In defence of reading.......

These are indeed interesting times to be a drummer. More and more, the jobs I play involve "ear" work or at the most reading lead sheets. The only regular reading I'm guaranteed to do is once a month with John MacLeod's big band at the Rex, and even then, it's reading charts, which arguably require as much interpretation as reading.
So, should a young drummer not learn to read music? Nope, and I'll tell you why.

1. As reading is required less, it's also becoming a rarer commodity.
Being able to read music is one way of distinguishing yourself from other players, especially in situations that don't involve much rehearsal. Remember, if you can read, you can cut a lot of your heroes on the first run through of a piece of music. ( Admittedly, the second time might be a different story, but you get my point. )

2. If you need to learn something or remind yourself of something quickly, reading is the way to go.
If you want to have something be a part of your playing forever, by all means learn it by ear and memorize it, but sometimes we want our musical experience to be more ephemeral. Sometimes we're forced to record music we really DON'T want to remember! :) Reading helps with this.

3. Reading is not a difficult skill to learn and keep up.
The analogy has been made many times, but reading music and reading any language are the same thing. if you are literate, you certainly have enough brain power to learn to read music. Get a book and/or teacher and get it together, it can only help you.

I find personally that my reading can atrophy if I'm not doing it much, but I find it very easy to get it back in shape. Read classical snare drum etudes. The rhythms that you're reading are way more challenging than anything you'd see as a drum set player, and they usually have a lot of dynamics.        ( Which you should be sight reading as much as the rhythms. )

This one I particularly like, but any orchestral snare book will work.

                                       So, in conclusion, definitely use your ears etc, but don't be afraid to work on your eyes! :) 

House Drums and Being a Good Guest

It's been a while, so it's probably time for a rant.
I recently did a workshop at the venue Silence in Guelph. They have a house kit. A really nice Gretsch Catalina kit ( a very good value for the money. I've tried two sets and they both have very gutsy bass drums! ) Unfortunately, it's only about half useable because a lot of the drummers that have played it and used it moronically!
So, let's discuss good house kit etiquette. Because, you know what? If you treat a house kit with care and respect, if it's a decent set of drums at all, it will last FOR YEARS and you won't have to drag your drums in. Also, do you think the club is going to invest in more drums if you destroy them? Not likely.
So let's get started, and I apologize to all my "good guest" friends.

1. Do not over tighten stands
If the stands start new, they just have to tightened enough to stay in place. House cymbal/snare stands by their very nature are going to get moved up and down a lot. You can extend their life by quite a bit by not tightening the crap out of them. Plus it's a major drag to adjust them if you play at a club after some Edward Wrenchands......

2. Do not lose cymbal felts, hi-hat clutches, and sleeves/ wing nuts.
Do us all a favour. Put up and take down each cymbal separately, being careful to put the felts, sleeves and wing nuts back properly BEFORE you go on to the next stand. Cymbals without sleeves get cracked easily, so don't be selfish and in a hurry and mess it up for the next drummer. If you bring your own hi-hat clutch, put the house clutch somewhere safe and put it back afterward, and if you're using the house clutch, IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY PUT IT BACK ON THE STAND AFTER YOU'RE DONE WITH IT!!!!!!!

3. Leave the drum heads as they were
If you must put duct tape, duck ponds, paper towels, paper moons, or blue gummy bears all over the drums, please take them off afterward. Some of us are into that "non-cardboard box" sound! Same goes for putting things in the bass drum, and for Pete's sake, don't cut a port hole into a solid bass drum head! Believe it or not, not everybody is into that!

In closing, if you treat house drums with respect, you demonstrate you respect the music and your fellow drummers. If you don't, well, you are not welcome in my house (drums! )

Rudiment of the week!

Hey everyone,

There has been a lot of talk back and forth about rudiments lately with my fellow bloggers. In honour of that, I have decided every week I will take one of the 40 international drum rudiments and try to see what I can do with it. Everyone can follow along at home, or try one of your own.

This week I picked the double drag tap.

It looks like this:

I picked this for a couple of reasons. One, I hardly ever use drag or ruff ideas and two, I feel that mine could use a lot of work.

I worked on it for about an hour today. First I played it as is, being careful to play it marching style (ruffs as 2 distinct notes) and classical style (ruffs as short buzzes).

Then I tried playing light four on the bass drum and high-hat on 2 and 4, sung a standard tune (Softly as in a Morning Sunrise if I recall correctly) and played the drag as:

-continuous 8th notes, creating a 3 8th note figure.

-quarter note triplets, so the above example would take 1 bar to complete.

Next I moved the accented note to the toms and played the rest on the snare.

Then I put the accented note on the bass drum, rest of drag on the snare.

Then accented note on hi-hat, rest on snare.

Accented note on open hi-hat/bass drum double stop, rest on snare.

Right hand on floor tom, left hand on snare or small tom, ruffs on bass drum.

Same as one before it but ruffs on Hi-Hat with foot. (I had to play the rudiment as quarter notes and at a medium tempo I could still barely manage it.)

Accented notes on bass drum and cymbal, rest of drag anywhere I felt like.

Finally, i started to try to play the ruffs between bass drum and hi-hat but ran out of time. Again, this will be a lot easier to explain once I can film it. Stay tuned!