Talk to me about learning drums

[tremolo3]

Best advice I can give is to actually hit everything properly, meaning getting rid of negative thoughts like: "what would my neighbors think?" "am I too loud?" "am I hitting them too hard?" "will my cymbals break?".

It's an expensive instrument as in it requires constant maintenance, but a minimal 3pc setup can do wonders when do it right.

Other than that, the same advice for every other discipline: practice and be consistent.

[manymanyhaha]

This is awesome; I love that you've found something that works for you while struggling to coordinate your feet with the rhythm. I think that's one of my bigger worries when learning the drums, but it's good to know I can work my way around it.

Yeah, The Struggles:

1) Keeping a drummer
2) Programming drum machines (especially when in the creative moment, and have them sound live and not like ubiquitous samples)
3) Coordinating feet and hands

Problems solved!

I loop the drums so I can start playing, creating, exploring over them. The current struggle is making these spontaneously made loops evolve over time so as to not stagnate. There are surprisingly few real-time beat manipulation tools out there that don't sound like cliched electronica. If Xfer Nerve could do real-time multi-channel input, that would be ideal. But it doesn't.

[JonnyAngle]

Step 1: four on the floor
Step 2: amen brother
Step 3: give up because all other beats are hardAF

[MrNovember]

Step 1: four on the floor
Step 2: amen brother
Step 3: give up because all other beats are hardAF

This seems....likely

[Invisible Man]

I typed up a response then lost it.

If I were starting this again, I’d buy a simple, cheap percussion setup. Small kick, snare, hi hats, a cymbal, a floor tom. You can do a ton with that, especially if you supplement it with weird percussion, which can be scrounged or had cheaply / made up. Shitty drums can sound really good / interesting with a little tuning and some decent heads. Cymbals cannot be faked. They are worth spending money on.

If that turns out to be fun, I’d buy a mid-level electronic kit. Listening to someone practice drums is basically low-grade torture. If you’re playing a lot, and stumbling (and who doesn’t), you’ll ruin relationships. And if you want to integrate synths, e drums are much cleaner (midi /usb out). My studio is 100% geared toward recording when everyone is asleep, and it’s awesome. Also - e drums are 90-95% of the way there is terms of feel, though there is no substitute for acoustic drums that costs less than $7k. The Roland TD-17KVX is very, very good, but not perfect, for example, and I bought a used one for $1200.

Synth + drums is ideal for improvised textural jams. Love to talk more about that. Here are some sketches with e drums controlling eurorack:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tz46zpmppnarw ... e.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/672vz4nnjpaey ... e.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pz8mggkxolspwuz/HiLo.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjlgs35eg49nu ... 1.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9q5g6g5rgnqm5 ... n.wav?dl=0

[MrNovember]

So I've been practicing pretty religiously for the past week on a practice pad and I've already seen a pretty obvious improvement. Two things I've noticed:
1) my left hand feels...weird? I find holding the drum stick in my right hand feels totally natural, but it just feels off in my left hand. I've watch a few videos on grip techniques and I try to emulate what I do with my right hand, but it's still just kind of weird
2) practicing to a metronome gets boring quick. I usually give up after 10-15 minutes. Practicing along to songs I like is super fun and I can practice for hours. Currently watching random KEXP live videos and just practicing while I watch

[Schlatte]

nice! playing or practicing to songs you like is da way.
what really helped me develop my left hand coordination is just swapping the left and right, so on the beats where you would usually hit with your right one, you go with left and vice versa. it opens up a whole new realm of struggle

[mcatano]

I would look for a PDF of Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone and work through that book with a metronome.

Agreed with everyone else that there's absolutely no substitute for an acoustic kit; the way you hit the drums and how you learn to balance the volume between the individual parts of the kit are not things you can learn playing practice pads or e-drums.

I'm by no means a world class drummer or anything, but I've been playing a long-ass time and the one thing I know I can do is get behind any drum kit no matter how rickety or badly tuned or falling apart or roto-tom equipped it may be and pull a good sound out of it. It's not rocket science or magic or anything, but I don't think I would be any good at listening to how my drums sound in the room if I'd not had to spend years wrestling with ping-y cymbals in a concrete garage or borrowed kits at a million shitty shows.

[MrNovember]

I am tempted:
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-drum-percussion ... 1506272415

I wonder what he'd consider are interesting trades