Percussion can be fun, cool and very impressive. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. It will take months or years of practice and dedication to master. Like any other instrument, the drums are hard to learn, as there is more to the drums than just hitting something with a stick. If you get disappointed or discouraged because you can't play them very well, don't give up! With time, practice, and this article, you can learn to play the drums like a pro!
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1Learn all the different types of drums and percussive instruments. Obviously, you will be looking at drums, but there are different kinds of drums that make up a set. Keep in mind that there are different brands, sizes, sticks used, and different tunings among other slighter modifications that will affect the overall sound of each instrument. Here is a list of drums that you will find in almost every drum set you see:
- Bass Drum - The big one on the ground.It's not called "bass drum" for nothing; this drum usually makes a very low-pitched booming sound when struck by the mallet (the weight at the end of the shaft attached to a foot-pedal controlled by the drummer's right foot). Many drummers these days use a foot pedal with two mallets, played with both feet, respectively. This is referred to as "double-bass". A lot of the time it's referred to as the kick drum, to avoid confusion when sound checking, "Can I hear the bass?" The drum or the guitar? Most of the time the bass drum has a pillow inside for dampening.
- Snare drum - This one is usually located to the left of the drummer and played with the drummer's non-dominant hand stick (right hand should be on the high hat if playing a beat with the high hat and left hand should be on the snare). Typically it is known for its crisp "click" sound followed by a "resonating shuffle" sound effect when struck directly on the skin (the pad covering the drum).
- Cymbals - There are many different kinds of cymbals, varying in type, shape, and sound. A cymbal is a round, metal object that resonates when struck. The four most commonly used types of cymbals are the high-hat, the ride, the splash, and the crash.
- The high-hat is a pair of cymbals mounted on a foot pedal. The foot pedal is usually played by the left foot and controls the cymbals, bringing them together when pressed and apart when released. You can strike the cymbal when it is apart or closed, and you can shut the cymbals with your feet at different rates of speed, each creating a different sound.
- The ride creates a more subtle sound than the other cymbals because it is used to play very repetitively throughout most music. The cymbal will usually resonate from one strike to another.
- The splash is a cymbal that creates a metallic "splashing" sound, similar to the sound a water splash makes- which dies quickly after peaking.
- The crash is similar to the splash, but usually generates a loud and long, sustained sound. Listen for the crash at the end of measures in pop music or especially in periods of heightened drama in orchestral music.
- Finally, the china cymbal. It is curved at the edges and sounds trashy. This is a less common cymbal.
- Tom-Toms - There are many types of tom-toms but the most common three are the Floor Tom (the deepest of the three), the Mid-Tom (the medium of the three), and the High-Tom (the most high-pitched of the three).
Ad - 2Figure out the best way to hold your sticks. There are two main ways:
- Matched Grip - Hold them between your thumb and index finger a few inches from the bottom of your sticks and wrap your remaining fingers around the sticks. This method is the most popular one.
- Traditional Grip - In your left hand, rest the stick in the cradle between your thumb and index finger and on top of your ring finger. Wrap your thumb, index and middle fingers around the stick. Jazz drummers often play with traditional grip to create a different feel when striking the drums.
- 3Drum with hands if you don't have drums. Count eighth notes like "1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and..." and try your best to say it steadily. Drum these eighth notes with your first hand.
- 4Continue with your first hand, but now, whenever you say "Two" and "Four," tap the table with your other hand.
- 5Now for your right foot.
- 6Continue tapping with both hands, but now whenever you say "One" or "Three", tap your right (or left) foot.
- 7Take a lesson with a local teacher and see if you enjoy it.
- 8Go to the local drum stores and bang on stuff.
- 9Do your research for a drum set if you are interested in drumming before you spend the money on a set.
- 10Talk to the people at the stores and they should steer you in the right direction.
- 11Start out with a cheap, new set or a used set until you finally decide if you are going to stick with it. A three-piece set is adequate to start with.(High hat, snare and kick drum)
- 12Have your drum teacher or the people at the store give you some pointers on how to hold the sticks, how to hit the drum properly, how to adjust the drums to fit your stature, and how to set up your kit at home. You can also find a lot of this information for free on the internet.
- 13Try a variety of drumsticks. There are a lot out there, but there is no right or wrong stick. 5A is a good stick weight for beginners.
- 14Buy a metronome. If you can't afford a metronome, you can find a click track somewhere which is a recorded metronome that you can play in your stereo, on your Walkman, or on your computer while you practice.
- 15Pick up a video or book, and make sure you type the name of the item in a search on the Internet to read some reviews on the material before you spend your money on it. Not all of the videos and books help somebody that is new to the game, even if they may say that it is made for beginners.
- 16Keep in mind that most music consists of playing a beat and then using fills when they make sense musically. Play for the song, not for yourself.
- 17Practice playing beats first, most books and videos will focus on the most basic of beats.
- 18Learn to practice properly.
- Put the metronome on at a slow speed.
- Play while relaxed; if you notice any tension, slow down the metronome until you feel relaxed.
- Use your hands to play the simple beat stated above; what you are doing here is playing 8th notes with your right hand and keeping the time on the high hat.
- Make sure you count out loud when you are playing. Eventually you won't have to, but do it while you are learning and when you are practicing.
- Now, instead of hitting the snare drum on the "Two" and on the "Four" with the left hand, hit everywhere else.
- Have a good time and learn to play with your hands and listen to the sound you are making.
- Just using your hands, counting out loud, and playing with the metronome or click track will get you started to get into the groove and be able to freestyle.
- 19Try to develop a groove and get used to playing evenly, while counting out loud and while playing with the click.
- 20Learn how to close the high hat with the left foot when you play with the hands; it makes a different, shorter sound. This is the position at which most drummers use the high hat most frequently.
- 21Continue playing only with the hands; go back to the original beat.
- 22Play straight eighth notes with the right hand.
- 23Use the left hand and hit the snare on "Two" and "Four".
- 24Lift your foot off of the high hat here and there to get used to the sounds you are making. You can open it all the way, open it a little and hit the high hat in different places such as the outside rim, or the bell at the top to get different sounds.
- 25Get used to the sounds the high hat makes and get used to opening the high hat while you keep a steady beat and count out loud.
- 26Return to the regular beat again and add in the right foot on the "one" and "three".
- 27Get used to playing that, and then freestyle.
- 28Develop the right foot by playing it at the same time you hit the high hat to help develop the muscles.
- 29Try to play with the right hand and foot at the same time, left hand free styling, or with all limbs at the same time to really get your muscles used to moving.
- 30Get used to the hard part with drums: getting your limbs to do different things when you want them to and still be able to keep time even and have the drums make the sounds you want. At first it will be easy because you will be moving the limbs at the same time but eventually you will have to get used to moving one limb up while the other is moving down.
- 31Play the same thing above only using the hands but instead of hitting the snare on the "Two" and "Four" hit the high hat and when you are lifting your right hand off the high hat move your left hand down to hit the snare. you are basically playing the snare drum in between each hit of the high hat. While you are doing this count out loud "One e and a Two e and a Three e and a Four e and a" continuing to hit the high hat with the right hand on the "One and Two and Three and Four and" but hitting the snare on the "e's and a's" ( the a is pronounced as "ah" or whatever).
- 32Make sure you are still using the metronome to ensure that the beats are even, and make sure you continue to count out loud.
- 33Learn this difficult skill when you are playing the drums, but instead of just the hands you have to incorporate both feet and instead of making one movement up while one movement down you may have to double or triple or even quadruple one movement with a limb while the other limbs do something else in another direction. A good example of this is the difference between a "single" stroke and a "double" stroke. If you strike the drum with one beat from each alternating hand, you have a single stroke pattern. However, if you strike the drum with one downward movement from each alternating hand and let the stick bounce on each alternating stroke to get two hits per stroke, you have a double stroke pattern. This is what enables a drummer to perform very fast rolls and patterns. By studying and practicing the 26 American drum rudiments, you will be well on your way to mastering single, double, triple and quadruple stroke patterns. Start just on a snare drum. Once you are comfortable with the stroke patterns, make sure you practice them on multiple drums within each pattern. This produces some very awesome sounds that will leave your audience stunned.
- 34For example, count the same beat we have been using so far ,eighth notes, and on every beat close the high hat with your left foot and open it on the offbeats, or "ands". Hit the snare drum on the twos and fours to make a basic rock beat. With your right hand keep 8th note time (one and two and three and four and) on the rim of the snare or on a ride cymbal if you have one.
- 35Try to play the kick drum with the right foot. Experiment with various beats with the right foot while keeping the rest of the limbs locked in the main pattern. This is where it starts to get tricky. Don't worry though, it gets easier the more you play. You have to get your limbs used to making movements that are independent of each other. There is no quick way to do this. Just take your time and think about what you are doing. If you break it down into one beat at a time it makes things a lot easier.
- 36Learn drum notation and about time signatures.
- 37Learn there are only a few ways in which each beat can be broken down to. We will be talking about a standard 4/4 beat.
- Put your metronome on at about 60 bpms, each of these clicks will be a quarter note pulse that will help guide your understanding of rhythm. I will put brackets around each of the beats so you know what have to be said out loud to the metronome. You can say these at first and then play them with your hands until you figure out the rhythms. You can go to the Vic Firth website listed below and others to hear what each of these sound like. Remember that each click of the metronome is one beat, each of these subdivisions take up one beat so you will be tapping your hand or speaking the words faster and faster as you go along.
- Learn about quarter notes, usually the main beats, and there are 4 of these to each bar. they are counted "[1] [2] [3] [4]" count to the metronome each number will fall right on the click
- You have quarter note triplets that are not used that much in rock beats but you will find them in drum fills and used in percussion lines found in school bands. Basically a triplet is where you play 3 notes in the time you usually play 2. you can have quarter note triplets, 8th note triplets, 16th note triplets, 32nd note triplets.
- 38These are hard to understand, but for quarter note triplets you must do the opposite of subdivide and think in terms of half notes. Count 1-la-le evenly in the space of the half note. For eighth note triplets it's the same, but with three notes split in the space of a quarter note.
- We have our friend the 8th note which there are 8 of these to each bar. counted "[1 +] [2 +] [3 +] [4 +]" (the "+" sign = the word "and") remember to count out loud and use a metronome to make sure you are even.
- We have a cool sounding beat with 8th note triplets. They are counted "[One-Trip-Let][Two-Trip-Let][Three-Trip-Let][Four-Trip-Let]" or any three syllable word. Play this along with the metronome each click on the metronome is a beat and each beat is subdivided.
- We have 16th note beats that you played earlier when you were learning to move your hands in opposite directions. Counted "[1 e + a] [2 e + a] [3 e + a] [4 e + a]"
- We have 16th note triplets which I count as [1 trip let and trip let] [2 trip let and trip let] [3 trip let and trip let] [4 trip let and trip let]
- We have 32nd notes which I count as "[1 e + a + e + a] [2 e + a + e + a] [3 e + a + e + a] [4 e + a + e + a}
- Remember that each of the subdivisions have to fit in time with the metronome. each click will be quarter beat and easy to keep time by the time you get to the higher subdivisions you will be counting faster or playing faster but the numbers you say will always land on the clicks of the metronome.
- We also have 32nd note triplets that require a lot of subdivision to count and are pretty much too fast to say out loud, but if you want to hear some 32nd notes and 32nd not triplets, then listen to the song "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix. These notes are hard to play correctly because you need to be able to play them evenly, making the same sound on the drums with each hand and be able to move around the drum kit playing these notes in time with the rest of the song.
- 39Rests are used within the song where no sound is made during the note.listen to some of your favorite songs and use a small subdivision such as the 8th or 16th note count and you will see that during a lot of the fills you will hear spaces where there is silence when you are counting. Welcome to the rests.
- 40Learn with regards to the subdivision of beats and rests through practice with just the snare drum. Check the tips section for a list of snare drum rudiment books that you can find for pretty cheap and that will develop your understanding of the beat subdivisions and beat subdivisions with the use of rests as well as building up your skills with both hands. Your goal is to be able to make even sounds with both hands. When you play an accented note with the right hand it should sound the same when you play with the left and when you make a normal stroke with the right it will sound the same as the left and vice versa and so on. An accented stroke is when you strike the drum harder than the other strokes (usually on the rim of the drum, also known as a rimshot). Accents give a very dynamic effect to the music. In music notation, accents are shown by the mathematical "greater than" sign (>).
- 41Learn to do drum fills.
- Count out loud and play with a metronome for drum fills.
- Start with the basic beat as before "1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +" and play as you did before with right hand on the high hat and left on the snare. Use the right foot on the kick. Repeat as you warm up. Now continue counting out loud and just play "1 + 2 +" and then stop playing with you limbs and just finish counting out loud "3 + 4 +"repeat. it should sound like "Boom tic Pap tic" now on the "3 + 4 +" do anything else for example start with moving every limb at the same time on the "3 + 4 +" you can hit the crash (if you have one) on the one on the following bar and you will have pulled off your first fill.
- Be creative and do every combination you can think of while counting the "3 + 4 +" some will sound good to you some won't (don't forget to open the high hat) some basic ones can be all snare alternating hands. Two kick and then two snares. Two snares and two kicks. You get the point as long as you keep the time it doesn't matter what you pick as long as the time stays even.
- Now we go back to the subdivisions of the beats as I wrote above. Continue to play the "1 + 2 +" as you did above. Now pick a couple subdivisions of the beat as written out between the brackets above for the "3" beat and the "4" beat" such as "[3 trip let] [4 e + a} play note while counting out loud and use all limbs at the same time as you did above. Repeat. Congrats, now you have played a more complex fill. Now continue to use the same subdivision you picked but do different things with each hand. you will soon be playing fills you only dreamed of.
- Now pick other subdivisions for the "3" and 4" beat you can go "[3 +] [4]" or "[3 +] [4 trip let]" or "[3 e + a] [4 +]" or whatever. Is it starting to get easier yet? As long as the notes are played evenly and within the time you have lots and lots of possible combinations for the fills.
- Now one thing to remember is that you don't have to just play the [3] beat and [4] beat as fills. you can play the whole bar as a fill picking any of the subdivisions for each beat and combining them such as "[1 e + a] [2 trip let] [3 +] [4 trip let]" or whatever you picked. say the subdivisions out loud then play with all limbs and then play around with using different sounds and sound combinations for the subdivisions. Don't forget your kick drums when doing the fills to give them that extra "oomph".
- Another thing to remember is that you don't have to start a fill at the beginning of a beat such as: count " One and Two" and play it like you did before with the right hand on the high hat and the left on the snare but when you get to the " and three and four and" play the fill starting on that and instead of waiting for the "three" beat. so if you do a basic 8th note fill it would be [1 +} [2 fill] [fill fill] [fill fill] or play "One and" and then a fill during " two and three and four and" sorry its hard to write out but read it over and over while you play and you'll figure it out. basically the fills have to fit within the mathematical subdivision of the bar.
- One thing also to remember when playing fills is to try and continue to hit the snare on the " two" and "four" while you do whatever craziness you want on the rest of the notes as to continue to keep the time to the listener.
- Now for the curve ball, throw in rests to the subdivisions and that's it.
- 42Have fun practicing and remember practicing is the work and the show where you get to show off a little is the payoff. Also, don't give up on this tedious task of perfecting the drums. Instruments are hard to play which is why there musicians get the attention they do.Ad
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- Let the drumsticks do the work for you by bouncing, don't pull them up or you will tire easily.
- If you wish to pursue drumming, start with an inexpensive or student drum set which can often be purchased for under a few hundred dollars. These usually come with a high hat, crash-ride cymbal, kick drum, snare drum, one or two rack tom-toms mounted on the kick drum, and a floor tom-tom. You can always upgrade or add more pieces to your set later.
- If you are still in school try and take a band class, "cool" is a made up thing that does not exist when you leave school. Unless you are a rock star.
- If you don't want to buy a drum set just yet but have the RockBand drums, you can hook them up to your computer and use them with the program Drum Machine as an electronic drum set. You can change what sound each pad will make just in case, the downside is that the drums might be slow to respond and can throw you off beat.
- Use cans or buckets if you can't afford a drum set or you can purchase a drum pad for rudimentary practice.
- Don't bash your pads or drums else you may end up with broken sticks and drum heads, cracked cymbals, and hard bone impacts which may prevent you from playing at all. Unless you happen to be John Bonham or Keith Moon, take it easy. Drummer gloves can also help prevent this.
- As always when playing drums, wear protection such as ear plugs. Snares in particular were designed to be extremely loud (to carry across entire battlefields), but are played very near YOUR head and ears. You want still to be able to hear music and conversations when you are 80! Many drummers start noticing hearing loss in their 50s and belatedly start wearing protection then. Don't let this happen to you! Ear plugs can be found at most music stores.
- Use a metronome to help keep time with even clicks. You can either purchase one from your music store, or download a metronome program to use on your computer.
- Practice every day even if it is not in front of a drum set or it is just for 15-20 minutes. Practicing every day for 5 minutes is better than practicing once a week for 35.
- Be a musician first, and a drummer second. The best drummers in the world play their drums in a very musical way, always putting the song first rather than their flashy chops. There's a time and place for everything
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