INGO Drummer/Percussionist Thread

[Leo]

As a grandparent that also has a drum student often in my house, a practice pad is much better for practice, at least while I am home. <rim shot, cymbol crash >

 

[cbhausen]

I took @Twangbanger advice and got a little Evens Real Feel practice pad which has a really nice bounce to it so I can learn some stick control.

I also added a second crash cymbal to my little toy drum set makes it more fun to play. Each one is tuned to a slightly different pitch so you can tell which one to play first when listening to a song where the drummer is playing two slightly different size crashes. It adds a lot of character to the music when the two crash cymbal sound slightly different rather than playing the same one two times.

I’m jamming along having a great time with the simple stuff but overreaching a bit when I try to do some shuffle beats. I’m really into the Jeff Porcaro stuff but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play it. I play what I can and simplify the rest and have a lot of fun doing it.

My current dilemma is I feel like playing along with a song is doing a video game like rock band. I’m trying to remember the fills and hit them right and not doing very well at it. And when I do hit a fill just right I’m out of time with the groove. I feel like I’m doing it backwards. I need to get the groove down first then play the fill over the top of it to get it all to come together. I also have a very discriminating ear so I’m very critical of myself when I don’t get the beats that should be right on top of one another exactly together. It drives me nuts when I can’t hit the snare and the kick drum or the snare and the hi hat together.

Next step is I’m thinking about getting a Drumeo subscription and doing this right from the ground up before I develop any more bad habits which I know I have many. But it’s still fun despite me being such a damn perfectionist so I guess that counts for something.

 

[jbombelli]

I took @Twangbanger advice and got a little Evens Real Feel practice pad which has a really nice bounce to it so I can learn some stick control.

I also added a second crash cymbal to my little toy drum set makes it more fun to play. Each one is tuned to a slightly different pitch so you can tell which one to play first when listening to a song where the drummer is playing two slightly different size crashes. It adds a lot of character to the music when the two crash cymbal sound slightly different rather than playing the same one two times.

I’m jamming along having a great time with the simple stuff but overreaching a bit when I try to do some shuffle beats. I’m really into the Jeff Porcaro stuff but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play it. I play what I can and simplify the rest and have a lot of fun doing it.

My current dilemma is I feel like playing along with a song is doing a video game like rock band. I’m trying to remember the fills and hit them right and not doing very well at it. And when I do hit a fill just right I’m out of time with the groove. I feel like I’m doing it backwards. I need to get the groove down first then play the fill over the top of it to get it all to come together. I also have a very discriminating ear so I’m very critical of myself when I don’t get the beats that should be right on top of one another exactly together. It drives me nuts when I can’t hit the snare and the kick drum or the snare and the hi hat together.

Next step is I’m thinking about getting a Drumeo subscription and doing this right from the ground up before I develop any more bad habits which I know I have many. But it’s still fun despite me being such a damn perfectionist so I guess that counts for something.

You'll always be your own worst critic. I can't tell you how many times I've been practicing and just wanted to throw my sticks across the room and yell "I F'ING SUCK!!!" only to have other people tell me how good I am.

 

[gregkl]

No musical ability here. I can't tune a radio without getting static!

But I keep thinking about learning how to play a musical instrument during my retirement years. I could use a hobby that doesn't have a lot in the way of consumables(i.e. shooting).

How does one know if they have any innate ability to learn how to play something? I have been interested in electric guitar and piano in the past, but recently have been watching Sina on YouTube and been thinking that drumming could be cool.

Is there a way to decide what instrument would be the best one for a person to pursue?

I struggle with "hearing" the beat. When my wife and I were taking ballroom dancing lessons, you learn the steps and follow the beat/timing. I could do one of the other but not both. Hence I never learned how to do it.

 

[cbhausen]

No musical ability here. I can't tune a radio without getting static!

But I keep thinking about learning how to play a musical instrument during my retirement years. I could use a hobby that doesn't have a lot in the way of consumables(i.e. shooting).

How does one know if they have any innate ability to learn how to play something? I have been interested in electric guitar and piano in the past, but recently have been watching Sina on YouTube and been thinking that drumming could be cool.

Is there a way to decide what instrument would be the best one for a person to pursue?

I struggle with "hearing" the beat. When my wife and I were taking ballroom dancing lessons, you learn the steps and follow the beat/timing. I could do one of the other but not both. Hence I never learned how to do it.

I found this (please, no offense intended if this is targeted toward those more senior then you

Best Musical Instruments that Senior Citizens can Easily Learn | Easiest Musical Instrument To Learn For Seniors

Learning to play an instrument at an older age seems difficult for some people. Read this blog to know more about best musical instruments that senior citizens

www.seniority.in

Good luck with your musical journey!

 

[littletommy]

I’m well over a month in with my Alesis drums, and I’ll tell ya, they are a blast! I bought the expansion pack that adds another tom and cymbal, and it is just the most fun of any instrument I’ve ever played. Playing with a metronome is a good time too, and I can tell that I’ve improved a ton over the last month. I’ve already recorded a few songs using these, and actually got a decent amount of streams on Spotify!

 

[gregkl]

I found this (please, no offense intended if this is targeted toward those more senior then you

Best Musical Instruments that Senior Citizens can Easily Learn | Easiest Musical Instrument To Learn For Seniors

Learning to play an instrument at an older age seems difficult for some people. Read this blog to know more about best musical instruments that senior citizens

www.seniority.in

Good luck with your musical journey!

I saw that and some other sites. I may not be that "senior" yet, but I will be by the time I retire,lol.

Thinking a digital piano might be the way to go. According to the stuff I read, piano works well as you age.

Plus, I have always liked the instrument; Billy Joel, Nora Jones, Gamazda(YouTuber), Elton John and of course the great classical musicians.

I would try to learn how to play rock stuff mostly, I think.

 

[cbhausen]

I saw that and some other sites. I may not be that "senior" yet, but I will be by the time I retire,lol.

Thinking a digital piano might be the way to go. According to the stuff I read, piano works well as you age.

Plus, I have always liked the instrument; Billy Joel, Nora Jones, Gamazda(YouTuber), Elton John and of course the great classical musicians.

I would try to learn how to play rock stuff mostly, I think.

If you want to learn music theory and read music, piano is definitely the way to go. 88 keys on a full sized keyboard, each one tuned differently. Not like a guitar where there could be several different ways to play the same note or chord. The foundational instrument for nearly every musician.

 

[gregkl]

If you want to learn music theory and read music, piano is definitely the way to go. 88 keys on a full sized keyboard, each one tuned differently. Not like a guitar where there could be several different ways to play the same note or chord. The foundational instrument for nearly every musician.

That was one of the things I read was that the notes are right there in front of you. Put together in a way that seems logical. Which is what I like.

Plus, my fingers/hands can handle the keyboard better than the fret board!

 

[Leo]

That was one of the things I read was that the notes are right there in front of you. Put together in a way that seems logical. Which is what I like.

Plus, my fingers/hands can handle the keyboard better than the fret board!

Think about what kind of music that you most often listen. Think about what makes you happy. As much as I respect all kinds of music, some genre are more inspiring for me to play than others. Pick the instrument that is the best for your music.

Spend some time with people that play music. I have seen only a few musicians that are not willing to put an instrument in the hands of a new person and let them try. I have a good weighted keyboard and more guitars and amps than I want to brag about. I am always willing to invite someone over to try a few. I never meant it to happen, but I am giving lessons pretty often these days.

The comment about a piano is correct. Hold three fingers across 5 white keys and you have a major, Move the middle finger left to a black key, you have a minor. Push a pinku out to add a 7th. That is consistent to the length of the keyboard.

Any music recorded on a guitar is natural to play on a guitar. I also have good success with Miles Davis style jazz solos because his trumpet plays one note at a time. Billy Joel songs are written for piano. I struggle to not be choppy on them because on the piano, he just adds a thumb and moves his pinky for the next beat, a guitarist has to let go of everything, twist his hand a whole different way and slide 3 frets down the neck to catch the next chord tone, all in a fraction of a second. Of course when you let go, all the notes that you want to sustain go away.

The good thing about a guitar is I can hang it on my back and go anywhere, Pretty hard to do that with a piano.

 

[gregkl]

Think about what kind of music that you most often listen. Think about what makes you happy. As much as I respect all kinds of music, some genre are more inspiring for me to play than others. Pick the instrument that is the best for your music.

Spend some time with people that play music. I have seen only a few musicians that are not willing to put an instrument in the hands of a new person and let them try. I have a good weighted keyboard and more guitars and amps than I want to brag about. I am always willing to invite someone over to try a few. I never meant it to happen, but I am giving lessons pretty often these days.

The comment about a piano is correct. Hold three fingers across 5 white keys and you have a major, Move the middle finger left to a black key, you have a minor. Push a pinku out to add a 7th. That is consistent to the length of the keyboard.

Any music recorded on a guitar is natural to play on a guitar. I also have good success with Miles Davis style jazz solos because his trumpet plays one note at a time. Billy Joel songs are written for piano. I struggle to not be choppy on them because on the piano, he just adds a thumb and moves his pinky for the next beat, a guitarist has to let go of everything, twist his hand a whole different way and slide 3 frets down the neck to catch the next chord tone, all in a fraction of a second. Of course when you let go, all the notes that you want to sustain go away.

The good thing about a guitar is I can hang it on my back and go anywhere, Pretty hard to do that with a piano.

Thanks. Good advice. I can listen to guys like Billy Joel and Elton John all day long. Rock is my genre for sure. I mentioned Gamazda. She is from another country and possibly only plays on YouTube but she covers songs I like. Of course, she is amazing and I realize there are not enough heartbeats left in me to get like that, lol.

I actually like her cover of Dream On better then Steven Tyler's!

As far as portability, I'm not planning on taking it anywhere. Playing will be a hobby for me almost exclusively. Something to challenge my mind as I age.

I have learned watching my 94 year old mother, that keeping your mind challenged helps with aging. I plan on following in her footsteps.

 

[Leo]

I forgot one good thing about a piano. If you check craigslist and marketplace, you can usually find some pretty good pianos free to a good home. A lot of churches and schools give them away too, and those are usually in perfect shape and have had the tuning touched up not long ago.

Sadly, most Churches have this same story. They try to give a piano (or a really nice organ) away for 6 months, running ads in the paper. They call around to all the churches in poor areas and offer to pay the delivery if they want it. Eventually we rent a Uhaul and load it up, pushing it off the tail gate into the dump.

Something in my heart dies seeing a good quality instrument in perfect shape roll into a scrap heap. When the front loader operator pushes it into the pile, it nearly brings tears to my eye. An old retired Pastor told me he saw dozens of pianos drop in the dump and still felt bad about the waste.

We once had a complete drum set for sale, the first guy bought it but the phone still rang several times a day for a couple weeks. Different times.

 

[gregkl]

I forgot one good thing about a piano. If you check craigslist and marketplace, you can usually find some pretty good pianos free to a good home. A lot of churches and schools give them away too, and those are usually in perfect shape and have had the tuning touched up not long ago.

Sadly, most Churches have this same story. They try to give a piano (or a really nice organ) away for 6 months, running ads in the paper. They call around to all the churches in poor areas and offer to pay the delivery if they want it. Eventually we rent a Uhaul and load it up, pushing it off the tail gate into the dump.

Something in my heart dies seeing a good quality instrument in perfect shape roll into a scrap heap. When the front loader operator pushes it into the pile, it nearly brings tears to my eye. An old retired Pastor told me he saw dozens of pianos drop in the dump and still felt bad about the waste.

We once had a complete drum set for sale, the first guy bought it but the phone still rang several times a day for a couple weeks. Different times.

I would be looking at a digital piano. It might be heavy but I could move it around easily. Had an acoustic upright. Been there done that. They just don't fit in my homes nicely.

 

[Twangbanger]

I took @Twangbanger advice and got a little Evens Real Feel practice pad which has a really nice bounce to it so I can learn some stick control.

I also added a second crash cymbal to my little toy drum set makes it more fun to play. Each one is tuned to a slightly different pitch so you can tell which one to play first when listening to a song where the drummer is playing two slightly different size crashes. It adds a lot of character to the music when the two crash cymbal sound slightly different rather than playing the same one two times.

I’m jamming along having a great time with the simple stuff but overreaching a bit when I try to do some shuffle beats. I’m really into the Jeff Porcaro stuff but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play it. I play what I can and simplify the rest and have a lot of fun doing it.

My current dilemma is I feel like playing along with a song is doing a video game like rock band. I’m trying to remember the fills and hit them right and not doing very well at it. And when I do hit a fill just right I’m out of time with the groove. I feel like I’m doing it backwards. I need to get the groove down first then play the fill over the top of it to get it all to come together. I also have a very discriminating ear so I’m very critical of myself when I don’t get the beats that should be right on top of one another exactly together. It drives me nuts when I can’t hit the snare and the kick drum or the snare and the hi hat together.

Next step is I’m thinking about getting a Drumeo subscription and doing this right from the ground up before I develop any more bad habits which I know I have many. But it’s still fun despite me being such a damn perfectionist so I guess that counts for something.

Everybody is bad at moving in and out of fills from the groove, in the beginning. There are 3 keys:

1) The fill has to be simple. (Dirt simple = effective).

2) You have to practice it until you're sick of it. (If you lose interest and move on to the next cool fill, you'll never really get the first one nailed).

3) You have to practice it SLOW. By that, I mean...S---L---O---W. So slow, it's mentally painful. So slow, you cannot stand it. Talking like, you need to set the metronome at quarter note equals between 60 and 80 bpm. And then be nailing it perfectly at that speed.

4) (bonus material)...choose a fill that integrates the kick into the fill, so you're using your whole body.

The "slow" thing is true for all instruments. If you really want to know if you can play something, play it slow. Speed covers up a lot of imprecision and mistakes. For drums, I often find that slowing something down makes it harder. The shuffle grooves you mentioned are the classic example. It's easy to play a half-assed rendition of a shuffle when you're breezing through it quickly. When you slow it down, that's where it gets wobbly and you really find out where your problem is. (For example the high-hat wash in the Bonham "Fool in the Rain" shuffle, slowing it down until the opening and the closing are two distinct, separate movements).

If all you do is play along with songs at full speed, you will not get good at fills. You have to turn-off the recorded song for a while, slow the groove + fill down with a metronome, and get into a "trancelike" state, doing it over and over, slowly. It's not going to necessarily be fun at first, but you have to develop the ability to make it fun for yourself. This is what drumming really is. Learning the movements of drumming takes slow, boring, repetition, and doing it slow is how you learn. Aim for spending half to 1.0 as much time doing this, as you do playing along with music at full speed.

 

[littletommy]

One of the hardest things I’ve encountered with my new drums was playing a slow blues beat! Way more difficult than a standard rock pattern. I’ve always loved Led Zeppelins “I’m gonna crawl” and it sounds pretty simple to play on drums, right? Wrong, way wrong. It’s even more impressive to me than say kashmir, but not as frikken cool as “in my time of dying”.

 

[Leo]

One of the hardest things I’ve encountered with my new drums was playing a slow blues beat! Way more difficult than a standard rock pattern. I’ve always loved Led Zeppelins “I’m gonna crawl” and it sounds pretty simple to play on drums, right? Wrong, way wrong. It’s even more impressive to me than say kashmir, but not as frikken cool as “in my time of dying”.

I feel your pain, there are songs I have been working on for years and have not done them justice yet.

While I am far from a drummer, sometimes it is easier to get that slow, heavy groove in 6/8 if you are used to rocking in 4/4. Since a lot of jazz and the bluesy jazz depends on the back beat on 2 & 4 instead of the first beat on 1, that messes with me too.

Sometimes I just strum a simple rhythm along with the recording over and over until it is so ingrained that I even walk to that beat. I am no master, just a struggling student.

I still often practice with a metronome or the drum function on my BOSS looper pedal.

If you really want to screw up your mind, there is Dave Brubecks "Take Five" that is in 5/4 time signature. Even my looper pedal cannot play in 5/4.

Don't give up

 

[littletommy]

I feel your pain, there are songs I have been working on for years and have not done them justice yet.

While I am far from a drummer, sometimes it is easier to get that slow, heavy groove in 6/8 if you are used to rocking in 4/4. Since a lot of jazz and the bluesy jazz depends on the back beat on 2 & 4 instead of the first beat on 1, that messes with me too.

Sometimes I just strum a simple rhythm along with the recording over and over until it is so ingrained that I even walk to that beat. I am no master, just a struggling student.

I still often practice with a metronome or the drum function on my BOSS looper pedal.

If you really want to screw up your mind, there is Dave Brubecks "Take Five" that is in 5/4 time signature. Even my looper pedal cannot play in 5/4.

Don't give up

I try to play to a metronome at least a half hour a day, so I’m getting better, just need to work in some different fills here and there. My drum module has a metronome built in, and I just found out yesterday it has a built in recording feature, which is a big deal for me because I usually record everything while practicing. Before, I would have to take up space on my digital multitrack machine.

 

[littletommy]

Here’s a short video of me with my Alesis surge electronic drums. I did the video with my iPhone, and ran the drums through a Behringer 12 channel mixer, and into a zoom R16 digital multitrack.

 

[Twangbanger]

Here’s a short video of me with my Alesis surge electronic drums. I did the video with my iPhone, and ran the drums through a Behringer 12 channel mixer, and into a zoom R16 digital multitrack.

Recording yourself is huge. I hate doing it! I would rather watch anything than see myself play...

 

[armalitesheepdog]

Old Joke....
What do you call a guy that sleeps till 11, doesn't have a job and lives with his girlfriend.............A Drummer.