What should I keep on practicing?

[Razzinnator]

First of all hello to everyone It's not exactly my first time on these forums, but I haven't been here in quite a bit of time and I'm not exactly sure what to do right now, so I decided I'd turn to some experts for help.

To start off, I'm still relatively new to drumming. I own a (very bad) drum set that I received as a present about a year and a half ago. After I got it I started playing and I learned quite a bit in one month, a few songs, exercises, I watched a lot of videos and got familiar with the world of drumming, but then I just quit.

Now, about one month ago, the band I was in since that time finally got all its members (we lacked vocals and a bassist) and we decided we would start rehearsing. All my fellow band members have over a year of experience playing their instruments, so they are far more skilled than I am. We rehearsed for a few times, played twice on stage (a pub in our town has a Jam Session/Open Stage night every week), and it went quite well, but I still feel like I'm a total beginner and I can barely play anything.

This is where I need help. There are no teachers in my area, no drum shops, only a small musical instrument shop (so I don't have any places to pick up anything useful), so I'm all on my own. I want to try and get better, and keep up with the rest of the band (since the songs they're suggesting us to cover are near impossible to me now), but I don't know which path is the right one for a better progress in my drumming skills.

First of all, what exercises should I be doing?
I've looked around these forums and around the internet, but the amount of information is overwhelming, so it's really hard to understand what is good and what is not.

And secondly, should I work very hard and push myself to learn very difficult songs, or should I look for some more appropriate to my skill level (and easier to learn, but still challenging)? Which ones will help me progress better?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the wall of text :(.

[rickthedrummer]

Work the rudiments and 4 way independence, that will get you going in the right direction.

[jordison515]

Work the rudiments and 4 way independence, that will get you going in the right direction.

Agreed.

[Razzinnator]

Firstly, thanks for the quick responses!
I'll work on the four way independence since I've seen a lot of exercises around. But I also see a lot of rudiments (40 I think?). Which ones should I focus on, and what is the best way to practise rudiments? Start slowly and build up speed, play them for half an hour or so on..

And what about the songs I should try to learn?
Thanks once again !

[amdrummer]

what genre are you guys? i say just listen to a variety of music and try to learn some jazz or somthing it will help you learn sublty which helps in any genre. and if you wanna get faster practice on a pillow that what i do.

[jordison515]

Firstly, thanks for the quick responses!
I'll work on the four way independence since I've seen a lot of exercises around. But I also see a lot of rudiments (40 I think?). Which ones should I focus on, and what is the best way to practise rudiments? Start slowly and build up speed, play them for half an hour or so on..

And what about the songs I should try to learn?
Thanks once again !

Your basic paradiddle, double paradiddle, triple paradiddle, and single and double strokes. Maybe flams/flam taps as well. Start slow, at about 90, and once you get that down, go to 95, so on. But you have to make sure you do them correctly. Check out some vids on youtube. Your hand technique has to be spot on, dude. Once you can play the rudiment at the set speed for 3-4 mins straight, move on up. Do this with all the rudiments I told you. PS for the double and triple paradiddles, start slow; 70/75 for the double P, maybe 60/65 for the triple.

Jordi

[Drumbledore]

Firstly, thanks for the quick responses!
I'll work on the four way independence since I've seen a lot of exercises around. But I also see a lot of rudiments (40 I think?). Which ones should I focus on, and what is the best way to practise rudiments? Start slowly and build up speed, play them for half an hour or so on..

And what about the songs I should try to learn?
Thanks once again !

What I do with my students is I give most of them (except the real young ones or maybe the occasional adult who is really struggling) a sheet of what I dub "The Seven Essential Rudiments"...single strokes (both with right hand lead and left hand lead 'stickings' ie RLRL or LRLR), double strokes, triplets, single paradiddle, the five stroke roll, flams and drags. Firstly, get the singles flowing as smooth as you can with both right or left hand lead....try it with quarter note counts (1,2,3,4), 1/8th note counts (1+2+3+4+) and 1/16th's (1e+a,2e+a etc). Same thing with doubles (right hand lead and left hand lead), same process. Bear in mind work on this as much as possible with a metronome at slow speeds (60 BPM or a little slower, depends) work through, bumping up the speed in increments of 4 beats at a time (Ie: say, 52BPM, 56, 60, 64...you get the picture) until you can comfortably play at a medium pace. Then, next stage on this sheet, singles, doubles etc over a quarter note kick. This will mean sometimes you got to slow stuff down when working on getting your left hand accurate over your right foot. No cheating it. Fast and sloppy is not a good impression.

The next thing is to work on a simple RLR LRL triplet, and I introduce the triplet before the paradiddle, not the other way around. The reason why? Well, what I've noticed over the years of teaching is that with a lot of right handed students, naturally the right hand paradiddle, whether on the snare, pad, or split between different parts of the set, the RLRR part of the paradiddle is strong whilst the LRLL is not always so even. So what I reasoned is that if a beginner student neglects practicing the left hand lead single stroke roll (usually because they feel too weak on it or they can't be bothered for whatever reason), then with the RLR LRL triplet, especially with an accent at the beginning (RLR, LRL) will give you no choice but to switch constantly from right hand to the left. Once a student is comfortable with the proper accenting of the first stroke (I go a little in depth with stick heights, playing the stick off the head and other explanations), then I know they're usually able to play the paradiddle, because we take the same wrist and finger motion and add another stroke to the last note of each triplet, so what was RLR LRL becomes RLRR LRLL executed strong, evenly and with greater confidence. The upshot of having the triplet introduce early in the game too is that sometimes in some lessons I'll put the kits aside and bring out the conga's, maybe borrow a djembe or two and I get them doing some simple jamming.......the triplet is right at the heart of a lot of African rhythms....I'll set my drum machine with some shaker and small percussion patterns using some simple ideas based on a lot of triplets and before you know it, a student will really have the idea of alternating and leading with either hand under their belt. Then when we get back to the snares or electronic kits, we work a little bit on flams, five stroke rolls and finally the drag is introduced.

With these "Seven Essential Rudiments" (over time, all are exercised over not only a quarter note kick, but a left foot hi-hat on 2&4, to really work on co-ordination), what this also does is to give little "starter" ideas to getting into the larger body of rudiments. For example, the single stroke is what makes up a simple triplet as seen before, but the triplet also becomes the springboard into learning the single-stroke four (a triplet with a single stroke tap at the end, RLR L, RLR L), as well as the single stroke seven (RLR LRL R, LRL RLR L). Put a drag note in front of a single stroke four and next thing you know you have the single ratamacue (ll-RLR L, rr-LRL R). Or the five stroke roll....add another double you get a seven stroke roll (RRLLRRL), add another eighth note single to the five stroke roll you get the six stroke roll (RRLL R L), add two pairs of doubles to the seven stroke roll.....well, it's maths really, isn't it? Learning not only the flam at the beginning, not just a constant L/R, L/R, but in fact the alternating flam (L/R, R/L) will give your hands the accuracy and speed to to play.....the flam tap (L/R R, R/L L), flam accent (L/RLR, R/LRL), the Swiss Army Triplet (L/RRL, L/RRL, as well as exercised as L/RRL, R/LLR, which I'm still exercising, lol), inverted flam tap (L/R L, R/L R) and the more exotic flam based rudiments with names like pataflafla, flamacue and so forth. Plus you can put flams at the start of paradiddle, double paradiddle and so forth. And beyond the 40 rudiments you can make further and further combinations...hybrids. But first and foremost, have the seven rudiments that I mentioned at the start....the single stroke, double stroke, triplets, single paradiddle, five stroke roll, flams and drags mastered.....if needs be, they need to be burned into your memory and your muscle memory by daily practice. In fact, use them as part of your warm up routine on a practice pad before you start playing away at the kit. Everything else builds upon that....in my experience that is how I can get my head around knowing my 40 PAS Rudiments. This was what my old Canadian drum teacher at high school impressed on me as a teen student of drumming, and it has never left me since.

[Razzinnator]

Thank you very much for the great and very thorough answers ! Today I started practicing my rudiments (the right way), and it's a bit tougher than I expected, but I'll keep at it for quite some time.

Well, having that gotten out of the picture, what about my second question? What kind of songs should I try to learn to play? Songs that are closer to my skill level (but still challenging), or songs that are really difficult? I'm not really trying to play entire songs necessarily, I just want to progress fast.

[slinglander]

IMO-start with learning straight forward, simpler songs(check AC/DC or similar bands) first and then work up in difficulty but learn to keep the beat!

[Drumbledore]

Quite true what Slinglander and others might state....simple stuff like AC/DC's. Add stuff like the Beatles and maybe some Stone's stuff. Not all the stuff is easy from these guys, but the majority of it can be. Eg: AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" is one song I introduce in some early lessons. Or "Watching The Wheels" by John Lennon was another simple song taught to me by one of my earlier drum teachers. "Birthday", "Revoloution" by the Beatles and "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones were songs I used to do in a covers band, I "picked them up" after learning them a few times at home and at rehearsals, easy for anyone really.

[Razzinnator]

Okay, I'll start with something easy and slowly build up, as well as work on rudiments and independence.. Thanks a lot for the quick answers, they really pointed in the right direction, so hopefully I'll get better!

[MartyM]

Razzinnator, the only thing I can add to all the other great response's is also to work on clean hits to drums..what I mean is hitting the sweet spots and not the rims..unless you are working on a specific rim shot technique

[MR. G]

Hey guys...just back from Key West vacation and stumbled across this thread. Wanted to mention I found it very enlightening mostly because it was also tailored to some of my own concerns. Thanks for the input.

[Russ]

Drumbum has a lot of great information and resources for new and beginning drummers needing a learners lesson, or even more advanced drummers looking to stay sharp and continue practicing their chops. It would also benefit you to get used to staying in tempo with a metronome, learn good posture, stick grip, and how to read sheet music as well as tabs.

[Bish]

4-way independence.

[TPO]

I'm pretty new myself, these are the things I've found have really helped.

Doing a few simple rudiments to a click. Start at whatever speed is comfortable and just follow the click for a few minutes at a time, then switch to the next rudiment. Over a few days or weeks, once you've nailed them at one tempo, up it just slightly, maybe just 5bpm, and go again. You might be surprised how much harder it is, but this will slowly increase your speed and also teach you the most important thing in drumming, which is to stay on the beat! You can tell when it's time to switch up, as the moves will become relaxed, almost lazy, rather than a struggle to keep up.

I'd recommend doing nearly all practise to a click, as time keeping and consistency is an oft overlooked essential. Even just sitting there doing one handed hits or RLRL rolls to improve speed, do it all to a click. Consistency is more important than raw speed.

A click will also make your rudiments fit into a four bar pattern, which is how you will use them practically in songs. Playing 'freeform' your mind can easily structure the physical moves of the rudiment differently in your head, and then it becomes a challenge to switch that to song timing.

As an example, here are three versions of the paradiddle as given to me my tutor.

RLRR LRLL
LRRL RLLR
RRLR LLRL

But the physical moves are the same for all three, in the same order. All that changes is how you fit those into a 4:4 pattern. If you don't have a click track giving you that four four pattern (especially the emphasised first beat) your mind will almost instanatly just play all three patterns identically.

Personally I have a routine of about 15-20 mins of rudiments and simple exercises to a click, and I try and make myself work through them every time I sit at the kit.

I would resist the temptation to try and work all the rudiments straight away. Better to choose a handful (the ones recommended above would seem an obvious choice), then do those as often as you can until you really nail them. Keep the exercises to a relatively short period of time, say about 20 mins, because then you will actually do them regularly rather than just jumping straight to the fun bit of playing songs (which is what we all want to do!). To get good you need to repeat stuff over and over again till the muscle memory is really locked in, that can be a bit boring, so be honest about your own attention span and design your exercises so you will actually do them. Better to do a short routine four times a week than a monster session once a month (or more likely never). There is no shortcut for muscle memory, it only comes with lots of repetition.

As for songs. To start with find something where you can fairly comfortably play the basic groove, but that has a few flourishes and fills that will take a bit of practise but you know is within your abbility. There's no point just jumping straight into a song where you can't do anything, you'll just get demoralised and drop it, plus its not much fun and you are supposed to enjoy this!.

Keep hammering that song till you've learnt the lot. Try and make yourself get every fill and hit, but work on them one at a time rather than trying to do everything at once. The objective is to enjoy playing the song, feel like you are doing well, but steadily pushing yourself as well.

Once you nail one song, look for something similar but with different fills and flourishes and go again. But keep doing the original song regularly as well. I now have about ten that I regularly go through, about half of which I feel I've comfortably nailed. Switching back and forth keeps them fresh, and adjusting to the changing tempos is a challenge in itself. Plus, its lots of fun to play stuff that you have nailed!

At first you'll probably find you are going around lots of basic groove songs, AC/DC, ZZ Top, that sort of thing. Once you are comfortable with a few of these and finding them less of a challenge, turn it about. Find a song where the fills are now pretty much within your grasp, but the groove is a bit more complex or switches around and needs the practise.

Over time, choose songs that each have one element that is a challenge for you. Not impossible, but a challenge, ideally building on stuff you've already nailed. A good test is whether you can play all the fills and grooves of the song on thier own at a slow tempo, but struggle to play them together at speed in the song. If you can, you just need to practise, but if you can't play them at all you might be biting off more than you can chew. Also, stick to songs that you already know really well because you like them and listen to them a lot. That way you don't have to learn the song, just how to play it. All the songs I've learnt are ones that I've liked for 20 odd years and already knew like the back of my hand before I ever took up drumming!

Something to consider, once you think you've nailed a song, do a drum cover video and post it up here. This has a number of advantages.

1. We love to watch drumming and you will likely get very positive feedback! This is great for your morale.
2. The drum chatters can point out anything that you're doing wrong, or might want to change.
3. Just recording your playing, knowing that others will watch it (especially other drummers), will focus your mind and make you want to play better. I find it a great motivator to really nail that last little bit which I want to perfect before I let anyone else see it.

One last thing, try and grab a lesson or two from a decent tutor. Even if you can only manage one lesson every few months and have to travel a bit for it, having a professional cast an eye over what you are doing can be invaluable. A good tutor, who understands that you can only do lessons occationally, should be able to watch you play and pick out the most important things for you to work on, and in particular any bad habits that are going to hold you back. I'd say this is an excellent investment, even if you can only do it once. But do ask about and find a good tutor as obviously you don't want to waste it!

[trickg]

4-way independence.

Remember, this guy is a beginner - what exactly does that mean to someone who might not be aware of various bits of drummer lingo?

My thought is this: You are off to a good start working on your rudiments, but now you just need to get to work. I got the Tommy Igoe "Groove Essentials" DVD - I didn't use it a tremendous amount, but what I did use was great. It has grooves that go from the easist of easy to some seriously difficult Afro-Cuban and world grooves.

One of my chief "complaints" with "Groove Essentials," if it can really be called a complaint, is that very seldom have I heard one of those grooves in a song I'm trying to cover - at least not exactly, even if they are somewhat close. Variation is the spice of everything though, and even Tommy says here and there on the DVD that there are no absolutes - "Groove Essentials" is meant as a foundation so that you can be creative within the context of what you've learned.

Now, having said all of that, a lot of the drumming I've learned I have done through simple emulation of songs I'm covering - mainly with the Praise bands I've played for. Learning how to listen and pick apart what's going on in a drum part on a song is a great way to learn. For starters, the guy on the recording is a pro - why reinvent their wheel? Those drum parts in those songs have structure, dynamics, groove, fill ideas....if you can pick that apart by listening and working to try to emulate/immitate it behind your own kit, and if you can take ideas away from those parts, you are on your way to developing your own vocabulary of things you'll impart into your own drumming.

Slinglander mentioned AC/DC - I couldn't agree more on that. Phil Rudd did it right - he laid out basic but really nice feeling, groovy grooves, he put hits in the important places, he filled when needed without being over the top or too flashy...all in all just some really nice, tasty, straight ahead rock drumming. Dig into Phil and learn from what he did because what he did worked - period. It's the power of 2 & 4 backbeat drumming at its best.

Push yourself, but keep it in perspective. For instance, trying to cover "Tom Sawyer" at this stage probably is just going to frustrate you, but covering "Back in Black" is doable. I think that half of being a successful musician is understanding your abilities and limitations.

Good luck with it!

[Skillful Kai]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV4DiAyExN0"]‪Hoobastank - The Reason‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

Best song to play to! Good solid groove and a slow tempo. Enjoy!

[Razzinnator]

Wow, there's a lot of responses in here ^^.

I read through all of them and I want to thank you a lot once more for all the great feedback, since it's really helping me a lot!
After only about a week of practicing my rudiments I'm already feeling a nice improvement in my drumming altogether, and I'm going to keep on working like this for a long long time.
Also, thanks for the song suggestions, I'll try to learn a few of them Back in Black I've already managed to play a while ago, but I'll look into more AC/DC and the song just above this post.
Not sure if I'll upload any covers for now, since I have a really really bad (kinda no-name) drum set, that sounds bad, looks bad, doesn't have everything I need and so on.. Can't wait to replace it..

[late8]

There's been mention of BPM (beats per minute) and I'm going to assume you have a metronome? If not, make it your next purchase. Try to keep track of your progress by comparing where your BPM falls apart during practice and set that as your benchmark to break through. There nothing more frustrating for you or your bandmates to have the meter all over the map and a metronome will help build and lock in your "internal" metronome. Before long, you'll be able to "feel" the meter in your head as you play. Good luck and welcome to DrumChat.

[Razzinnator]

That's on my list, I'll try to get one asap. Until then I'll use an online metronome, and it can still help me get some practice until I can get the real deal.
Thanks .

[livewire80]

This thread is what this awesome site is all about! The care and time taken to help out in these responses is why this forum rocks so hard!! All that's missing is a response from Frank (RIP) I am sure he would of had a few paragraphs of ideas as well

[TPO]

Not sure if I'll upload any covers for now, since I have a really really bad (kinda no-name) drum set, that sounds bad, looks bad, doesn't have everything I need and so on.. Can't wait to replace it..

Don't worry too much about the quality of your kit. Firstly, if you are using an average amateur camera it's not going to make a lot of odds anyway. Most cheap mikes will instantly max out with the power of the drums, so any refinement and subtlty will be lost!

Besides, most drummers I've spoken to can hear the quality of the drummer no matter the kit, so you'll still get good feedback even if the drums aren't as good as you'd like.

That's on my list, I'll try to get one asap. Until then I'll use an online metronome, and it can still help me get some practice until I can get the real deal.
Thanks .

If you have a smartphone you might be able to get a metronome app. That's what I use on my iPhone, playing over bud earphones inside my ear defenders. Only cost me a 79p!

[Razzinnator]

Thanks for that great tip about the Metronome app, I got one for my phone and it's exactly what I wanted!

Also, if I practice a bit more, I might upload a cover, just for some feedback on my general skills, to see if I'm progressing at least a bit.