Through this week I messed around a little bit with the garageband app and the different types of drums on there and to say the least they were not very high quality. If you want to use electronic drums on an app or machine it needs to be a high quality app or machine or else it will not sound as good as you may want it to. On another note I have been looking into the different types of styles of drumming. Some different styles are swing, rock, jazz, and lots of other kinds. When you want to distinguish the different types of styles of drumming it is important to put your emphasis on the beats that fit best to what else is going on besides the drums. A lot of this has to also deal with the time signature of the song because depending on if it is 4/4 or 6/8 there is more of and emphasis on different beats. So if you are playing in 6/8 it's important to focus on beats 1 and 4, so 1 2 3 4 5 6. If you were to go listen to different genres of music and listen to the drums in each of the genres you would be able to hear a distinct difference in the style of each of the drummers. Going into this week I plan to keep practicing and look back at the different rudiments and ask my mentor for any tips he may have.
Coming into week nine I feel like with the small amount of time that I have been able to practice I have made some good progress. Lately I have been more focused on creating beats on my own rather than reading off sheet music. This week when I was able to practice I put some earbuds in and just started listening to music and just played along with it and try to do whatever I felt like sounded the best. Some things I need to work on and learn more about is how I can incorporate the toms and cymbal more when I’m making beats. I tend to mainly use the bass drum, snare drum, and hi hat cymbal when I make beats. I have been thinking about some ideas as to what I should do for my presentation. I’m not going to bring a drum set into class because I feel like that would be too much of a hassle and it would disturb other classes. So instead I want to somehow record me playing and put in a presentation of some sort. Looking into this upcoming week I plan to look for advice from my mentor and some research on youtube as to how I can improve my skills on using the toms and both cymbals for my beats.
Coming into week six I can see the progress of my skills as I have been practicing different rudiments on a practice pad or any surface I can. Lots of hard work has been put in over the past few weeks. I recently watched a video on youtube to help freshen up my skills and knowledge on reading sheet music. The video refreshed my memory on different rhythms and beats and what instruments go on what lines on the staff.
The basics of drum set sheet music are fairly simple, the lower sounding drums will be lower on the staff and the higher sounding drums and cymbals will be towards the top of the staff. So the bass drum will be the lowest note on the staff and the hi hat will typically be towards the top. For simpler beats you will usually see four quarter notes at the bottom of the staff, this shows for bass drums hits. Another beat you might see is a bass drum hit on beats one and three, and then a snare drum or hi hat hit on beats two and four. When making a beat the bass drum is the most important, as it serves as the foundation of the beat. The bass drum is typically what gets people’s toes tapping along with a song. I am able to use this knowledge to help me create my own beat when I practice or am just playing around. Overall I feel like I have been making good progress on this project. For the upcoming week I plan to keep practicing and to try and play while listening to music so I can try to play along with the song. As a musician it is always important to be able to create something on your own rather than produce something you read off a sheet. I hope to get lots of work done in this upcoming week and I’m excited that we are already half way through. Going into week six I have been practicing as much as I can and I am starting to get the feel of things, slowly but surely progressing. Trust the process. As I am getting almost halfway through this twelve weeks I am not sure if I will continue with the drums. I know it is not even half way through, but this project has really shown me how difficult it is to find time to practice especially when I don’t own a drum kit. Who knows though maybe one week I will have a breakthrough and realize I love drumming. Seeing that me and my mentor have not been able to work out much time to work together I have been researching tricks and tips for people who are teaching themselves the drums. What I have seen come up the most match up with lots of practicing techniques. I also saw a video on exercises I can do on a drum pad, the exercise just consists of going from quarter notes to eighth to sixteenth, then getting into using certain hands for certain beats. I definitely have noticed myself paying much much more attention to what the drummer is doing in songs that I listen to. It is so cool to hear what different kinds of rudiments and styles the drummers use in different types of songs. I really want to try and emulate what those drummers are doing and practice playing to the music to improve my skills. For this upcoming week I plan to practice, practice, practice as much as I can.
Going into Week four, I am thinking this will be the week that I begin to read sheet music. I probably will not just dive straight in, first I’ll talk to my mentor to see what he thinks I should start off on and any tips he can give me going into reading sheet music for drums. During this week I watched some videos on tips, techniques and just general information for drumming. Something interesting I found was a video of an interview of a professional drummer and the main question was whether or not it is important to learn to read music if you play the drums. Overall the professional drummer never said it was not important or that it wouldn’t help, he was saying that whatever you can do to make yourself a better musician you should do. The drummer talked about how you did not have to be able to read sheet music to be a great drummer. The reason not knowing how to read music is not necessarily a bad thing for drumming is because the drummer's job in a song is to keep the beat. When a drummer is trying to keep a beat they don't have to play certain rhythms, they can play whatever they want as long as it sounds good, makes sense with the style of the music, and is in time. Although you do not need to know how to read sheet music it is always helpful to know, which is why I plan to learn it. I feel like if I start to play things that have been written and made already it will improve my abilities to make up my own beats without sheet music. For this coming week I plan to keep that interview in mind while I learn sheet music and I also plan to keep a steady pace with my practicing to improve my skills even more.
Going into week three there is not much else to say about what had been going on with the project besides practicing. I have been trying to practice as much as I can, it just becomes hard to find time when you also have another instrument to be practicing as well. Through these first few weeks I have been trying hard to learn the fundamentals and it is becoming more comfortable for me to play. I have also found myself listening to the drums in most of the music I am listening to, this helps me get a feel for what the beats should feel like for different songs. I am going to start learning how to read drum set sheet music next week and try and read some very simple stuff to begin with. Learning an instrument is a hard process, but some ways to help are practicing and exposing myself to hearing different recordings of all types of drumming. There has not been much else to report for this past week, I have just been trying to get the feel of things which I am definitely getting by now.
As we now head into week two I am slowly making progress on my drumming skills as well as my general knowledge about the drums. I have been continuing practicing paradiddles and they have been slowly but surely getting better. My left hand is getting better at controlling the rebound of the stick on the drumset. Moving into this week I will hopefully have the opportunity to practice more. During this week I had a hard time finding time to practice as my week was full of tests and work. Nevertheless I am still trying to get as much practice in as I can.
These first two weeks have been a struggle which is understandable because learning a new instrument or any new information can be a struggle. In some of my free time when I’m just sitting on my phone I have been searching up any tips or tricks to use while practicing. After going on multiple sites, about three things kept popping up as some things I should do while practicing, the first is just to practice as much as I can, repetition is key when learning something new. The second tip I learned is to practice using a metronome, which is something I have done before, but with practicing my trombone, so it’s sort of the same concept but a drummer needs to constantly be able to keep a beat so practicing with a metronome will make it easier to keep a beat. The third tip was to listen to music while I play and just try and play along to the music. This will help me improve my improv skills and finding the beat on my own. I have definitely gained a lot of knowledge and tips on drumming this week that can help me through out the rest of this project. Moving into next week and the rest of this project I will be sure to use these new tips and tricks and I will keep the blog updated on how the project is going. I hope to buy some drumsticks of my own sooner then later so I can practice at my house even without a drum set. For me this is a hard project because when I am doing or learning something I want results asap and that is not how drumming works, it takes lots and lots of time and practice before you start to see results. I hope that you are enjoying learning about my process and I hope you are excited for the end result as much as I am. As we roll into week one I have come to the realisation that the drums are an extremely hard instrument to learn and get comfortable with playing. Even though I am only one week into this project I have already noticed the difficulty of finding the rhythm throughout my body to be able to play different beats and rhythms. I know that as this project progresses I will improve slowly but surely. As I go on further into the twelve week project I will need to practice constantly and learn different tricks and tips that can help improve my drumming. As far as the basics for drumming I have already learned a good amount for only a week.
In this first week I have learned how to hold the drumsticks, how I can make a simple beat, and the paradiddle. The thing that I have struggled with the most is the paradiddle. A paradiddle is when you control the rebound of the stick to make the stick tap whatever you are hitting twice. I have been struggling with this especially with my left hand mostly because I am right handed. Another thing I have been struggling with is keeping a beat, the problem here is that it is awkward for me to be hitting two drums or cymbals with my hands and having a foot on the bass. For me it feels like a pat your head rub your stomach kind of thing, especially when I have one hand keeping straight sixteenth notes and another hand trying to hit on the offbeats. Eventually this will become easier or more comfortable with me it will just take some time and practice. Thankfully my church is allowing me to practice on the drumset that they have, rather than me having to purchase one. I will hopefully be able to go up there a few times a week. Along with that I also have access to the drumset in the band room. Eventually I will most likely want to purchase a pair of my own drumsticks and a drum pad for me to practice on at home. As to showing my progress I hope to maybe make videos of me playing or something along those lines and watching them at the end of the project to see how I have improved. Next week I will hopefully have learned much more and improve even if it is just a little. Welcome to what will be my twelve week blog on the process of me learning how to play the drums. I am very excited to start this project because learning a new instrument is something that is very fun, yet stressful. Drums are a very unique instrument, in which they are a percussion rather than a wind instrument. Something else that is different about the drums is that there are no specific notes, it’s just beats and rhythms. I already know how to play the trombone so I have already been reading music for roughly six years so know different beats and rhythms and beats so come easier to me than someone with no musical background.
I plan to take this learning experience at my own pace and I never want to make myself feel rushed or stressed to learn something by a certain day because I want this to be a learning experience rather than just a school project. For the first two to three I just want to spend this time getting comfortable with playing and maybe just trying to make up some stuff on my own. When I’m playing my main goal is to just be comfortable and just play whatever feels right. After the first few weeks I’ll start finding songs and pieces I can learn that will challenge me. I am looking to learn a new piece every two to three weeks depending on the difficulty of the song I’m playing. For practicing on my own I plan to use the drum set in the band room during 4th period on Wednesday when the class is working on genius hour. Outside of school I plan on asking my church if I am able to use the drum set they have to practice on. If the church is unable to let me use their drum set I have a friend who has a drum set that he never uses so he will let me use his if I need to. All in all I feel if I follow my plan and just stay committed and focused I can make this project a huge success. Playing the drums could potentially become a hobby of mine in the future if I enjoy it enough. Also learning the drums will even help me in my trombone playing because it will help me practice keeping time and it will also help me with sight reading and learning odd rhythms. I am looking forward to this project and can’t wait to get started. |
Andrew LawrenceWelcome to my Genius Hour Project website here you can see my blog posts for the twelve week period of my project also I have links and websites to show you a little bit of where I have been getting some tips and tricks. |