Drums

Drums

By Trex

Introduction

I'm just a random person who plays the drums. I recommend you to play my quiz, if you already haven't, after watching this lesson. So drums are, yes, noisy instruments but awesome, stress-relieving, and let-me-take-my-anger-out-on-the-poor-set kind of instruments. You feel nice when you are able to play them, make grooves and play your favourite songs along with the track. People in your house may say, "Why are you making this useless noise?" but, trust me, I have experienced the ditto same thing. Only you know what you are playing and you know, the other person will not understand but remember, whatever you are playing, only a true drummer will find it beautiful.

What Are Drums?

*Google Copy-Paste Alert*

A percussion instrument sounded by being struck with sticks or the hands, typically cylindrical, barrel-shaped, or bowl-shaped, with a taut membrane over one or both ends are Drums. They are western instruments.

The Parts Of A Set

There are eight parts of a BASIC drum kit. The main parts are:

- Snare

- Kick/Base Drum

- Hi-Hat

- Crash

- Ride

- Tom-1 / High Tom

- Tom-2 / Middle Tom

- Tom-3 / Floor Tom

Drummers play the drums while sitting on a seat. This is not a regular chair, it is called a 'Drum Throne'.

Note: There is no most important or least important part. Every part is needed to play the drums.

Percussion Parts VS Cymbals

There are 2 MAIN parts of a set :

- Cymbals - They are the shiny golden parts. The main 3 cymbals are Crash, Ride and Hihat (Refer to image on the previous slide.)

- Basic Parts - They are the percussion parts of the set. These parts include the toms, the snare drum and the base drum.

WITHOUT SYMBALS

ONLY CYMBALS

Drum Schools & Grades

There are 2 drum schools. Not schools like studying schools, but grade schools. These 2 types of schools are :

- Trinity School and

- Rockschool

All drum schools have 8 grades and after completing all these grades, you oficially become a pro drummer.

pearldrummersforum has said that If you're just starting out, rockschool would probably be better. But if you're looking for more advanced and challenging books go with the guildhall.

I feel that the trinity one would make you a better and more 'rounded' drummer in the end.

Sight Reading And Notations

Sight reading is the MOST important part for a drummer. One drummer HAS to learn sight reading before giving a drum exam. Here is a pic of all the BASIC notes of drumming.

So for example, the bottom-most black-circle note would be kick, while the top-most would be high tom. But if the note is a cross in any way, it indicates a cymbal is played. The cross with a cut is crash.

Extra

2 Important things :

- A bar is one small segment of music that holds a number of beats.

- The number of beats per bar is the time signature. If it is 4/4 (Four

By Four) then there are 4 beats per bar.

Notes and rests

Now, what are rests and what are notes?

They are mostly the same -

Notes are how and when to play and for how many beats while rest is to stop for a definate number of beats.

(Refer to last slide to see the rests and notes)

Paradiddles & Sticking

Sticking is a way to gain control of your drumming and is basically practice. The process in which we assign certain notes to either our left or right hand is sticking. On the other hand, Paradiddles are  drumming rudiment that combines single strokes with precisely placed double strokes. In drum terminology, “para” means "single stroke" and “diddle” means "double stroke," and thus the term describes a sticking pattern where a single stroke is followed by a double stroke

Paradiddle-diddle & Pad

The single paradiddle-diddle is a powerful rudiment that is based heavily on the single paradiddle. 

What if you do not have a drum set, but want to practice. One way is using a practice pad. On this, you can practice sticking.

For example, try this :-

R L R R - L R L L (REPEAT 5 TIMIES) go slow then increse your speed.

R R L R - L L R L (REPEAT 5 TIMIES) go slow then increse your speed.

These really make your drumming better. If you want to become a good drummer, practice EVERYDAY for at least 1/2 hour.

R is when you strike the pad with your right hand, and left is when you stike your stick with the left hand.

Grooves

First of all. What are grooves?

A Groove is a repeated phrase that sets and maintains the rhythm and tempo of the piece.

Grooves and fills are the main components of the music played on a drum kit, and together with basic techniques or rudiments make up the curriculum for learning to play the drum kit.

They are beats that make up a song.

A basic groove mainly uses the Hi-Hat, the Snare drum, the Bass drum and the crash cymbal (not that the other are not used. They are, but in little advances and intermidiate grooves. We will read bout that in the following slides.)

Basic Grooves

Look at this grove in this image. As you can see, it has one bar with a time signature of 4 beats per bar. Here the first note is the hi-hat plus the bass drum. The second is an only hi-hat. The third, Snare drum plus hi-hat. The fourth one says only the hi-hat is to be played and then this groove repeast itself once more.

This is a basic groove. If you played this, you are a beginner drummer. Well done!

Fills

A drum fill is a featured drum part that comes during transition points within a piece of music. Often, drum fills consist of the playing of all the toms and the snare drum. I recommend you to watch some basic tutorials on youtube, too.

Groove with fills

Let us look at a groove contaning a fill in it.

Here, the first bar consists of a basic groove of snare, hi-hat and bass drum. But the next bar has a fill. This fill will be played like:

4 Snares followed by 4 high toms followed by 4 middle toms, lastly followed by 4 floor toms.

'%' kind of sign in basic grooves

This sign basically means 'repeat'. Take this picture as an example.

Here there is a basic groove in the first bar and then 2 bars with this % like sign. This sign means, repeat what you played in the last bar. So the groove will be the same for the first 3 bars and then there will be a basic snare and floor tom fill.

Multiple Choice

DID YOU ENJOY AND UNDERSTAND DRUMMING BASICS?

• Yes. It was awesome

• Yes. It was nice

• Yes. It was OK

• No. It was bad

• No. Worst presentation ever