And using cymbals more musically is something I need to work on.
I also need some different cymbals…
A good thing to practice as a musician and drummer, and something I don’t do enough, is to play super, super slow. Like painfully slow. Get zen with it. I have some fundamental flaws in my playing and am working on triplet grooves. So I’m at 55 bpm and am taking Benny Grebs letter ideas and cycling through them on different limbs at this speed with a super quiet metronome where I can only hear the downbeat. There is an overwhelming number of combinations and ideas you can play like this. After the basic triplet subdivisions, I’m going to take different paradiddle patterns between two limbs, with different patterns or letters between the other two. Then eventually sparse grooves and patterns on each limb.
Playing super slow is the key to really learning tricky parts, solidifying your timing, and also gaining speed. Start super slow, slowly increase tempo. Listen to yourself, record yourself as much as possible. Be so solid that when playing music you can listen to everyone else and get lost in it.
Also another thing that I’ve never practiced until late is counting out loud. Counting or vocalizing quarter notes, off beats, whatever floats your boat. This is a super effective practice method that I should have started a long time ago.
I usually write these things from the top of my head while in the midst of inspiration or realization, so excuse the randomness and poor sentence structure.
Please do share your practice methods and insights with me as well, fellow followers!?
Triplet based grooves, shuffle patterns for right hand, subdivisions for fills and better groove between LH and foot
Left foot keeping fast eighths
Drum and bass stuff for project
Learn fives by guthrie for challenge
In some funk tunes, the groove is swung, but not completely divisible into even triplets, like most things that are swung. So the eighth notes sit somewhere between being straight and swung a little. To my analytical mind, this frustrates the fucking hell out of me when playing. Listening to this sort of groove is the funkiest shit, and I understand what’s going on, but playing it is something I need to work on. What’s cool is how you can change the emphases of different accents or fills to be straighter or more swung, to give some nasty flavor to the groove. Cissy Strut does this. I was getting super frustrated trying to make the groove sound good until I realized this was happening. Also some lettuce song I just heard does it…Breakout I think.
I think to pull this shit off, you need first to perfect your triplet and eight subdivisions, then sit back and get dirty with it. Or maybe get stonered…..
I’ve been doing this jazz trio thing at a local bar. It is such a rare and unique opportunity in a lot of ways. We’ve been building our crowd and repertoire over the past month, leading up to last night, which had a huge turn out and a bunch of badass musicians showing up to sit in. I’ve been practicing my ass off for 6+ hours a day to try and sound like I know what I’m doing. 5 minutes before I go out the door, my sister’s boxer attacks the shit out of my dog. I couldn’t unclamp his jaws from my dog’s neck, and when I did he chomped the shit out of my right index finger. I thought I lost the last segment of it, but it just got super crushed, teeth going through my nail and pretty deep all around my finger, I think the tendon or bone got fucked, and the last segment is numbish from nerve damage or something. It swelled to where its straight, but i taped it and tried to bend it a little to keep the stick in my hand. To say the least I was fucking frustrated with my playing during the gig, but people loved it and tipped over $100 (compared to $0 so far). Murphy’s law I guess. Got another gig tonight. Maybe i’ll play one handed.
I wrote up a whole post about tuning drums, and it deleted itself somehow. but to sum it up, I found that if you don’t have a tension watch or some sort of tension measuring tuning device, you can get a more precise and even tension by using two drum keys at once. Tune the lugs straight across from eachother at the same time, turning as close to the same time and distance as possible, simultaneously.
I need to start recording my gigs, playing, and practice. I haven’t heard myself play for a while and…its just so bad. Not really, but there are a lot of things I need to pay more attention to musically, especially the volume, tones, and length of sounds from different cymbals and drums.
Also when playing music, I need to just let go and get into it, forgetting about mistakes and musical concepts. I need to stop thinking so much.
I’m nearing the end of Marco Minnemann’s ‘maximum minnemann’ book, and I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s definitely challenging as FUCK. The thing is that the main focus is on odd groupings and odd time, and a lot of the concepts don’t have a direct application to most music. They do however challenge the fuck out of your coordination and perception of time and feels, and this is probably the greatest aspect of the book. If you can subdivide beats into all these odd groupings within odd groupings on top of oddly grouped ostinatos, then playing in common time signatures with common subdivisions will be a breeze. The frustration that I’m feeling however is that I’m spending so much time trying to internalize 7tuplets, 11s and all this odd shit, that I’m not spending any time on like chops, hand technique or groove. I feel like some aspects of my playing may suffer from putting so much into this book. But then again, once I finish and get into whatever’s next, I’m sure I’ll be happy about spending the effort.
oh my god.
