Thursday, October 20, 2011
Buying a Drum Set
Drums Buying Guide A guide to help you purchase a drumset. What is the best drumset for you? Do you need help buying a drumset? This drumset buyers guide will help! How much to spend on a Drum Set? What you pay for a drumset depends on the quality of the drumset but for a beginner, anywhere between $200 and $500. Much of this will depend on whether it's used drumset and/or a brand name drumset. What drums are the best, or "What are the best drumsets?" After you have the facts (above) it's really just a matter of individual preference. Like buying a car, some swear by Ford and others swear by Chevrolet. (We're actually fond of Toyotas ;). Do I need a 5 piece drumset or will less pieces do? A beginner can learn efficiently on a ride (or hi-hat), a bass drum, and a snare drum. Young students will appreciate a full 5 piece drumkit however as it makes it more fun to play drumfills down the drums. My son is asking for a double bass pedal. What is this? Simply put, it's two feet on the bass drum instead of one. A double bass pedal allows you to play both feet on the kick drum at the same time, thus creating some powerful and exciting (not to mention "bombastic") rhythms. Double bass drumming is common in rock and heavy metal drumming but can be used in any style (except polkas ;). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Choosing the Right Equipment
| I recently did a tour with an Indian tabla player, Sandip Burman. Before the tour he came to my house to show me some of the rhythms he would be using in his music. When we first played together, he had trouble hearing himself and I also had trouble hearing him. It wasn’t because I was hitting the drums too hard or playing too loud, it was because the cymbals and drums I was using weren't the right match to the sound of his instrument. |
I have been asked many times by young drummers what I think of a certain ride cymbal or snare drum, head, stick etc. . . I can let them know what I think of the equipment relative to my musical needs, but what is more relevant is, what are their musical needs?
Choosing ride cymbals is very important for drummers, especially for playing jazz, because most of the rhythms being played are centered on the ride cymbal. I’ve noticed that many young drummers who ask me about certain ride cymbals are usually not taking into consideration the music they will be playing and the other musicians they will be playing with. They talk about the cymbal itself and ideas like “cutting through,” “projection” and other qualities that are the opposite of what they need if they are playing jazz with acoustic instrumentalists. Also many drummers now practice with ear plugs or headphones, which is good to save their hearing, but I have noticed
that it can have a tendency to make them play louder and be less sensitive to the actual sound they are getting from the instrument. The sound you get from the cymbals and drums is very important and it mainly depends on your touch, but choosing the right equipment is the first step in giving yourself the best instrument to work with.
If you are playing with an acoustic bass it’s important to have ride cymbals that are not too loud and will blend well with the sound of the bass. I think this is why many jazz drummers prefer darker cymbal sounds, they blend with the warm sound of the upright bass. I’ve told many young drummers who are just starting to play jazz to find ride cymbals that will sound nice in the room and will be pleasant for the other musicians to hear. This was surprising to them because it’s very different from the information they get via media advertising that makes drumming look like a violent act that requires loud cymbals, powerful drums, and sticks and heads that won’t break.
The idea of “cutting through” may have some relevance for big band playing, but more than volume, the clarity of the beat is what is important. For big band you may want a brighter ride than if you are playing small group, but again it depends on the band and what kind of venues you will be playing. If you are in a college big band and are mainly rehearsing in a room at school, you need to take that reality into consideration when
choosing a cymbal. I’ve found the only times when cymbals that “cut through” are needed is when playing with a rock group that uses highly distorted guitars that cover every frequency. In those cases I’ve needed a ride cymbal that has clarity and some volume. Other than that, volume is not an issue and neither is “projection.” Cymbals tend to be loud to begin with, especially if they are not played with a mature touch. I find it harder to find a cymbal that has a nice sound and doesn’t get too loud as I play it.
I generally use relatively dark rides when playing acoustic jazz and rides that are a bit brighter when playing electric jazz. When I play with tablas or all acoustic instrumentalist in a small room or club, I found that the lightest flat rides gave me the airy sound needed to blend with and not overpower the other players.
I have also found that when playing small group, acoustic jazz, crash cymbals are unnecessary. If you need a crash sound, you can get it from a good ride cymbal. I like to add crash cymbals when playing with a big band to accentuate some of the band figures. I have found some splash sounds and specialty sounds to be useful in small group playing, but this also depends on the overall musical concept whether or not these sounds are appropriate. If you have at least a few different ride cymbals and additional cymbals sounds (crashes, splashes, etc. . ), you can make choices depending on the musical situations you find yourself in.
I find it useful to have different size bass drums with my drum sets. If I use a 22” bass drum this gives me a very different feel and sound than an 18” or 20” bass drum. I tend to use a smaller bass drum with jazz playing and how it is set up is very important. I use a full head on the front of the drum with no hole cut in it and no pillow or “stuffing” in the drum. The only muffling I use is a felt strip on the batter (beater side) head and
sometimes a felt strip on the front head. This way I can play with more dynamics and the drum actually has a nice tone and not just a flat thud. This is important to take note of for the younger drummers who may have never played a bass drum that has no pillow in it. That sound and feel was designed for “studio” playing and, in my opinion, doesn’t work for acoustic jazz. The double headed bass drum, played with a nice touch (having the beater come off the head as opposed to “burying” the beater) will blend well with an acoustic bass and give the band a warm bottom-end sound and feel. If you need to mic the bass drum, place the mic on the batter head (as if micing a tom) and you’ll get a great sound.
Tuning the toms and choosing heads are also important when playing acoustic jazz. I tune my toms relatively high and like to use a coated heads which gives me a warmer and slightly softer sound than clear heads. I tend to stay away from heads with built in muffling, they were developed for the dead “studio” sound.
Sticks choices are also very important for the jazz novice. With much of today's music taking place at extremely loud volumes, heavy sticks have become popular. By simply using a lighter stick, you can get a more musical sound out of your instrument. I use a stick that is basically a 5A made of hickory, which is a medium stick weight. I carry lighter sticks with me and if I’m playing in a small room with all acoustic musicians, I may use a light stick made of maple, which will help me play with a softer sound. Having a selection of brushes, mallets and other types of “specialty sticks” is also
important in order to have the ability to adjust your sound and volume to the
musicians and the room.
This is just scratching the surface of what to look for in choosing equipment for playing jazz, but I hope it gives you some new ideas to work with. For a more detailed overview of my own personal set-up, go to the Drum Talk page on my website,www.vitalinformation.com.
http://drumsdatabase.com/choosingequipment.htm
Steve Korn on Elastic Phrasing in Jazz
Practice This! is an educational project of Earshot Jazz with sponsorship from The Seattle Drum School. Each month in Earshot Jazz a new lesson by a different local jazz artist will appear for students to learn from and for non-musician readers to gain insight into the craft of improvising.
Elastic phrasing essentially tries to move beyond the strict subdivisions of metronomic time into a zone of more fluid, flexible time phrasing. Generally speaking, musicians tend to play phrases that break down into whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets and sixteenth notes. However, in jazz and other forms of improvised music, we have the freedom to get away from this rhythmic system of subdivision, just as jazz musicians might stretch or extend basic harmonic concepts.
One example of elastic phrasing is feeling where the band is expressing the pulse, or beat or time, while playing a different feel on top of it. Most musicians tend to group notes and phrases in even-number groups, four or eight or six notes to a phrase. With this in mind, a way to develop rhythmic freedom is to practice groups of fives or sevens, which most musicians find to be uncomfortable. With a little practice, odd subdivisions can become quite natural and will lead to a new world of rhythmic possibilities.
Another example is playing phrases that speed up or slow down over the pulse of the tune. One way I practice this on the drum set is to play a samba beat. I begin by keeping my feet moving at a set, steady tempo while speeding up and slowing down my hands on the snare drum. If you play a horn, for example, you can try tapping your foot along with a metronome set to one tempo and improvising to another tempo. There are many ways to go about practicing this, and you can hear a few of them at www.earshot.org.
One of the challenges of elastic phrasing lies in simply keeping your place in the tune. Anyone can improvise by stretching the time and playing in different tempos, but it’s important to keep your place in the tune and maintain a sense of the pulse with the rest of the band.
Some of this might seem odd or not directly applicable to a musical situation. However, in the bigger scheme of things, by being able to feel two different sets of pulse in my body at the same time, without necessarily needing them to line up together like a polyrhythm, I feel that I have developed a greater sense of rhythmic freedom.
Earshot Jazz is a Seattle based nonprofit music, arts and service organization formed in 1984 to support jazz and increase awareness in the community. Earshot Jazz publishes a monthly newsletter, presents creative music and educational programs, assists jazz artists, increases listenership, complements existing services and programs, and networks with the national and international jazz community.
Trading Fours: Jazz Drumming
By Paul Wertico
The concept of trading fours is a time-honored tradition in jazz. Through the years, though, I've encountered a number of students who have experienced a creative roadblock when attempting them. This occurs mostly to those drummers who are inexperienced in playing jazz. Since a lot of them have played rock and pop most of their lives, the idea of trading fours seems a bit foreign. Also, because of playing rock and pop, some of them have become used to playing fills and phrases that begin and/or end on the "1", so the idea of "breaking up the time" can be somewhat challenging.
As a result, when these drummers trade fours, they often string together a bunch of familar licks or patterns in a very "unjazz-like" way. However, after first learning some of the more traditional and musical approaches to exchanging fours - such as playing things that open up a musical dialogue with whomever they're exchanging fours, or playing something that relates to the melody - their playing begins to "open up". But there are even more adventurous approaches that can really extend a drummer's ability to play creative fours.
When you listen to some jazz drumming masters, such as Roy Haynes, you might notice how their fours seem to break up time in very interesting - and sometimes almost baffling - ways. To the novice jazz listener, it almost seems that these drummers are playing in a random or free-form manner. However, when you analyze these "out" sounding fours, it becomes clear that the masters know exactly what they're doing. They just break up the time in very creative and sometimes asymmetrical ways. It's with this in mind that I have compiled a few techniques in order to look at fours in a different light.
If you imagine four bars of 4/4 as being comprised of sixteen beats, with some creative thinking you can break up these sixteen beats into various blocks or counter-time signatures. Take a look at example 1A. Here, instead of four bars of 4/4 time, we have two bars of 3/4 and two bars of 5/4. The result is still sixteen beats, but subdivided in a mixed-meter type of way. This changes the flow of the time and also allows you to know where you are without guessing.
Examples 2, 3, and 4 are more ways to "break up" the time using mixed meters.
When practicing these techniques, play four bars of straight 4/4 time, then play an example, then play four bars of straight 4/4 time again, and so on. Start out simply, playing just bass drum, hi-hat, and ride cymbal. Make sure you count the meter changes and subdivide accurately. Use a metronome. Eventually, you'll get used to hearing and feeling the meter changes. Try to make everything sound natural, not stiff or contrived. This technique is also more effective when the time signature changes are clear to the listener. Later, as you get comfortable, you can get more and more adventurous by adding various drums and different rhythms, as well as accents and dynamics, within the time signature changes.
I would also suggest that you practice giving a clear and solid downbeat on the "1" of the first 4/4 bar after your exercise. This will help later when you try playing these kinds of fours with a band. By giving a clear and solid downbeat on the "1" after your four, you will help solidify the band's re-entry. (These types of fours are supposed to inspire your bandmates, not trip them up or completely lose them!)
As a variation to this approach, I also recommend that you try to play these exercises not as mixed meter groupings, but as odd phrases over straight 4/4. Feel and hear 4/4 time and play the odd groupings as superimpositions over four bars of four. See example 1B. It's identical to example 1A, except that here you think of four bars of 4/4 time grouped in three's and five's. This will strengthen your ability to play odd phrases in 4/4 time.
Now, let's look at breaking up those sixteen beats in the four bars of 4/4 using 8th-note subdivisions. (This results in a total of thirty-two sub-beats.)
Look at examples 5, 6, and 7. Here we add some 3/8 and 5/8 bars to the rhythmic equation. In doing this, we can displace the 3/4 and 5/4 bars by an 8th note. This makes a normal rhythmic figure seem displaced, as in example 5. The effect can really make things sound "backed-up". Again, when you try out all these examples, be sure to count, subdivide accurately, and use a metronome.
Next let's look at this technique utilized in a polyrhythmic way that also implies mixed meters. Look at examples 8 and 9. In these examples, a similar approach is used, but in a "six over four" manner. Here, the total number of "poly-beats" (made up of quarter note triplets) in four 4/4 bars is twenty four. You can group the quarter-note triplets any way you want to, as long as they they total twenty-four.
You can expand this approach ad infinitum, applying this concept to trading 8ths and 16ths, playing fours in various time signatures, using five quarter notes over four, and so on. These techniques should help not only expand your concept of fours, but of time in general. It should also help you to know where you are in the flow of time during those times when you decide to "go for it".
However, when you try these techniques out, make sure to use musical discretion. Always be sure that the other musicians you're playing with are capable of following what you're doing and that the fours you play fit the type of music you're playing. (I don't think that playing these type of fours while doing a traditional Dixieland gig would fit all that well!)
Also, there's nothing worse than when a drummer throws off the entire band, or when everyone on the dance floor stops and looks up at the bandstand in bewilderment and disgust. Remember, even if what you play is in time, if the end result is a train wreck, then there'll no doubt be some bad feelings. And you certainly don't want to jeopardize the music (and maybe even your gig) in the pursuit of some hip-sounding four that everyone else needs a pocket calculator to figure out.
However, if your fellow bandmates are talented and open to new ideas, then this type of approach might not only open up your playing, but maybe their playing (and composing) as well. Have fun, and don't hurt yourself!
Setting up your practice space
A good place to practice is essential if you're serious about your musical instrument. Some of the things that make a practice space work-friendly come to mind: a tuner, a music stand, enough space for your instrument and you, and adequate seating. Others are less obvious, but no less important: power outlets, temperature control, the ability to eliminate distractions, and a recording device to mark your progress.
Bear in mind that no practice space can ever be perfect—and that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for creating your music practice room. Still there are some suggestions that can help just about everyone make a space as workable as possible to practice a musical instrument.
Every personal music practice space should ideally have at least a tuner, the music you are working on, a music stand, pencils and paper, a notebook or journal, a well-maintained instrument, an instrument stand, a metronome, and you in an alert state of mind.
Metronomes can be analog or digital and can even include a tuner. Paper can be plain or printed with music staves. A journal for marking your goals and progress can be as simple as a spiral notebook or as elaborate as a digital recorder. Depending on your instrument, your seating may be a piano bench or a comfortable, armless chair—you may even stand for much of your practice.
However, consider these issues for every object you add to your practice space: will this item add to my comfort, encourage me to practice, and help eliminate distractions?
Ideally, once you set up your practice space, you can leave it set up. Having your instrument and practice aids out and ready can help lead you to play more often. However, if your circumstances do not allow for a permanent practice space, keep your necessary items in a case or container that can easily be moved to where you practice—and can easily hold just about everything you need. The next best thing to a practice space can sometimes be a "portable practice kit."
Other considerations:
Can you control the temperature in your practice space? You don't want it so hot you become drowsy or so cold you're uncomfortable.
You can never have too many electrical outlets. Include a power strip or two just in case.
Adding a tuner for your instrument is smart, important, and very helpful for effective practice.
Your music stand is important, too. Many musicians choose Manhasset stands for their sturdy construction and ease of use.
What distractions can you eliminate from your music practice space? For example, practice time is a good time to turn off your cell phone and put it in another room where it can charge. If other people live with you, make sure they know how important your practice is to you and how much you appreciate them honoring your practice time by not interrupting it.
Is external noise an issue? Do you need to avoid disturbing others? Soundproofing and vibration abatement options are available. Brass players have the choice of using a mute or a Yamaha Silent Brass instrument accessory. Yamaha also makes an assortment of silent string instruments that includes guitar, violin, cello and upright bass. There are also a number of mutes for orchestral string instruments.
Can you keep your practice space clean and uncluttered? Clutter is a major distraction and well worth eliminating whenever you can. Does your chair promote good posture and proper positioning of your instrument? Few things can contribute to effective practice as much as proper seating.
How is your lighting? Room light should be enough that reading your music is never a problem. If you are playing a keyboard, a piano light will soon repay its expense by reducing eyestrain.
Here is a tip about one of the most useful accessories you can have in your practice space: an easy-to-use digital recorder. With a recorder you will get absolutely honest feedback about your playing. You will instantly hear wrong notes, skewed rhythms, less-than-optimal phrasing and dynamics, and other digressions from what you intended to play.
You can quickly put that feedback to use to improve your musical performance.
A good eraser and a small container for your pencils are also handy. Handiness is crucial. Don't waste time searching for items in your practice space that can better be spent on practice. Keep necessary items near at hand in the same place every time.
This is your music practice space. Use it for motivation to learn your music and to carve out more time to spend on your instrument.
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Practicing with a metronome
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Note Value Exercise
This free video lesson teaches Jared Falk's note value exercise. Basically, this exercise is designed to help you practice quarter notes, eighth notes, eighth note triplets, sixteenth notes, sixteenth note triplets, and 32nd notes all at the same time!
You start by playing a quarter note pulse on a metronome of about 50-70 BPM. Then syncronize your feet with the quarter note click using the hi-hats pedal and the bass drum pedal. Next, begin alternating quarter notes with your hands on the snare drum. After that, it's just a matter of changing your hands to the different note values in the exercise. Now, this may be easier said that done, but that's the challenging part.
Watch the video lesson on this page to see Jared demonstrate this exercise on the drum set. You'll get to see exactly how he plays each of the note values, and get a feel for the transitions between each part of the exercise. Then, once you understand how it all works, you can take it to your own kit!
Practice this exercise in both directions. First, master quarter notes up to 32nd notes, and then practice starting with the 32nd notes, and coming down to the quarter notes. This will give you an added challenge, to take your drumming even further.
Learn How To Count Rests in Drum Notation
This video drum lesson will teach you how to read and interpret rests within all the sub-divisions we've covered in the drum theory videos. This way, you will be able to tell the difference between rests within quarter notes, eighth notes, eighth note triplets, sixteenth notes, sixteenth note triplets, and thirty-second notes.
Quarter Note Rests
This first example shows a measure of quarter notes. However, the fourth note looks a little different than all the others. This is because this note is actually a "rest". It is to be counted, in order to fill the measure of 4/4 time, but is not to be played on the drum set. So, while you would count this measure one, two, three, four - you would only strike the snare drum on the one, two, and three counts.
Eighth Note Rests
Example two has a measure of of eighth notes. As with the quarter notes, you may notice something a little different here. The three and four counts have an eithth note rest instead of an eighth note. As with the quarter note rest, these are to be counted, but not played.
Sixteenth Note Rests
The third example features a measure of sixteenth notes with the "a of two", "and of three", and "four" counts all featuring sixteenth note rests. The concept is the same as with the previous rests, except these sixteenth note rests only take up the space of a sixteenth note.
Eighth Note Triplet Rests
Rests also apply to triplets. Here in exercise four, you can see a measure of eighth note tripletswith rests on the "trip of two", "let of three", and "four" counts. You might also note that these rests look identical to the eighth note rests. The only difference is the little number "3" that is above each triplet group.
Sixteenth Note Triplet Rests
The sixteenth note triplet rests work in exactly the same way. Here you can see a measure of regular sixteenth note triplets, with some sixteenth note triplet rests. As with the eighth note and eighth note triplet rests being the same symbol, sixteenth notes and sixteenth note triplet rests also appear the same.
Thirty-Second Note Rests
Exercise six has a measure of thirty-second notes with rests added on the second "a" of both the two and four counts. Now, these could have been written by using sixteenth notes on the "a" counts, but this example is just written up to show you how thirty-second note rests appear within the context of drum sheet music.
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