Inverted Rolls develop your snare drum rolls. The point is to emphasize the 2nd stroke of the double. Sometimes play this with accents on the 8th note, and 2nd stroke of each double, and sometimes play with out. Don’t be to stiff, the motion should flow.
Exercise for Inverted Rolls
Hertas lend themselves to 8:3 rhythms. There is a funny symmetry playing Hertas broken up between 2 percussive instrauments. Each Hand plays exactly 8 notes.
Hertas are a contemporary rudiment. Using Hertas you can make a variety of interesting rhythms. The right hand plays 4 double strokes of 16th notes inside 3 quarter notes, while the left plays 8 dotted 16th notes. I like to use this to make time feel illusory, and ambiguous, yet it comes together tight, with ease. If you play the Hertas in 12/8, it lends itself to 8 inside 12, a variation on 4 against 3.
Fill ideas applying the Hertas split up between two different hands.
new edrum in use
Piezo glued to the backside of head, wires duct-taped to 1/4″ jack, didn’t bother figuring out positive and negative values
Piezo Circuits, $1each, bought from Karlson’s Robotics, online
Front side of mesh head, you can see the Modge Podge glue seeping through to the front of head head
I made an edrum today. I’ve read about other methods where people turned Remo Practice Pads in to edrum sensors and worked well, but I wanted a mesh head. My friend had lent me a $10 floor tom that in my view was sub musical. It was difficult to use in a musical setting because it sounded bad. Opening it up, it had poorly cut bearing edges and the wrap was bubbling up in places.
This drum would be useful though, for practicing double bass quietly. I bought a 16″ mesh head to use as a silent drum head for practice. I heavily waxed the bearing edges to prevent rough wood from scraping the mesh head.
I had read about Piezo electrics, and had access to another friend’s Roland TD4. I also use an Alesis 6 as my snare module. I bought some Piezo Electrics. They cost $1 a piece so it was a low cost exploration. I wanted to use my glue gun but couldn’t find it. so I found my Modge Podge that I use for hand crafted screen printing, and slathered on the glue-ish substance on the piezo and then slathered it on the head around the piezo, using a paint brush. Over night the Modge Podge hardened in to a transparent semi-rigid varnish, entrapping the piezo against the head. I did this while the head was taught on the drum so the piezo would bond to a straight surface resembling it’s permanent home.
The quarter inch jack I also bought to interface with the piezo was a pain to work with and seemed to put up electric resistence deading the signal, so I taped the wires to the quarter inch cable directly. This was initially done so I could rapidly prototype it again if the system was a failure. But now it works so I haven’t bothered.
In fact the electric drum I made works so well I have to deaden it with a pillow because the vibrating head will make double and triple slaps on the TD4. The faster I play the more sustained vibrations on the head disrupt my signal. I’m adding deadening to compensate, and the pillows are helping. When I began I was incredulous it would work at all. Instead I find it works very well.
This was pretty fun, and I’m looking forward to working on my feet more.
I’ve gone quiet on my practice lately and just wanted to mention what I’m up too. Mostly I’m practicing out of the New Breed. It is an exciting and challenging book. You can find a copy here. I started focusing on the New Breed and Gary Chester’s drumming when I realized all the players who had ‘the new breed sound’ included Vinnie Colaiuta and Thomas Lang. Those guys are two of the best and what I want to drum like. There’s so many more other great players infused with that sound as well.
I’ve also been studying the drumming of new star Ilan Rubin. He is now NIN’s official drummer and I believe he’ll play a strong role on their new album slated for 2013. He has a clean, crisp, bombastic sound. He plays very tight. One of the novel aspects of his live drumming performances is how he can de facto incorporate a click track while making it a part of the art. Check out this video of him performing. He was not a contestant but a featured performer:
Sal Mineo played drumming great Gene Krupa in “The Gene Krupa Story“. He also starred opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and also died tragically young. He was killed for being gay. He was slain decades before Mathew Sheppard. Thankfully since that time Internet and electronic communication have expanded such that perpetrators of evil cannot operate autonomously. Sal Mineo will always be the handsome face behind Gene’s recordings for me.
This exercise is for developing your single stroke rolls, and rhythmic articulation generally. I am led to believe Joe Morello first published this exercise, though it stands to reason that it existed for a long time before. I play it usually at 80 bpm, sometimes switching to 100 for a change of pace.
I’ll try and update with a video posted of me playing it on a pad this afternoon.
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Had a fantastic day today playing the drums and listening in on a talk at the The Recording Conservatory of Austin.
The talk progressed through several stages. Act 1 featured Drastick’s drummer Ryan Henderson and his contemporary drum set. Towards the middle of the talk sound engineer Dwight Baker used my kit to demonstrate a few different classic recording methods, culminating in the Motown method. Drummer Ryan Henderson’s Black Beauty snare was used instead of my regular Ludwig Supraphonic. Ryan’s snare is beautiful, of course it’s a Ludwig Black Beauty; one of the best snare drums ever made. It’s 14″ by 6.5″, deeper and oopmhier than normal. In addition, we used an extra snare head, all slack, laid upon the beater side of the snare drum. This focused the sound very low. Dwight said it realized the sound of the lower octaves of the drum. It sounded uncanny in the engineer room. It sounded unfamiliar, but deep and thudy, in the drum room. It should go without saying that when recording a song, the engineer’s booth knows whats sounding good. This is also why, when seeking to record, you should spend some money, so you can have an engineer with ears you’re confident in.
The Motown method involved a few other angles. Literally angles. Some aspects of recording engineering really flew past my head. I am uninitiated and it was meant for an informed audience. A very large cardiod that had been the above mic in Glyn Johns’ position was moved to 1-2″ above the end resonant end of my bass drum. Imagine if you will, a traditional Glyn John’s. Maintain the triangle but move the mic above the drummer to a point near the resonant side of the bass drum, 2″ above the apex of the shell, within 1″ of the rim. I don’t know if there was a bass drum mic or not. I don’t know if the engineer Dwight Baker used all tracks, or what tracks he used. I want to highlight somethings:
The Black Beauty was nonstop, the go to snare drum the whole time. Think about how many times you hit a snare drum in a session. No matter what condition, the Black Beauty was the drum of choice. It’s made me reconsider my long time middle of the road Supraphonic.
The snare had a Shure 57 in a pretty normal arrangement. There was a stereo mic, that looked like a cardiod, between the bottom of my snare and the bass drum. Dwight said that to increase the bass drum’s sound, turn the mic more in it’s direction, or vice versa to get more snare. The mic helped achieve an even level of thud between the bass and snare in a 70′s vinyl manner. In that style, the bass drum and snare drum thump the sound spectrum in equal manners.
On my toms he placed English Tea Towels. English Tea Towels in particular. They were of a light quality, and I had not yet touched towels like these, so I know I will have to order them specifically on the internet. He then close micced these with Shure 57′s or something similar. The recording sound had a magical quality. Listening back, we achieved an awesome sound. I want to make a million records in this method! You just hear it and know the sound quality is awesome!
I want to add that as in the Glyn John’s, there was a cardioid like mic above my right shoulder. It was also arranged in that poignant triangle that prevents phase effects. It was also a good day for me playing.
Exercises for your left hand.