A Novice Guide to Drumming
Published June 10, 2008
With its visceral and immediately immersive gameplay, drumming in games has added a thundering new element to music games like Rock Band™ and its upcoming appearance in Guitar Hero 4. Much like guitar, drumming is immediately understandable while nearly impossible to truly master. Our Novice Guide to Drumming then will address many of the basic techniques critical to laying the foundation for drumming excellence.
One, two, three, four!
A Light Touch
How you hold and manipulate the drumsticks goes a long way towards determining your success. Try placing your hands roughly a third of the way up the sticks, holding them with a relaxed grip between your forefinger and thumb.
The important point here is to remove any tension in your hands, wrists, and even your arms. Strike the drum pads with quick, easy movements of the wrist, allowing the stick to naturally bounce off the pad rather than thumping it by moving your arms up and down.
Don't Hammer
Successful drumming requires consistent accuracy, and you can achieve just that by avoiding the temptation to hammer on the drum pads. The drum kit's pads are quite sensitive, so you only need to tap them lightly for the note to register. What's more, a lighter touch helps ensure your hands, and consequently the drumsticks, are in proper position after each note.
Pedal Technique
Even drumming in videogames can be an exhausting affair, and downright painful if you're not careful. This is especially true of your calf muscles as you ply the kick pedal sometimes hundreds of times in a single song.
That's you in the middle.
Avoid the muscle burn by keeping your foot pressed down on the kick pedal between notes. Keeping the pedal down also promotes accuracy as you no longer trigger it accidentally courtesy of an aching, exhausted leg hovering over the pedal.
Take the time also to experiment with how close you sit to the drum kit. You want your kick-pedal leg to rest so that your knee bends at a natural ninety degrees. Likewise, be mindful of your posture. Don't crouch, but rather sit upright so that you maintain a consistent distance at all times from the drum pads.
Square to the Kit
The bulk of your drumming will be spent on the left-handed side of the drum kit as you bang out beats on the snare and left-tom, but avoid swiveling your chair or stool to that side. If you do, you'll force yourself to twist unnaturally when you need to reach over to the right-hand side of the drum kit. Rather, sit square to the kit at all times. It may feel a bit strange at first, but unless you're a master drummer it should keep you balanced while you play.
Practice Mode
Muscle memory lies at the very heart of learning any complicated drum beat. Whether it's a classic paradiddle or a song-specific drum solo, quality time spent in practice mode is a must. Don't just load up the song and have at it though. Rather, try the following:
- Slow it down: Slow the song down twenty or thirty percent whenever you first begin learning a new section or beat. When you play full speed in Career Mode or with friends, you want to simply react, but during practice, it's time to ingrain the beat into your muscle memory. Only kick the speed up a notch when you're hitting well over ninety percent of the notes. Then, repeat the process until you're up to 100% speed and feeling confident.
- Isolate it: Different sections of the song can offer radically different beats. Rather than confuse the issue and your mind by playing them all at once, isolate them in practice and learn them separately. This is especially useful during intros and finales, typically the most difficult drum sections.
- One at a time: When taking on particularly complicated beats, isolate the section even further by concentrating on only one note type at a time. For example, start first with the foot-pedal until it becomes second nature. Then, add in a single note type (such as the snare) and practice the two together until they flow seamlessly. Repeat the process until the entire beat is fleshed out.
Get creative with your drum fills.
Ideally, when you're finished in practice, you should approach each beat as a whole rather than trying to interpret each individual note on the fly.
Regroup
There are few, if any, respites for the drummer in a song. You provide the backbone for the band from start to finish. Therefore, if you fall behind or surge ahead of the rhythm even by just half a beat, you'll miss every one of the constantly streaming notes. Instead of speeding up or slowing down to fall back in with the rhythm though, simply stop playing for a moment and restart on a section five or six notes down the line.
Never so Fast
Hard rocking, complicated drum beats can quickly elevate your tension level and, strange as it may seem, force you to drum even faster than what is required. If you find yourself consistently missing notes, chances are you're half a beat ahead of the rhythm and not behind the track. Try backing off just a little bit, even taking a break for a few notes to regain your composure.
Independent Limbs
There may be no more important skill in drumming than learning to use both hands and one leg independently. Specifically, learning to separate your leg's movement from that of your hands becomes absolutely crucial as you'll encounter any number of combinations that include drum pad notes preceded, followed, or interrupted by a lone foot-pedal note.
It can prove difficult to practice this method during songs as you concentrate more on the overall beat and not just learning to tap the foot-pedal independently. However, try sitting down at the drum kit on your own while practicing the following patterns:
- Foot-pedal plus drum pad followed by foot-pedal
- Foot-pedal followed by foot-pedal plus drum pad
- Foot-pedal followed by drum pad followed by foot-pedal followed by drum pad, etc.
The rest of the band depends on your beat.
Two-Handed Roll
It's all too common to find players attempting eighth and sixteenth note drum rolls with just a single hand. It's possible to hit enough of the notes during these rolls to avoid failing a song, sure, but if you want to excel rather than survive, practice alternating your hands (left, right, left, right) during these drum rolls.
This technique proves all the more important once you begin tackling the more difficult songs. If you practice it early and often in your drum career, you'll feel comfortable with the technique when you need it most.
Middle Pads, Both Hands
It's only natural that you'll play the far right-hand pad with your right hand and the far left-hand pad with your left, but when it comes to the middle pads, spend time tapping out notes with either hand on either pad.
This is particularly true of your off hand. If you're right-handed for example, you need to feel comfortable tapping out beats with your left hand on the middle pads, so be sure to spend some time using your "off" hand on the two middle pads whenever it makes sense. Like everything else, you want to feel comfortable using a wide range of techniques, and just like the two-handed roll, this technique is particularly necessary during the later, more difficult songs.
The preceding tips should get you started drumming the beats of your favorite songs with accuracy and confidence. Good luck and rock on!
