Drum 'n' Bass 1

Drum'n'Bass is a style that caught me by the ears a few years ago. It's primarily an electronic style, but drummers such as Johnny Rabb, JoJo Mayer, Tony Verderosa and Yuval Gabay have developed it into a live phenomenon. Here's a few ideas to get you started.

When playing this particular style, remember:
1. Keep everything light and clean. Your aim is to play these grooves at 160bpm or more so make sure your sound is uncluttered.

2. Make sure accuracy is your first focus, not speed! Start these grooves off SLOWLY and be obsessive about getting each note in the right place. Counting is a good idea.

3. RELAX!! You're playing at fast tempos for extended periods of time. While d'n'b is great for endurance, you need to make sure you're relaxed at faster tempos. Any tension will affect the groove and make it sound forced.

4. Practice each groove until the feeling is almost trance-like. This is one of the characteristics of d'n'b. The goal is to make the groove so comfortable within a song that a subtle change (even one note) takes the song to a new level.

Tips for getting the most out of these exercises:

1. GROOVE EXTENSION: Try chaining two of the grooves together to form a 2-bar loop.

2. GROOVE 'N' FILL: Play three bars of one groove (#2 for example), then tack one bar of another groove (#1 for example) on the end. It creates a nice tension-and-release feel.

3. DIFFERENT CYMBALS: Play two bars using the hi-hats and then two bars on the ride cymbal. Form a 4-bar loop using this concept.

4. ALTERED DRUM KIT: Johnny Rabb developed the Safari cymbals in conjunction with Meinl. These are fantastic cymbals which emulate the controlled electronic drum kit sound that works so well for this style. If you can't afford the cymbals, there are a few things you can do:
- Tune up your bass drum and muffle it so it has a tight controlled sound.
- Place a splash cymbal on the snare drum to give it a tuned-up, gated sound. Alternatively get a Drumbal! They are relatively cheap and come with a handle. Buying one of these will give you a whole new palette of sounds to experiment with that may well morph across into your usual playing style.
- Get a sizzle for your ride cymbal. Plug chains work well here, but Pro Mark produce some nice sizzlers that also work very well.

Enjoy!
TK >O

I'm writing a book...

Crazy I know, but there it is. Actually it's looking like three books now, not just one.

I've been playing drums for 23 years and teaching for 15. I've finally had the motivation to start putting thoughts into words, so that I can define my own take on drumming and hopefully pass it on to a few other people. This has come about because every lesson I find myself writing additional exercises or thoughts or concepts into the students' method books, or writing the lessons as I go, along with conversations I've had with other drummers and some of my older students.

A lot of books out there seem to be focused on the 'what' of drumming. There is nothing wrong with this - learning different styles and improving your technique is essential to being a decent drummer. However, most of the books and DVD's released by pro drummers are focused on hyper-technical ability or how they play their 'signature' licks. Most of this material is completely beyond the average drummer, and useless for most of the gigs and situations that they find themselves in.

Two things I find that are usually lacking are the 'why' and the 'how'.

The 'why' of drumming is simply why the student wants to learn the drums in the first place. Most of the time it's all about learning enough to play in a band. For some reason, current books never mention anything about business and promotional skills, people skills, or professional attitude, which are essential for longevity in the music industry.

The 'how' is going beyond just playing a beat. It's about playing authentically within a style. It's playing with touch and sensitivity. It's knowing how songs work and playing accordingly. It's about knowing when (and when not) to play fills. It's about knowing how band dynamics and drum kit dynamics work and how to adjust them to suit the style and the situation. It's about playing musically. I haven't seen one book yet that addresses any of these concepts adequately.

These are some of the things that I'm going to try to address in these books.
Stay tuned...

Broken Triplets - a Musical Perspective.

In the '80s, a phenomenon hit the drumming community that would create a lasting impact - Dave Weckl was invented. Developed in Sweden since the mid-'60s, and after 15 years of extensive development, this Uberdrumming Teknorobot was a worldwide success. The Dave Weckl MK. 1 with its characteristic mullet influenced many an impressionable drummer to copy and emulate his playing and to develop their technique. Love him or hate him, he was a huge impact upon drummers everywhere.

One thing that Weckl popularized was the use of broken triplets between the hands and bass drum. Very simply, a 'broken triplet' is one where two notes are played with the hands and one note is played with the bass drum. For example, RLb RLb, or LRb LRb. Just about any drummer worth his or her salt is able to 'boogada boogada' around the kit when given the opportunity. It sounds cool, and also seems a lot harder than it really is. In this lesson, I will hopefully help you to realize that there is more to this simple little group of notes than 'boogada boogada'. We're going to apply a few judicious accents to these triplets and create a few new ideas.

First, let's go through how to play these exercises properly. There are two rules to remember.

Rule 1: Two Layers of Sound. If you play an accent, bring the stick up to near vertical and drop it onto the drum. If you play a tap (ie normal stroke) play it from 5cm above the drum. If you follow this, the taps will sound soft and the accents will be LOUD.

Rule 2: Accuracy is Better than Speed. Go slow, you eediot! Aim to get the notes spot on before you speed it up! You want to sound like an intelligent drummer, not a garage hacker. Fine tune at slow tempos so that your quicker fills sound great, not like mush.

The first set of exercises outline the 4 building blocks that we're going to use:

Ex.1 uses no accents, so keep those sticks low.

Ex.2 has an accent on the first note of every triplet.

Ex.3 has the accent on the second note of every triplet.

Ex.4 accents every note played with the hands.

Play every triplet as RLb.

You'll hopefully notice that each exercise has its own unique character and feel. After you have mastered these on the snare drum, try orchestrating them on the drum kit. The trick is to keep all of the ‘taps’ on the snare drum, and move the accents around the toms. The easiest variation of this is to place all of the right hand accents on the floor tom and the left hand accents on the high tom.

Once you’ve had a play around with this, we’re going to change the time feel and play the above exercises as a 4:3 polyrhythm. Suffice to say, the number of triplet notes in 4/4 is the same as the number of 16th notes in ¾ (12). In 4/4, you play the triplets as 4 groups of 3, while in ¾ you play the 16th notes as 3 groups of 4. Confused yet? Essentially what we are going to do is play the 16th notes (which naturally fall into 3 groups of 4) as 4 groups of 3 instead. This creates a ‘stretching’ feel as the groups of notes fall across the beat, instead of directly on it.
Have a look and you’ll see what I mean:

The hands and bass drum play groups of 3 while the hi-hat (left foot) plays on the groups of 4. Spend a bit of time on these exercises, and remember to count out loud (“1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a”) as you play. Accuracy is most important here, not speed! Also, make sure you play the left foot hi-hat. Not only will it be good for your independence, it will also help you to cement the beat while you're playing these tricky-dicky groups of 3 over the top of it.

The next few examples are what happens when you take the 4 basic building blocks above and turn them into extended phrases:

Orchestrate these around the kit and you’ll start to hear some very funky phrases.

Lastly, here’s one bar from the exercises above which I have orchestrated and turned into a drum fill. It is the first bar of exercise 12. I have moved the accents onto the toms, and also added “4-e-&-a” on the snare drum to round it off to a nice neat 4/4 bar. Enjoy.

If you have a serious go at some of these ideas, you'll hopefully start to see a whole new world of fills opening up before you. Jump in and enjoy the ride!

Funkify the Songo

The Songo is a funky Afro-Cuban groove with a lot of potential. It's great to substitute for funk grooves sometimes in jam sessions, which really changes up the feel of the song. In this lesson, we're going to look at one version of the Songo, then permutate it to create more grooves.

First, here's a (reasonably busy) version of the Songo for you to learn. Please note - this is not the definitive Songo! Many world groove experts would disagree on the 'definitive' Songo, due to there being many regional variants etcetera. This is simply one variant that works for me and sounds good in most situations. Remember to play the accents fairly strong and the other snare notes light (about 3-5cm from the snare drum). Keep this groove light and happy. The bass drum pattern should be fairly prominent, with the snare and hi-hats filling in the spaces. Feel free to play a cowbell instead of the hi-hat.

Once you have that groove happening and feeling nice and dancey, we're going to mess with it a bit. The technical term for this is permutation. To permutate a groove, you simply take the first sixteenth note from the start of the groove and tack it on the end. Then, shuffle everything over to fill up the vacant spot. If you perform this process on a linear 16th note groove (oh, look! the Songo is a linear 16th note groove!) until you end up back at the start again, you end up with 15 variants or permutations, plus the original. It's a simple, systematic process that gives you tremendous potential for creating new grooves and variants from one idea.

Here's the full list of permutations on the Songo groove that you've just learnt. The original groove is notated at the start, and the permutations occur after that. Learn each permutation with a metronome, so that you have a clear focus on the beat. Keep it slow and steady and count out loud as you play.

You'll find that learning this page will give you a lot more flexibility in your groove playing. Some of the grooves have off-beat hi-hat, others have the hats on the "e" or the "a" of the beat. If you want a real 4-way co-ordination challenge, play the hats part on your cowbell or ride cymbal and keep a quarter note beat with your left foot on the hi-hats!

Enjoy! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them here, and I'll do my best to answer them.

P.S. I'd like to give credit where it's due. The permutation concept was popularized by David Garibaldi (Tower of Power's drummer) in his book Future Sounds. I highly recommend you get a copy if you're serious about studying funk and linear grooves.

Influences

Who influences you?

It's probably not something that you think about every day, but it's a question worthy of some thought. Our walk in life is influenced by other people to some extent or another, whether we like it or not. We're assailed every day by the TV, radio, movies, magazines and advertising. We're told that this product will make us eternally happy if we part with our hard-earned cash in order to have it. We're told by movie stars (who are usually only good at being someone they're not) that this perfume is the only one that will have the guys falling all over you, or this certain watch will turn you into an international superspy.
At an unconscious level, this is simply because we are people, we care about what other people think and we want to be accepted by others. If we are aware of this, it is a lot easier to be influenced by the right people on a conscious level instead and it gives us a chance to direct our lives the way we want them to go.

Your mentors, you must wisely choose.

As a drummer, I have embarked on a lifelong learning path. After 22 years of hitting drums, I am very aware that there are more things out there that I don't know than things I do. I also know that in order to improve, I need to pay attention to what other drummers are doing and saying. I need to carefully choose who speaks into my life, because I become like who I listen to and who I hang around. For example, one name that springs to mind is Vinnie Colaiuta. Vinnie has a proven track record as a drummer, including playing for big names such as Frank Zappa and Sting. I want to learn as much as I can about Vinnie - his style, techniques, attitude, values and beliefs. I want to know what makes him tick and how he got to where he is today. In contrast, I don't want to be like ole mate (let's call him Mungo) down the road that has a bash in a pub band on Saturday nights. I might know Mungo and say hi on occasion, but because I choose who influences me, Mungo's opinions don't hold any weight with me. I choose to hang out with drummers that are at least a step ahead of me so that I can eventually make it to their level.

On a level other than the professional, personal influences are also inportant. What do you want your life to be like? Your marriage (if you're married)? Your job? Your family? Surround yourself with people who will positively enhance your life. My parents have been happily married for more than 35 years. While they're not perfect (nobody is!) they've tried their best. If they've managed to keep it together for that long, they must be doing something right. I've grown up watching them do life together, and that's something that I want for my marriage. You might be thinking, "my parents split up when I was young, what hope do I have?" The answer is, you have as much hope as you decide to have. If your parents haven't been the best example, get alongside another couple who you might know who are doing life as a team.

Aware you must be. Influence others, you do.

The flip-side of this is that as we are influenced by our heroes and mentors, we also influence those who look up to us. Believe it or not, there are people that you know who listen to what you say and watch what you do. They observe your life and take it all on board. Whether you like it or not, you are an influence to others! That's a rather sobering thought. The things you do and say shape the lives of the younger and more malleable minds that you come into contact with. I guess the lesson is that we need to be careful about what we say and do. We need to be the best that we can be in order for the next generation to have even half a hope of matching that. Once again, as a drummer, I influence my students through my attitude, my comments and my encouragement. They look up to me for help, for guidance and the way forward.

So.... who influences you?