attn: drummers

can you recommend some good books that teach metal drumming?

i'm thinking of starting drum set lessons but i want a supplement too

can't recommend any books...i don't know if it's the kind of thing you can really teach someone through text. it's all about independent coordination. like, being able to have your left hand keeping one beat while your right hand is keeping another in double time. for instance, it's generally easier (for me, at least) to keep my right arm moving fast on the hi hats or ride, but if the ride only hits half the time and the rest of the beat is at normal speed, my brain has a hard time naturally transmitting that data to my arms because my right arm is more used to keeping a constant metronome type beat and my left arm is accustomed to keeping the beat on the 2s and 4s (just talking general 4/4 time sigs here), so it's kind of awkward to reverse them, so i have to practice a lot at that. the best practice is to get really good at independent arm and foot movement, like rubbing your stomach and head at the same time in opposite directions, one at half the speed of the other and alternate it. that kind of thing. it's also about the responsiveness of your muscles, especially in your feet when using the kick drum and hi hat peddles. drumming, especially for metal, isn't as much about what you're playing as it is about the technical efficiency with which you're playing it.

  catsonearth said:

can't recommend any books...i don't know if it's the kind of thing you can really teach someone through text. it's all about independent coordination. like, being able to have your left hand keeping one beat while your right hand is keeping another in double time. for instance, it's generally easier (for me, at least) to keep my right arm moving fast on the hi hats or ride, but if the ride only hits half the time and the rest of the beat is at normal speed, my brain has a hard time naturally transmitting that data to my arms because my right arm is more used to keeping a constant metronome type beat and my left arm is accustomed to keeping the beat on the 2s and 4s (just talking general 4/4 time sigs here), so it's kind of awkward to reverse them, so i have to practice a lot at that. the best practice is to get really good at independent arm and foot movement, like rubbing your stomach and head at the same time in opposite directions, one at half the speed of the other and alternate it. that kind of thing. it's also about the responsiveness of your muscles, especially in your feet when using the kick drum and hi hat peddles. drumming, especially for metal, isn't as much about what you're playing as it is about the technical efficiency with which you're playing it.

thanks catsonearth i'll put some of this into practice

you definitely have to play A LOT to be a good metal drummer and need to have strong calve and forearms that can for a marathon of feirce fast playing.

I would highly suggest setting up a quiet double bass pad and even just one other pad for practicing your cordination between double bass and the snare. Practice that 24/7 and excerise a lot and you could be a good metal drummer pretty quick. Especially with most metal drumming its far from technical on musical level as I think catsonearth was saying. Theres a lot of metal records that are just in 4/4 with the double bass blasting and the snare always dropping on the two practically.

On the subject of double bass pedals, I'm in the market for one, and found them to be quite expensive... any suggestions? Not too long ago I picked up a DM5 kit to incorporate something more intuitive than tapping 1 inch squares on a keyboard... drumming has been enjoyable, good endurance exercise too, I think I'm looking to attempt double bass.

  EDGEY said:

On the subject of double bass pedals, I'm in the market for one, and found them to be quite expensive... any suggestions? Not too long ago I picked up a DM5 kit to incorporate something more intuitive than tapping 1 inch squares on a keyboard... drumming has been enjoyable, good endurance exercise too, I think I'm looking to attempt double bass.

i think i have tama, i didn't pay for it though

  EDGEY said:

On the subject of double bass pedals, I'm in the market for one, and found them to be quite expensive... any suggestions? Not too long ago I picked up a DM5 kit to incorporate something more intuitive than tapping 1 inch squares on a keyboard... drumming has been enjoyable, good endurance exercise too, I think I'm looking to attempt double bass.

what if you just get another kick pedal and use one of the tom triggers as a second kick trigger? or buy/make another trigger?

also what do you think of the dm5? i find the pads unplayable, especially after being used to playing real drums.

edit: lol i can sell you a kick pedal and extra triggers if you want

Ide suggest a Iron Cobra Junior for sure best pedal for the price

I really wouldnt suggest paying less than that for a double bass pedal

and like modey was saying another pad and two of the same kind of pedals would be a decent cheaper solution

I have 2 extra PD-7 pads on there now, I used to have a homemade kit... I took a small drum trigger brain, a couple contact mics, taped the contact mics to some wooden dowels, wrapped the dowels in packing leather, and zip-tied them to a milkcrate. It worked pretty good.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2004...807&l=cf85d

I recently aquired a drum kit and I think it is a pretty shit budget beginner one but its cool to have one all the same, I had a friend over the other day who can sort of play and we set up a simple 606 beat off my laptop and he played in time, and I put a few layers of bass and melody with it... it was a lot of fun. But the drum kit just sounds bad basically, and it also ridulously loud compared to the amp I've got. Is there anything easy I can do to make it a bit quieter so its easier to mess around with? I'm not reall worried about losing sound quality at this stage

wtf watmm keeps signing me out weirdz anyway

to get your drums not so blasting loud you want something like THIS

  Coalbucket PI said:

I recently aquired a drum kit and I think it is a pretty shit budget beginner one but its cool to have one all the same, I had a friend over the other day who can sort of play and we set up a simple 606 beat off my laptop and he played in time, and I put a few layers of bass and melody with it... it was a lot of fun. But the drum kit just sounds bad basically, and it also ridulously loud compared to the amp I've got. Is there anything easy I can do to make it a bit quieter so its easier to mess around with? I'm not reall worried about losing sound quality at this stage

i used homemade sticks made out of rolled up polypropylene film (plan printing grade polyfilm) and paper, made a huge difference. also for a while i covered the entire kit except the cymbals in a thick blanket, it realy made everything 'thud' aso opposed to 'boom', or whatever. i guess you could also be boring and use the vic firth pads.

I dont know if boring would be the way to define such a solution or NOT ultra ghetto fabulous maybe would be more fitting hahaha

  Blanket Fort Collapse said:

Especially with most metal drumming its far from technical on musical level as I think catsonearth was saying. Theres a lot of metal records that are just in 4/4 with the double bass blasting and the snare always dropping on the two practically.

he said good drumming, and saying something like that is ignorant and twatty.

just for the record i hate in flames and i think they are shit.

learn beyond the dark sun on drums = you will be king of the percussions

i cant drum :(

get better at wanking

Alot of metal drumming nowadays tends to be mindless blast beats and really fast singles. To do that you just need to practice a simple drum roll between one hand and one foot. The key is that it's not as all powerful as a recording would lead you to believe. Most guys doing that use drum triggers and hit their bass drums so lightly that it would sound like bunnies fucking inside of it when you took the trigger off. The trick is to develop smaller muscle groups. Might not seem obvious at first since you probably already can play faster using the larger muscle groups such as forearm as opposed to wrists or fingers. But once you develop your fingers you'll see that they can move alot more fast. Here's a really well explained example of a guy who is insane at it.

There's alot more to GOOD metal drumming than just playing single strokes as fast as you can. The same way some metal bands playing more complicated things tend to use their backgrounds in other styles of music like jazz can put their talents into a new and interesting context (ie meshuggah) You'd really be best off learning metal by learning something more challenging like jazz, swing patterns, polyrhythms, 4 way independence etc. A good analogy would be how someone getting their feet wet as a dj by jumping right into jungle is going to find it piss easy once they master that and take a stab at mixing house records.

I would suggest getting a book called "advanced techniques for the modern drummer" by jim chapin. It's a great book that basically teaches you to play a basic swing pattern on a ride cymbal and play everything else with every other limb at the same time. I literally programmed all the beats in a piano roll from the book and practice by playing along and keeping track of my progress and bpm threshold for each exercize.

Other than that, set goals for yourself. Figure out where you're ability already is and push it as hard as you can without burning yourself out. It's just like learning ANY instrument. You have to give enough of a fuck about what you're doing to find out on your own what areas need improvement, and how to build on your strengths in a tasteful way. Alot of metal drummers I know all learned how to blast but never anything else. Now the only thing that sets any of them apart is how fast they can do it. Makes it turn from a limited form of expression to a pseudo Olympic sport.

  xxx said:

  essines said:

just for the record i hate in flames and i think they are shit.

 

If they started talking about Satan in Finnish and recorded the sound of someone vomiting pitched down by 50% and sampled the squeal of a slaughtered lamb to play melodies on a sampler, then I guess that's what it would take for you, huh.

d00d i think you just summed up my metal project.

  xxx said:

  modey said:

  xxx said:

  essines said:

just for the record i hate in flames and i think they are shit.

 

If they started talking about Satan in Finnish and recorded the sound of someone vomiting pitched down by 50% and sampled the squeal of a slaughtered lamb to play melodies on a sampler, then I guess that's what it would take for you, huh.

d00d i think you just summed up my metal project.

 

Get that shit committed to disc or mp3, I gotta hear it. I was trying dig into Essines but on further review, I actually like the sound of what I came up with--thereby, agreeing with Essines and thus fucking me yet again in Uroboros fashion.

i haven't finished it yet, i'm releasing an album at the end of the month:

it will contain plenty of "that kind of thing".

so i just started taking drum lessons. a jazz drummer is teaching me his craft. i've been wanting to do this all my life and finally i have a basement with some room to put a kit so i'm going to do that pretty soon. right now i just have a little practice pad so i'm working on it. yall drummers have any tips for a beginner as far as how to practice well and whatnot?

I learned by wearing headphones and playing along to simple stuff, such as nirvana, sabbath, and punk stuff. From there, it got easier to do the more complex. It takes years though fred.

awesome. thanks. yeah lots of rudiments. also i'm working on the double hit right now. that's where i'm at, trying to get a good double hit going.

also, where do you stuff your boner while you're drumming? i have a massive drum boner every time I pick up a pair of sticks.

i have the rest of my life, this is a long term investment. i want to be decent, if not good, when i'm retired.

  Quote

In some ways, jazz drumming can be a little easier because the kick drum is de-emphasized and that's what trips up most beginners.

The thing is that all these jazz drummers make that shit sound so easy. It took me quite some time to learn to play a decent sounding simple swing rhythm that actually swings.

  Quote

Drumming requires endurance so the best tip is to run rudiments like I'm sure your teach has told you to do.

I second this. Rudiments are great. The best thing is that you can play them on a practice pad, but also adapt them to train your indepedence on a full drumkit (for example playing a paradiddle on the toms and snare, with another paradiddle at half tempo with your feet).

*test*