#61

Thanks for sharing your insights … this helps me a lot

#62

Oh shoot! I’ve been focusing on open-handed playing lately and it has really blew me away. Also, I’m a HUGE hip-hop guy. I went through this huge DIlla phase a few years ago. It was thing. My friends got pretty tired of me talking about Dilla haha.

I’ve got an open handed beat exercise that I was just going to send to a friend of mine (also a big hip-hop enthusiast). I’ll post it up here shortly.

If we’re talking hip-hop, especially getting into the more jazz influenced style, I can’t stress enough the importance of using a metronome on the OFF beat. while practicing. This is also really important for jazz. If you haven’t tried this before just acclimate to playing with a metronome on beats 2 and 4. But ultimately the real deal is parking that metronome on off 8th notes. Buy a 100 pack of neck braces on Amazon or something because once you lock in this groove you’ll be breakin necks everywhere you go. I can get a sound example of this too.

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#63

I’ll have to try that out. I really enjoy practicing to Madlib, Dilla and DOOM beat tapes. Given there are loops the tempo is consistent but the pulse is so much more alive than a metronome.

My hair brained idea for my left foot is to be able to play root notes on organ/Taurus style foot pedals while drumming. My original main instrument is bass so I already know the music theory but the coordination idk about. Mostly just curious if I can do it.

#64

Dude that’d be crazy. You should totally go for it.

#65

I recommend this book pretty highly to help free your limbs up. It’s basically a handful of one page rhythmic melodies to be played with one or two limbs while the other limbs are doing various ostinatos.

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#66

While we’re on the topic: what are some favorite drum books? Whether exercises or more philosophical like the prior mentioned Effortless Mastery. I’m currently reading Writings on Music by Steve Reich and even though it isn’t strictly drumming focused, it does get into his percussion pieces and his ideas about rhythm in general are really interesting.

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#67

i’ve had this one since it came out! it’s great. impossible to “finish.”

as for other books i’d highly recommend drum wisdom by bob moses, it’s long out of print but can be found easily in free .pdf form.

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#68

i found this video from Steve Albini on tuning toms to be really interesting (and useful)

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#69

switch it up, and put your hi-hat on the right
play like a goofy-foot drummer, it you can… :slightly_smiling_face:

at santa cruz, george marsh had us take the spring off the kick drum pedal,
and see if we could still play it right?!
check it out :slightly_smiling_face:

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#70

that’s really interesting… what’s the intended lesson of that? kinda the same as playing rudiments on pillows, no rebound? or i guess less rebound on kick…

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#71

yea, he was trying to make us aware that the kick drum pedal, like tai chi, has a pull-back, and then a forward motion… :slightly_smiling_face:
(also, see if you could pick it up on re-bound off the drum head, without the spring, and still keep it going (keep it in control))

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#72

here’s a very simple workout exercise i tend to use for strength and control for your left foot.

set your metronome (always use a metronome) to 16ths.

play quarter notes for 8 or 16 bars
switch to 8ths
switch to 16ths
then back down to 8ths
back to quarters

play two and four on your snare and play 8ths on your ride.

move back and forth through those at a tempo you feel most comfortable with.

pay very close attention to the separation between the bass drum strikes and keep them even.
this becomes really critical at blast beat tempos.

another simple exercise that will quickly help you with left foot control is playing triplets on the bass drum and quarter notes on your hats.
this naturally forces you to play with an alternating leading foot.
right foot lead and then left foot lead due to the nature of triplets.

pedal setup is also very important with double pedals.
so spend the time tweeking them.
:stuck_out_tongue:
let me know if you have any more questions and i will be glad to help ya!

–
@abalone
heh!
neat.

but my pedals don’t even have springs to begin with. :stuck_out_tongue:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJpZbrypVei/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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#73

thought this might be of use in the left foot discussion…

for some reason, this little comping “cel” has been a thorn in my side since my teens. there’s just something about the coordination that i can’t do outside of medium speeds. last night i decided enough is enough.

this uses both unison and non-unison motion in the feet. apologies if this looks like a mess - i can export it without the ride if anyone’s interested. i usually loop these many many times before moving on.

next step is probably halving the amount of left feet. moving it the same way but around beats 2 and 4.

Screen Shot 2021-01-18 at 15.06.20
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#74

Moses book is great, but definitely for more advanced concepts- inner ear, points. One of my favorites.

#76

Syncopation, Alan Dawson, master studies, all of the Blackley books.

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