12 Tips I Wish I Knew as a Beginner Drummer

Hindsight is 20 20. So here are my top 12

tips

I would give my

beginner

self if I could go back in time. Welcome to the unglamorous

drummer

. I believe that no matter who you are, you can master the drums you can conquer. the instrument when you are armed with the right knowledge. I think this video will help you do just that. We're going in reverse order here, reducing from number 12 to number one, which is my favorite tip, but of course, these are all of them. important number 12 no one cares how fast you can play stop trying to impress people with your skills that's what i

wish

i could go back in time and just punch myself in the face and remind me of that because i think we all understand who we are I don't know We are supposed to impress people with our skills, but deep down we have the desire to earn people's respect and impress people, we want people to admire us as players and sometimes it is very difficult to feel that we are doing that when we're not showing our technical ability, that's difficult, but once you realize it and you get to the point where you know that playing musically, supporting the song and making the band sound better, that's what's going to happen. impress people, then it's easier to gravitate toward that.

It took me too long to get there, so you should know don't try to impress people with your skills in that number 11 sense, don't touch the fillers with your hands, touch them with your ear, with your mind, with your head, do you? what do I mean? Well, that means that when it comes to an energetic part of the song where a fill is necessary, don't just exploit whatever your hands have practiced like, oh, I've been working on those double paradiddles, I'm going to play a double pair. Filling out here is generally a terrible idea, especially if you're playing rock in jazz.

Yes, you can play, you know, a rudimentary type fill, but the fill still has to be interesting and supportive, and support that moment of the song, so you want to think. through what sounds best there, what feels best there, what will really support the music, make the band sound better overall, that's not a flurry of notes that might be a particularly impactful kind of feeling in the that we're hitting a beat and then we're creating it. Interesting, I have other videos on this topic so I don't want to leave you there, but be sure to hit the description at the end of this video and check out other playlists and videos here on the channel that give you a lot more. in depth than these quick

tips

number ten so this is important this is the most technical and ergonomic you will save your knee in a four hour concert if you sit further back from kick number one and if you bounce the mallet instead of burying Me It took a long time to realize this, but when I was in college I did a lot of very long concerts late at night and you get into that territory where you're so tired late at night that you don't exactly use good posture. , you're getting tired and I was making that worse by sitting too close, so I was pushing really hard on the kick to bury the kicker and a lot of that impact, a lot of that energy was going up to my knee, my right knee would actually hurt a lot.

After the concert. Knee pain in my 20s is not a good thing and knee pain for anyone is not a good thing, so if you want to save your knees, do it by sitting a little further away. Stand back and give yourself some space and then by bouncing the beater instead of burying it, that energy comes out of the beater instead of up the leg. I know it's a controversial topic, not everyone agrees with me that I made a video about it, not too. A long time ago, that of course is in the description, but I highly recommend that you experiment with that to give your leg a little more room, but a little further back, even if it doesn't feel totally comfortable yet because it will and then practice bouncing the beater.

It will save your knee number nine: Being able to play slow and relaxed singles is extremely underrated and essential for relaxed drumming with good rhythm, in fact the key to not rushing from a technical point of view, believe it or not, to unravel it a little bit real quick. If you can play relaxed singles, that means your sticks move in an arc motion, a very relaxed fluid motion from drum to drum, which means you're less likely to rush when you play stiff, you know you're constantly trying to reach a When playing the next drum, you are afraid that you won't be there in time, but when you play with a relaxed movement that you learn by practicing relaxed singles, your sticks travel in this smooth arc and go nowhere. they're gone too soon, you're just relaxed and you're letting the laws of physics do their job and the clubs move naturally which helps you stay relaxed up here which is good and literally helps keep you from rushing at number eight.

It's interesting and I know not all of you like jazz, but this actually relates to all genres. Swing in jazz actually comes from the quarter note. Keep the timing stable and consistent and everything else will follow, so what that means is you could just play just quarter notes to the right, I've got two and four and that's all you need to make that swing, no. you need the da da da, that's just an added bonus, a steady quarter note is what drives if those If those quarter notes aren't time-stable and they're not dynamically stable, if the listener can't feel that steady quarter note in the one that can relax, then it literally doesn't sway, no matter what kind of other complexity When you play, you have to have that consistency and that goes for many other types of rhythms as well, and some of the later points here today will touch on that number seven.

Record yourself in any way possible, listen to it and critique this. It was actually something I did at a pretty young age. I had an electric drum set when I started playing drums in high school. It was very easy, you know, to press the record button or I think I had something else that I would record my drums on. It was easy to do because I could do it through my headphones and then I would go back and listen and of course I

knew

my playing was sloppy and not great, but in doing it, as I progressed and started taking lessons, then I would record . my acoustic equipment later and I would practice playing songs and I would record myself playing songs even if it was just through a phone or an iPod or something like that and I would listen to it so I could hear well, what sounds good and what doesn't sound good.

Well, that's how you grow, that's how you criticize yourself, especially if you don't have the luxury of one-on-one lessons, that's how you can get good feedback on your playing, by listening to yourself and knowing what's going on. Number six, this is a huge one when you relax and make an effort to listen to the music around you, listen to what's around you, you'll be a lot less tense and nervous at a concert. I remember realizing this while I was studying performance at university, I majored in percussion performance and so I had to play recital all the time playing mallet instruments which were very challenging for me and I remember playing a vibraphone solo, it was a piece super melodious, really cool, but it was a little scary because there were a lot of notes, but I realized that I was playing Lo in the concert hall one afternoon practicing that if I just sat down and listened to it and enjoyed the music and stopped worrying about whether I was going to make a mistake or not and I stopped worrying about the people who were going to be sitting outside. here, watching and listening to myself, I discovered that when I could immerse myself in the sound of everything that was happening and simply enjoy the music, I was more relaxed, less tense and less nervous.

I quickly realized that the same applied to playing drums at gigs where if I just relaxed and listened to the music around me and enjoyed listening to the other good musicians around me making music, it made me worry less about myself. I wasn't that worried about how I sounded or how I felt. The audience was more interested in how everything feels. It's a big turning point. Everyone needs to reach that turning point as a

drummer

. When you get there, your playing will become much more mature. I want you to get there now. That's why I'm sharing this with you.

I want you to get to that point where you can immerse yourself in the music that you're playing in real time so that you can enjoy it and you can get to sound cheesy but become one with the music around you. that you're playing because a good drummer comes in and plays what fits the song and supports the band, not to mention we want to get rid of the jitters, so it's always good, the number five more energy doesn't equal more speed or more notes and vice versa, so we can go in some directions getting deeper here, but basically what I mean is that you can build energy in a song without speeding up and without playing more notes.

I

wish

I had realized this in high school. Why I was playing a lot of quick fills in my hands because I felt like if we were going to generate the energy I needed to play a quick fill, but sometimes things that are more spaced out and impactful can actually generate more energy because they feel bigger. Think about a song where maybe there's a heavier beat in the verse and then the beat opens up or eases up in the chorus. There are so many rock songs, pop songs where exactly that happens or maybe the drums even fail a little in the chorus, but the chorus feels so big and energetic, it's not because the drums hit more notes, it's not even It's not necessarily because the drums play louder, it's because there's more space for the drums and that way other instruments can shine a little more, but because of that more space, things feel bigger and more open if you're playing a group. from a tight, busy hi-hat and then you open up into a simple walk rhythm, literally everything feels bigger and more energetic and that's when we play fewer notes.

It's kind of counterintuitive, but think about it, let that marinate in your mind because that will help you make that correlation number four, number four, this makes me laugh, uh, spend some time figuring out how to tune your drums instead of just loading them up with moon gel or duct tape or O-rings and filling them with pillows and dirty clothes, uh, I know this is one of those controversial points that will offend someone because sometimes there's a time and a place to put soft things like the moon on your drums sometimes you want a dead sound you want to fill the kick drum with stuff but that shouldn't be the default you should always have a reason for whatever damping you're using i know i've said that before if you've seen my videos you know about I like to make my drums sound good without any muting and then put the mute on it as an effect and then change the sound, so spend some time figuring out how to tune your drums. don't be afraid to mess them up if you're a

beginner

and you've just bought a drum set and maybe you think you've figured out how to make them sound good, don't be afraid to take literally how to loosen the heads completely and then retune them, you'll always be able to find the way back to where they were and you will always stumble upon something new and interesting so don't store your drums the same way don't settle for mediocre tuning keep experimenting figure it out number three so this is one of those core beliefs that I have and What you've heard me share before if you've seen a lot of my videos is that you spend as much time sitting and listening to music through headphones as you do physically practicing your drums, it's one thing to work on the technical side of drumming by working on your hand technique. in your coordination and everything, but another is to learn music and Sometimes, the most productive way to become a better musician on the drums is not to play more music or practice more songs.

Sometimes it's just sitting down and listening to more songs so you can absorb what you're hearing and absorb the drum parts. on the record, do it before playing a song, so sit back and listen to music through headphones. It's a great way to pick up things you've never heard before and really notice things in the recordings that you may have heard. I didn't just listen in the car, so doing so will help you increase your maturity. I didn't start doing that while I was in college. I sometimes listened to music through headphones in high school, but I was busy playing and playing. and you weren't paying attention to what was actually happening on the record, so make sure you don't miss those details, really take the time to appreciate the thought that went into creating a great recording number two, a great snare sound .

It has less to do with the snare itself and more to do with how you hit it and yes, tuning comes into play too, but the number one factor in the sound of a snare is how you hit it, how hard you hit it, where you hit it. , that's even more. important than tuning, for example, if you are looking for a low, powerful sound and are playing hitsrim shot, you may not actually get as loud a sound as you want because the crunch of the rim shot drowns out the drum, compared to if you just hit it in the center and let the stick bounce, you get a loud sound or maybe you have it tuned a little higher and you want a strong rock and roll crunch, but if you don't hit it hard enough or you're not playing rim shots, that's not going to happen, you have to hit it hard and you have to hit the rim shots to get that sound, no matter how you tune it, you won't get the crack unless you play the rim shot maybe you have an annoying ringing coming from your snare that could be because you're not actually hitting it in the center If you move just an inch or two away from the center of your drum, there will be a lot of ringing and it won't be a focused sound most of the time, you don't want that kind of strident sound, so pay attention to how you hit the drum.

I wish I had known this a long time ago so I could focus on To get a solid backbeat, it is very important to have a good solid backbeat and playing rock, whether soft or loud, needs to be consistent and therefore make sure you To get that good snare sound, pay attention to how well you play number one. This is my absolute favorite point. It became the biggest turning point in my playing and it didn't happen until I was near the end of my college career, so I wish I could go back and teach myself all of this.

When I was in high school, a great feeling is not just the result of a great moment, it is equally the result of good dynamics, a good mix of kits and good consistency, good dynamic consistency, so this is an important point , so I want to break it down a little bit. more and there is also a video I made a while ago going deeper into this, you can see it in the description. The feeling is something that always escaped me. People talked about pocket, feel, rhythm and everything, and I could never understand it. Why doesn't playing in my band sound as good or feel as good as the feeling of a professional drummer and eventually I gradually learned these things and someone explained to me that good dynamics is actually maybe even more important than good moment if you are playing? a consistent backbeat, the beat feels good even if the timing isn't perfect, listen to an old zeppelin record and you'll hear that they didn't record with a click, but it all felt great because Bonham mixed his gear well, the cymbals were the The right volume next to the drums you could hear everything well and he was, you know, playing these hard rhythms that were consistent and it still didn't matter that the timing wasn't perfect, the band was together and there was a group that is what that he believes. feeling good dynamics creates a feeling that you have to understand that yes, we want to play in good weather, but good dynamics are equally, if not more, important.

This is the other side of what I was saying about the swing a minute ago, how those stable. the quarter notes drive swing well, a constant rhythm and a constant recoil, you know, a powerful recoil that is a consistent dynamic within the framework of the group, that is what drives a rock feeling, if suddenly there is a weak rhythm or It's inconsistent beats, the listener can't relax, and it feels like your game is out of time, even if it's not. Check out a video I made a while ago about this, where I compare my game to a computer game and we talk about which one feels better and what the real differences are between them.

It's nice. interesting, I think you'll enjoy it, so it's in the description below. Hello everyone, thank you very much for watching. If you're new to the channel, be sure to subscribe before you go and also download the free e-guide in the description. My gift to you is going to help you a lot. I believe that no matter who you are, you can master the drums when you have the right knowledge and the free guide below will help you even further in conquering this instrument. Thank you. By watching, know that you can do this. Stay unglamorous everyone.