The Genius Of Ringo Starr

I just wanted to be a drummer John Paul George and Ringo played as a unit, give me Ringo, what would Ringo do with my four left drums? That's all Ringo Starr needed and the look on our faces was like Ringo Starr, a drummer, a rock. and roll Pioneer, a singer, songwriter and bandleader and the man responsible for more people than ever picking up drumsticks, ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles Foreign Parts, unique sound and approach to drumming and understanding of how drums work . drums can contribute to every song or everything that makes Ringo so great. Your phenomenon will never happen again.

Join us as we dive into the

genius

of Ringo Starr. Nobody plays the drums like Ringo and he really has one of the most unique voices on the drums, but there are a couple of reasons and probably the most significant is that when I was born I was left-handed, but my grandmother thought that witches took over me and made me right with my right, so I have a right-handed kit that I operate with my left, believe me, that is not as easy as it seems. If you're right-handed, you can see Ringo do this when he's simply tapping out hi-hat beats or when playing accents and even when playing drum beats.

Simplicity is another key part of Ringo's style, he's far from the most technical drummer out there. , but that's not what the Beatles' music needed. The most timeless drummers are the simplest. Listen to what Ringo plays. song in my life, most drummers would play just a simple 8th-note hi-hat rhythm throughout the song, but Ringo chooses to play just one note on the hi-hat each measure. The Simplicity and less is more approach is what makes this drum part so brilliant, this is or take a song Like Love Me Do where Ringo only uses the kick snare and hi-hat foot throughout the song when it comes the way Ringo plays the kit that is known for its signature wiper hi-hat plane Greg Bissonnette, who has been playing double drums with Ringo since 2003 in Ringo and the Round Heads and Ringo's all-star band, confirms this in one of his drummio lessons when I see him play when we play next to each other, his swing and the way he acts. he dances while he plays, he throws his shoulder towards it, sometimes we get into this swinging motion when we play this approach and the way he moves behind the drums ultimately has an effect on the swing he has and adds to his rhythms, but Not only that, Ringo was also a big fan of jazz drummers like Cosy Cole, apparently Ringa didn't really like listening to Focus drum records, but Cozy Cole's 1958 version of the song Topsy Part 2 was one that he really liked it.

We're going to go a lot deeper into Ringo's signature rhythms and fills later in this video, but when it comes to Ringo's playing style, we can't overlook his phrasing on the drums, specifically the way he chose to end his fills. of drums that most drummers would normally do. They end their drum beats with a loud bang on the next downbeat, but Ringo often skips it right now. Let me show you some examples and a great one is from the song Let It Be when the guitar solo goes into the third chorus. Let It. Also in the song Hey Jude, where verse 2 transitions into the first chorus, and in the song Don't Let Me Down, where Ringo ends each phrase with another open hi-hat where most drummers would choose to play a symbol. of shock, oh stranger, ultimately.

Ringo knows how to perform the song from the drums, although many of his parts sound outlandish, his parts are musical and make sense for each song. It's been said a million times, but Ringo was the perfect drummer for The Beatles. Ringo was the king of feeling. he's, you know, he's a song drummer, he actually used his kit in a very different way, a very creative way, oh, he's got the pocket, he's got the swing, he's got the feel and that's what it's all about, making the songs. songs come to life abroad, I think we. We can all agree that Ringo's creativity and imagination help him create some drum parts on Pretty Outside the Box that you wouldn't normally hear in pop and rock songs from the '60s and '70s.

The first one that comes to mind mind is Ticket to Ride for help with the album I love that clip where you can literally see Ringo standing in the background performing that part and to lay it all out on the table about Ticket to Ride. This Groove doesn't play metronomically perfect but that's part of its beauty, some may argue that beats three and four are played as quarter note triplets and others will argue that only Tom's last beat is played in a partial triplet. For the sake of this video, we have decided to now only write beat four with a triplet figure, regardless of how it is interpreted.

I want to write it down, listen to Rango, try to match where he puts those flames and that's the best way to learn how to play it. Now, speaking of quarter note triplets, this is a subdivision that Ringo uses quite often, like in the song Daytripper and her. He loves you, so while I was preparing for this video I was scanning all the Beatles transcriptions that we have within drumming and of course one of the best ones is the song Come Together and I was actually able to upload this to dramio slow down. the parts loop into different sections and it was a great way to really internalize these classic parts that Ringo played, so we have almost 200 Beatles transcriptions transcribed without note inside dramio and if you want to see them you can click the link that appears below. this video will take you to drumeo.com and you can get started with a free seven day trial and with that let's go ahead and take a look at the legendary overseas drum parts that haven't been told about this beat.

It is absolutely legendary and anyone can instantly recognize it if you look at photos of the beautiful spoon. I would tune them low and put tablecloths on them to remove any rings. Let's listen to the isolated drum track one more time and then I'll play it on the kit. I know Ringo once explained in an interview that he played this part counterclockwise around the kit starting on the floor. The reason we came to this is because you say I'm left-handed. Look, I can't go. I have to put this hand down, so everyone thought, "He's a

genius

, but all he's doing is trying to play backwards, you know, that's how it goes, so it comes this way, but if you listen to the track in isolation, you can hear the falling tone, so I'll let you debate this in the comments and you can decide for yourself on the verse of the song.

Ringo simply plays eighth notes on the floor tom with quarter notes on the kick drum, which is a pretty interesting choice, probably for most drummers. I would have simply played an 8th-note hi-hat rhythm through this section with a BackBeat on the snare, but Ringo approached this part differently. Ringo's big contribution was that he used his tomtoms as part of the songwriting if you're a drummer and you can do this and make people dance you're badass Another great example of Ringo using his Toms in a creative way is in the bridge of the song, something out of Abbey Road Foreign Parts is this eight-bar drum solo at the end of Abbey Road.

It's far from the typical rock drum solo, but it's Ringo's classic 8th notes on the kick drum, broken 16th note fills on the toms and a build up in the last measure and of course we can't forget the way Ringo navigated for some of the more progressive themes. and complicated Beatles music like The Bridge of Happiness is a Warm Gun that jumps between 9 8 and 10 8. and the bridge and here comes the sun that goes between five four and four four or you could think of this as a quote from eleven eight four four and seven eight foreigner we don't do it often someone says what we just left seen and there it's all anarchy and nervous singing Act naturally Ringo, we've already covered some of Ringo's most famous drum parts, but here let's delve deeper into some more of Ringo's signature drum beats that he played with the Beatles because that's probably why you're here so let's start by looking at the song Tomorrow Never Knows from the album revolve on this track.

Ringo plays the same beat throughout the song and there are also some tambourine reverse symbol effects and tape loops that you are also hearing. This is the rhythm that Ringo plays on the kit, just remember to play the walk symbol with the shoulder of the stick. Next is Ringo's beat in the song. I feel good, come on Paul McCartney has defined this style of drumming as what did I say? He once said in an interview that there was a style of drumming in what I said, which is a kind of Latin r b that Ray Charles' drummer, Milt Turner, played. on the original record and we loved it, one of the big deciding factors of Ringo as the band's drummer was that he could really play it so well.

Next up is one that Ringo plays near the end of When I'm 64, where he switches to using drumsticks after using brushes earlier, he also adds some triplets on the walk symbol which sound great now. I know I said we were going to dive into some Beatles beats here, but I thought we should probably include one outside of the Beatles. catalog because Ringo has recorded many other incredible drum parts. The following is from the song Back Off Boogaloo that Ringo released as a single in 1972. This song begins with a snare pattern and here is a clip of Ringo describing how he came to The reason we have that drum pattern is because he He said, you know, give it that soda base that I like and I can't do that, and this, you know, I can't do them both together, so I just cheated.

Well two, three, four, and that's how it was done on the snare because he couldn't just play that kick drum in a foreign language, some of you might not know this, but Ringo was actually influenced by country artists like Hank Williams and Hank Snow. That's probably why he had such a good shuffle and swing sound early on in Ringo's words. I'm not good at technical things. I'm a basic unconventional drummer with fun fills because I'm really left handed playing a right handed kit I can't play drums so I can come the other way okay so my fills are never very rolling it's all juicy it's like no I don't know right This may be true; it didn't stop him from coming up with drum fills that were musically original and ultimately memorable.

If you look online, there are countless forums of people discussing Ringo's drumming and his drum fills while he was researching this video. I came across an article that said he had tried it. -to the formula that he would resort again and again to two sixteenth notes in the One Beat followed by a sixteenth note rest and then a group of four or five sixteenth notes. Yes, this might generalize things, but I think there is a lot of truth in this. and it shows that Ringo played to his strong points within the drumia, we have almost 200 Beatles transcriptions no for no and while I was preparing for this video by reviewing them all, these fillers appeared again and again.

Foreigners also used a lot of triplets when he came to the drum fields he played with the Beatles just listen to songs like oh darling and a day in the life they had to count them all here are two great examples of Ringo's triplet filling the first is from the second chorus of your Blues and the second is from the introduction of tell me why a song that we haven't talked about yet, which is one of Ringo Starr's basic drum recordings, is the song Rain, the only thing I've always said is that rain, I've never played like that since.

I don't think because they were busy, his first meeting with the American press generated a joke-filled, humorous interview with a gross of $17 million last year. I don't think there's a drummer out there that's had the range. and the impact that Ringo had because of Ringo, a lot of you watching this video are playing drums today and that's Legacy, but I think a lot of times you focus so much on who's the fastest or who's the most technical and we forget Whose is more. The important thing and that is the music. Ringo truly understands the role of a drummer and what it means to support and contribute to music.

One thing I love about Ringo is that he never stayed in one place musically. The diversity of those songs is so great. that's the great thing with the Beatles, yeah, uh, we weren't just stuck in the rock mode, the heavy metal mode, this mode, that mode, you knew we could play anything, he really progressed as the band progressed and he really you can hear that in his drum parts, especially when you listen to earlier tracks like Twist and Shout, please compare them to what Ringo played on later tracks like Helter Skelter and I want Yoshi to be so heavy that many considered some of the early tracks of heavy metal.

Ringo also continues to keep the double drumming tradition alive with his all-star band, where he currently plays with Greg Bissonnet, but Ringo has also played double drums with other drummers over the years, but when it comes to Ringo's Legacy, I think that these musicians will do it.Explain it better, no one had ever done that on a record before Ringo was king of the field. I mean, when he plays behind you, you see a lot of these bands when they play, they look around watching the drama like you know. he's going to speed up he's going to slow down you don't have to look at what we're doing oh he's just there he's you know it's a song The drummer the music is so organic he hears the vocals and says he never wanted to fill and hinder the vocals .

He always plays a fill only when it's necessary and works for the song. He really had a knack for creating really interesting musical parts. He bought the drums from behind and made it. people listen to them, he heard the song once and he knows exactly what to play. Don't think when I'm involved it's too much work and then I just rolled down the windows, it's not that you need to do this, I mean it's what I need, I need to play to peace and love, peace and love, okay, that's a Summary of Ringo Starr's genius. I know Ringo's career has been covered extensively through documentaries, interviews, books, and even the more recent Get Back series, but I hope this video gives you some new perspectives on Ringo's drumming and I hope it inspires you to check it out. some more of Ringo's interpretation now in the comments.

I'd love to know anything you've learned from listening to Ringo Starr. Also, don't forget that we have the entire Beatles discography transcribed for you within drumeo so you can learn everything. of Ringo's drum parts not for note and lastly, Ringo, if you are watching this, you are always welcome here at drumeo and I would love to have you in the studio so you can really show us how these parts are played and with that thank you. Thank you very much for watching and see you in the next video, greetings.