Whenever you practice an instrument the inclination is to begin quickly under the belief that you’re really playing something well when you do it quickly. Wrong! Especially with drums, timing is essential. When you’re beginning to learn how to play drums this is the major consideration to keep in mind. Here’s some tips on how to do that.

Even before you begin, take some time to warm up your arms and wrists. Drums are a physical instrument and you don’t want to pull a muscle, even if what you’re doing isn’t technically demanding. You’ll feel loose and you won’t hurt yourself.

At first you’ll start with a simple rock beat. Play it very, very slowly. After a lot of practice and repetition it’ll get boring. Good! This means you can either speed it up or add a little something to it. The key is to play it backwards and forwards and be able to keep track of time while you’re doing it. Whatever dazzling technical wizardry you pull off will be useless without good, steady time. This is what separates good and bad drummers.

Once you get the basics down you can up the ante a little bit. Begin working on your rolls, as that’s one of the staple techniques in your arsenal. Rolling enables you to play quickly, so it’s important to master. But as with every technique, practice it slowly and consistently. In fact, you’ll frequently hear rock drummers in songs slowly hit their snare and begin to gradually increase their speed until they’re playing quickly! In other words, it’s a good way to practice and it sounds good.

Another technique you’ll need to get down is the bass drum that you activate with your foot pedal. Get it consistent at first, then do some alternate rhythms to change it up, then you can really focus attention on your speed. Experiment with some different techniques: the two main ones are heal up or down. With heal down, you use the downward momentum generated from your ankle, whereas with heal up you used the muscles of your thigh. Try both to determine which you prefer.

Once you have a general sense of rhythm and technique, experiment with the different parts of your drums. It’s not like there’s only one sound per drum; different parts of the drums and cymbals produce a very different kind of noise, and it’s up to you to know all the different sounds your drums can produce. Try hitting the sides, around the rim, the centre, and really everywhere in between. This is especially true of the cymbals, which produce a much higher pitch around the top of the bell commonly found in jazz ride patterns. Even the metal parts surrounding the heads are commonly used in various kinds of music. In other words, when it comes to drumming, absolutely nothing’s off limits!

Like anything else, play as much as possible. If you’re not enjoying it you’re not going to continue, so relax, don’t put pressure on yourself and keep good time!

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Category: Entertainment
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