music

[aunkster]

Ok please try to stick with me here .As you know its very hard ,maybe even impossible to find sheet music so I am going to try listening to a cd and playing along with that ,The trouble is I have no idea how you all do this..Dont laugh,I can take a piece of sheet music (not tabliture ) read it and play it after a little practicing,
I bought a boombox with a cd player with a remote so now I need to know how you guys listen to a song and learn the music to the song..
I have to admit my ear is not the greatest ,I can just read music really well.

Any ideas would help because I want to learn to play along with music but I cant find any sheet music .
thanks

[pastor_bob]

Aunkster, you might want to try the Turn It Up and Lay It Down CD's. It gives you the music without the drum track. That way you can play at your level, and as you progress, you can still use the CD's, with a more sophisticated level of playing on your part. I got volume 3 a few days ago, and I just ordered volume 1 & 2 from DrumBum this morning (they're on sale at DrumBum). I'm sure this thread will get a lot of help. I just thought I'd throw this out too.

[Ethel_The_Frog]

Get headphones. Turn bass up on full. Sorted.
Your ear will need some training first before it picks up and is able to distinguish everything, so give it some time and learn what you can hear.

[aunkster]

but how do you know what to play?
Like I said ,if i can read it on sheet music I can play it how do i know what to play by listening ,If I get a cd without the drum track do I just make up my own?

Sorry if this sounds stupid ,im just a sheet music person.

[pastor_bob]

Aunkster, I can't really speak much to the hearing and playing what someone else is doing on a CD, because I struggle with that too. What I do is try to count out what I heard to make sense of it, then try to recreate the sounds.

As to the CD's without the drum track, if it's a basic rock song, the the basic rock beat will apply. You can play basic: 8th notes on the hi-hat, with the kick on 1 & 3, and snare on 2 & 4. Or, you can get as creative as you want in the 4/4 time signature. Of course, different CD's will give you different tempos, and time signatures, so you can play rock grooves, country grooves, funk grooves, Latin grooves, etc.

[Ringo]

PB's right
If I'm trying to learn a song by ear then i listen to teh song over and over until I can play the basic parts verbatim. If there is something like a difficult bridge, or fill, solo, (i.e.-most rush songs :D) I will create my own version of that.
Example:
Okay for the song RUIN by Lamb of God there is the self proclaimed "ruin fill" that most metal drummers know of. It starts with a high hat/bass drum hit and then goes into 5 snare hits and a tom hit (repeat 2x) ending with a splash hit. The next part is where I mess with it.
Your supposed to do doubles over triples on the toms and bass. I reverse it, doing triplets on the toms and doubles on the bass. And instead of ending on the bells of two ride cymbals, I just go on my floor tom and lower tom and end with a big crash.
hope this helped
-Ringo

[fiacovaz]

but how do you know what to play?
Like I said ,if i can read it on sheet music I can play it how do i know what to play by listening ,If I get a cd without the drum track do I just make up my own?

Sorry if this sounds stupid ,im just a sheet music person.

I'm a great believer in that if I can read sheet music then, I can also write sheet music..... and I do both very well. The hang up you are having is that you feel the need to play what someone else has already written. That's all well and good but, being able to practice playing along to a CD gives you two learning opportunities: 1. That you learn, by rote, what is on the track...that will train your ear to really LISTEN, as Ethel suggests. 2. You can also take what you already know how to play and fit it in with your practice to create your own "Groove." One other thing I will tell you about sheet music...there are instances where what is written has to be played, e.g rudimental drum solos, concert and orchestral music. On the other hand, with a big band or combo, sheet music is okay to use but it is merely a guide to help you get through the song. You can play what you feel as long as it fits within the context of the music. I do this all the time when playing off sheet music with my big band. BTW, there is no such thing as a Stupid question in this Forum. In fact, you posed an excellent question. Pastor Bob offered you a terrific solution to help you get started...Turn It Up and Lay It Down. I've used volumes 1 & 2 for a couple of years to simply create my own thing. Try them...I think you'll amaze yourself with what you already know...and that's JUST PLAY IT!!

[gonefishin]

Some real good advice so far and I agree , listen and feel the music first . Then try playing some of the basic parts and fill in what you feel yourself . Good luck and just have fun with it, and dont get too hung up on not knowing exactly how it was written .

[1DrumBum]

As far as learning off of CD's, the best suggestion I can give is to sit down and listen to the snare and bass drums and find out what patterns they are doing throughout the song. Also, use your metronome to find the speed of the song, that way you can work out any tricky parts on your own while not playing with the song, that way you don't get frustrated because you are trying to play catch up on those parts all the time.

Get some good headphones and really listen. It can be a little tough at first, but over a little time you will train your ear to hear what you want. Boost the bass up to hear the kick drum and floor toms. Drop the bass out and turn up the highs to hear the hihats and other effects like splashes and chimes. Drop the highs and lows and crank up the mids to hear the toms, but that will be when your learning the fills. You should be able to play the song all the way through in time with the cd before you start working on the fills.

I can read sheet music a little, but it soooo much faster for me to learn directly off of the cd. I've been learning that way for many years. I play multiple instruments and one of the first things my music teachers in college taught me was how to seperate the instruments in a song while I was listening to it. It's just a little trick of mentally blocking out what you don't want to hear. Example: I know what the guitar sounds like in the song, but I want to learn the drum part. I listen to the guitar for a moment to distinguish the tone and feel of it, then I mentally block out anything in the song that sounds like that because that is not what I want to learn.

Give it some time and don't get discouraged, and most importantly, have fun learning it!

[aunkster]

thanks a million,you guys really helped..I appreciate everything..Im going to order some of those cd's from drumbum

[Aaron]

also what you could try is to get some isolation headphones, vic firth has some for 50 bucks, and just listen to a song you know well a couple of times and try to discern some of the more complex things so you can do them.

[Gretsch219]

I found this site about a year ago and printed a few sheets off of it. I think some are not too acurrate, I don't know. But you could just give it a try! Funny part is that I only know a few bands from there!!!

Here's the link (they should all be in PDF): http://rdeneau.free.fr/en/index.php3

Gretsch219

[pastor_bob]

Thanks Gretsch!

[1DrJoy]

I found that listening to live albums helped me to start picking out the drum parts for some of my fav songs. If you listen to "Delicate Sound of Thunder" for example you can hear exactly what Nick Mason plays on each song and you get a really good difference between each drum. This helps to get your ear started on listening. If you start with just simple songs (another band to start with is AC/DC) then before you know it you'll be branching out to others. The Black album by Metallica is also a good one to start with.... Hope this helps.

[Ethel_The_Frog]

The Black album by Metallica is also a good one to start with.... Hope this helps.

YES. I agree with this quote 25068923000% !
That album is so easy considering that it's a metal album. And really good fun to learn.

[silverdragonsound]

I found that listening to live albums helped me to start picking out the drum parts for some of my fav songs. If you listen to "Delicate Sound of Thunder" for example you can hear exactly what Nick Mason plays on each song and you get a really good difference between each drum. This helps to get your ear started on listening. If you start with just simple songs (another band to start with is AC/DC) then before you know it you'll be branching out to others. The Black album by Metallica is also a good one to start with.... Hope this helps.

Funny this was what my teacher told me would be the things I would be playing first. He told me the easiest song to play with might be Back in Black by ACDC. I have yet to try it but I am going to give it a whirl in two weeks when I am done with school and have some time.

[quikstang2]

Try finding songs that have written music. Try and figure the song out by ear and only refer to the sheet music when you need help. I'm the complete opposite of you and I'm doing this in reverse to try and learn to read music.