Drum Practice and timing

Hey Chris,

1.When you make something quite complicated to go along with changing time signatures/general amazingness of tim's guitar, do you count in your head the timing or do you just make up what seems to fit the 'feel' of it, treating each little bit as small segments. or does something completely different go through your mind? (generally talking about animals here).

2.Is there anything you'd recommend practising to improve independence? (i've been drumming on and off from the age of 9 and am now 19)

3.Then there's something completely different - the drumming in 'cat fantastic' that i saw posted on youtube. (also loved that song when I saw you guys in Nottingham). It seems the style is quite different. you have the first section that plays like 6 and a bit bars in 4/4 and then changes on the off beat with a crash. how do you keep timing and know where the crash comes etc and the left foot changes to the up-beat?

4.Then what i'd call the 2nd bit which has a hell of a lot going on whilst keeping the left foot going - i'm not even going to ask what's going on there! kind of echoing question 2 about independance - can you recommend anything to improve this kind of wizardry ?

Sorry for the massive list of questions and I know they're not very specific but some vague advice will do

xx

hey!

ok ill try and answer these as best i can

1) On Animals, yeah i used to have to count out his guitar line into phrases... so say this phrase is 13 beats long, i'd look to see where musically the accents in the phrase are and then divide my drum phrase according to that... eg. bar of 3, bar of 4, bar of 4, bar of 2. as long as it adds up to the total length of the guitar phrase you can do anything!

HOWEVER doing anything might not sound right musically. if i just played 3 bars of 3, then a bar of 4, then that might not line up with the guitar line, and therefore sound a mess... does that explain it?! if not, ill try again

For the new stuff, i took a different approach. I didn't want to sit and count out all Tim's guitar lines this time, so i just went with what fit the whole phrase, without counting anything. Just listening and getting a feel and idea as to what might work. For me, this has led to some better drum parts as sometimes the guitar and drums are doing COMPLETELY different things, but somehow they work in the context of the song. i realise what i just said totally negates what i said above in the answer to the Animals drum parts!

So really you can do it either way, I'm moving towards just feeling the music more and not worrying about counting etc. but sometimes its kinda hard when you have half beats and quarter beats thrown in like in Tim's guitar lines!


2) There a book out called '4 Way Co-ordination' by Marvin Dahlgren. I have this but haven't really worked out of it yet. its HARD! theres another which comes recommended which is 'Syncopation' by Ted Reed though i haven't used that one at all. You could always check out the threads on www.drummerworld.com as they are full of useful things by drummers much better than me!


3) Yeah again, thats just something which i thought fit the guitar line pretty well. it didn't need anything crazy in my opinion. i love that guitar line and so i didn't want to get in the way of it.
I can't tell you the timing as i don't know myself I'm afraid! All that i do is play in 4 for most of the phrase, then theres a half beat at the end. I'm just listening to what Tim plays rather than counting my own bars etc, so i only know when the half beat is because I'm listening to the music.

I keep the tambourine on the hihat going on quarter notes throughout, and because the guitar line is something and a half beats, when we go into the second phrase, the tambourine/hihat is now on the offbeat rather than the on beat... The left foot doesn't change at all, its the whole phrase that changes around it, and I just listen to the guitar line to know where i am.

I can try and write it out for you if that would help? Give me a shout.


4) So the second part of the song kinda carries on from the first part. The guitar line is in 5/8, so the main part of the drums (snare, bass, toms, cymbals) are all in 5/8 to mirror the guitar, BUT the hihat/tambourine has continued in 4/4 (just on the quarter notes) so you get some weird overlaps between the tambourine timing and the timing of the main drum part.

Its a bit of a weird feeling as you kinda feel off balance, but its just practice. The best way to practice anything like this is just to do it REALLY SLOWLY. this is key. your muscles have to learn where they need to be so that you can play it without thinking. the only way to do this is lots of repetitions of the thing you are trying to practice, and do them slowly so you can be accurate and your muscles gradually know where they need to be. once you understand where everything should go, then you slowly speed it up. theres no point playing fast, if it sounds a mess



Hope this helps! i didn't realise how hard it is trying to explain these things

Wow yeah, helps a lot!

Thanks so much for replying so quickly and in so much detail!

I haven't actually got access to a drum kit right now because i'm at uni which is absolutely killing me sometimes. but i've been air-drumming along to cat fantastic and get exactly what you mean now! especially with the 5/8 bit, it doesn't seem so strange now that i know to count in 5/8. Band practice tomorrow so i'll definitely use some of what you said when coming up with some new stuff!

Can't wait to be able to hear everyting in detail (guitar especially because it's kinda hard to hear what's going on) on that track when you release the record.

Love the amount of effort you must have put into explaining that - thanks bro.

-Ross

Oh also, another question (easier this time!) can you play guitar at all or any piano? and if so does that help at all with drums?

Hey Ross,
Yeah i don't have a kit either, i know your pain!

I used to play piano and a little guitar too, but not anymore - i'm not sure they would help really as Tim's riff are just too crazy sometimes!