: What do you play?

Reporter: I play the plastic guitar in Rock Band.

Paul McCartney: Oh, cool. I bet you’re better at it than I am. My grandkids always beat me at Rock Band. And I say, Listen, you may beat me at Rock Band, but I made the original records, so shut up."

What more is there to say?

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haha i like that..

I would stay away from Rock band video game and play real drums either Ekit or acustic drums.

Just wanted to leave you with this bit of encouragement about your Yamaha DTX-500K E-kit - - - Ive got one of them myself and I take mine out to work paying gigs with it quite often at the small to medium small venues that I get called to do from time to time. Its a great little kit - one thing I did was to add a 3-zone "ride" cymbal and the good cymbal stand for it. I took a Y connector and plugged both crash cymbals into it and then plugged the Y into the Crash input on the controller - giving me 2 crash cymbals and a 3 zone ride that has the bell activated as well as the "splash" sound activated by hitting the very edge of the ride.

You have a good kit to learn on and to gig on - - - and welcome to the marvelous world of drumming - - - and to this great site full of really good drummers who will go out of their way to help you in any way they can.

Hi again guys, I've recently moved house and only just got my computer set up so a belated thanks for your comments!

Warren, it's good to see good praise on the DTX! For a beginner kit I'm very happy with it. One thing I want to look into is if I can replace the hi-hat pad with a cymbal.

Just a further couple of questions which have been on my mind whilst learning! Counting! Is it a necessity to use 'counting' whilst learning a beat? If so, how do you take a beat from a certain song (for example - Dani California) and put it in text to learn off (1+2+3+4 etc) because when I listen to any track that doesn't have a simple beat to it I can never work out how I would play it in counting terms.

Secondly, going back to the huge debate of Rock Band, is it weird that I tend to use Rock Band alot for drum notation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnHl2LXyqkM