This guy skips all the hard stuff
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Left Foot
So the last couple of days I've been trying to do research on the best technique for left foot work. Sadly, the answer (like with so much of drumming) seems to be "do whatever works for you." This is not helpful advice when you don't know what works yet.
I've got a packet of problems which mostly add up to
1. No endurance in my left foot
2. Independence problems
3. Injured left foot
For some reason, increasing speed with the left foot also just seems harder than with the right...I think because you don't get the rebound.
Anyway, I'm really frustrated. I keep thinking I'm going to find some key to make it easier...but I suppose it just comes down to repetition.
I've got a packet of problems which mostly add up to
1. No endurance in my left foot
2. Independence problems
3. Injured left foot
For some reason, increasing speed with the left foot also just seems harder than with the right...I think because you don't get the rebound.
Anyway, I'm really frustrated. I keep thinking I'm going to find some key to make it easier...but I suppose it just comes down to repetition.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Lately and Detroit 442 update
My posts are becoming more navel-gazey and less informative. So here's the update on Detroit 442:
Sunday I sat down and played the damn thing front to back all the way through the first time without a hitch. I've altered the extended chorus section, but it has the feel of the original and I'm still hauling ass there and not really giving up on the hard stuff. I kinda think the original version has too many fills there anyway.
I think I've mentioned before that I have about one great playing day, one lousy playing day, and five middle of the road playing days a week. Sunday was the great day. Couldn't do a single thing wrong. I worry that Tuesday's rehearsal...where I must display all of this talent...will be when my body and brain decide to stop talking to one another. But oh well...
11:59 is still a bear and I've kind of given up on the left foot stuff for the moment. I think I'll get all of the rest of it just fine soon. Honestly I'm sure that no one would be any the wiser if I left out the open hi hat stuff at the gig...but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of trying to learn this Clem Burke stuff. I haven't decided what I'll do yet. I've got almost 12 weeks to work it out or give up. It is such a depressing thing that it is hard to focus on for too long without getting totally discouraged...so I'm trying to not worry about it.
Sunday I sat down and played the damn thing front to back all the way through the first time without a hitch. I've altered the extended chorus section, but it has the feel of the original and I'm still hauling ass there and not really giving up on the hard stuff. I kinda think the original version has too many fills there anyway.
I think I've mentioned before that I have about one great playing day, one lousy playing day, and five middle of the road playing days a week. Sunday was the great day. Couldn't do a single thing wrong. I worry that Tuesday's rehearsal...where I must display all of this talent...will be when my body and brain decide to stop talking to one another. But oh well...
11:59 is still a bear and I've kind of given up on the left foot stuff for the moment. I think I'll get all of the rest of it just fine soon. Honestly I'm sure that no one would be any the wiser if I left out the open hi hat stuff at the gig...but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of trying to learn this Clem Burke stuff. I haven't decided what I'll do yet. I've got almost 12 weeks to work it out or give up. It is such a depressing thing that it is hard to focus on for too long without getting totally discouraged...so I'm trying to not worry about it.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Oh Yes
This only marginally fits on this blog...but it's going here anyway.
I said I keep you around to keep me honest
Around to keep me clean
Shining fluorence
You said as long as you feel ok
As long as you're getting out of bed each day
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
Oh
I said you hold this isthmus in your hands
It's the only place I can land
I am a prop airplane
You said as long as you're showing up on time
As long as they believe that you're really smiling
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
What if I could do better?
Oh
...
I said it must be my foreign blood
I'm mean I'm Dutch
I think that they are known for bad behavior
I just get so low
You said as long as your eyes are wide
As long as your throat is open
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
Well I'm gonna die trying
I said I keep you around to keep me honest
Around to keep me clean
Shining fluorence
You said as long as you feel ok
As long as you're getting out of bed each day
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
Oh
I said you hold this isthmus in your hands
It's the only place I can land
I am a prop airplane
You said as long as you're showing up on time
As long as they believe that you're really smiling
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
What if I could do better?
Oh
...
I said it must be my foreign blood
I'm mean I'm Dutch
I think that they are known for bad behavior
I just get so low
You said as long as your eyes are wide
As long as your throat is open
As long as you're doing your best
But what if this is not my best
But what if this is not my best
Well I'm gonna die trying
Monday, August 1, 2011
Lately and Detroit 442 and 11:59 Update
So a couple of weeks ago I was hoping for some major breakthroughs. It didn't happen quite as I'd hoped. And since then I've been busy and a little discouraged and haven't been working on it much. Yesterday I sat down and, much to my surprise, I can now play Detroit 442. I'm cheating just a hair on the floor tom to snare fills...but for the most part the song is in serviceable shape start to finish and will only improve with practice now. It feels a little like magic, though I know that the work I put in a few weeks ago has probably been cooking in the back of my brain ever since...so it isn't really magic at all. The song actually feels a little slow to me now, and I have to work really hard not to rush. Considering I thought it was too fast for me to play just a month or so ago, this is very strange indeed. Riding the floor tom is still stupid fast...but the rest doesn't feel so fast anymore.
Of course, in that way that I never give myself any credit, I've moved on to feeling stupid and lame about other things I can't do now. I'm still really struggling with the hi hat opens on 11:59 (though the independence between bass and hi hat hand is getting better)...and after seeing a friend play last weekend with ease and grace and finesse...I feel like I'll never be that good. Playing hard things and making them look easy to the point where the untrained eye would think you aren't doing much at all...that's impressive.
I was having a pity party late Saturday night about all the lost time in my past. For 7 years I sat alone in my room during middle school and high school for hours every night. I knew that I wanted to be a musician, but I did so little to push that forward. Sure, I taught myself guitar during that period, but I really didn't move very far forward with it (note to parents...the primary reasons I don't think I moved far forward were...#1 my parents did not see my true passion and therefore did not foster it with music lessons on guitar #2 my parents bought me a shitty guitar. I still have it and love it...but it is not physically possible to play barre chords on that, and so I never went beyond open chords in first position). I'm not blaming my parents because they gave me everything they could and did their very best. I was lucky and treated well. No I mostly blame myself and really have no idea why I didn't work harder. Beyond that, I'm sad that I didn't figure out that I wanted to play drums until I was an adult. You really can't beat the discipline of playing drums in a high school marching band or kit in a high school jazz band. The fundamentals are just mind blowing and I never had that.
Of course...there are flip sides to all of this. I can't deny that playing the cello gave me the basis for teaching myself both guitar and bass. Sometimes I still think in terms of the cello. Someone who is trying to learn the bass recently mentioned to me that the hardest thing for her is remembering the names of the notes and where they are. I beat myself up alot for not having a total mastery of the fretboard...but at a very basic level I know the notes. And I can't say when or how I learned that...it just came from playing the cello. I wouldn't know how to tell someone to learn that except...play the cello for 20 years...which is not helpful advice. It is not unlike "if you'd played drums in your high school band you'd be able to do that."
So I am where I am. I have to start where I am and move forward. The alternative is not moving forward...and then I will be even more sad 30 years from now. And I have to cut myself a break and acknowelege that I do make improvements and that I am light-years away from where I was in December 2005 when I bought that drum kit on a whim. I am even light-years away from where I was when I started learning Detroit 442 a month or so ago. Progress happens whether I see it or not and whether I give myself credit or not.
"What if this is not my best? Well I'm gonna die trying."
Of course, in that way that I never give myself any credit, I've moved on to feeling stupid and lame about other things I can't do now. I'm still really struggling with the hi hat opens on 11:59 (though the independence between bass and hi hat hand is getting better)...and after seeing a friend play last weekend with ease and grace and finesse...I feel like I'll never be that good. Playing hard things and making them look easy to the point where the untrained eye would think you aren't doing much at all...that's impressive.
I was having a pity party late Saturday night about all the lost time in my past. For 7 years I sat alone in my room during middle school and high school for hours every night. I knew that I wanted to be a musician, but I did so little to push that forward. Sure, I taught myself guitar during that period, but I really didn't move very far forward with it (note to parents...the primary reasons I don't think I moved far forward were...#1 my parents did not see my true passion and therefore did not foster it with music lessons on guitar #2 my parents bought me a shitty guitar. I still have it and love it...but it is not physically possible to play barre chords on that, and so I never went beyond open chords in first position). I'm not blaming my parents because they gave me everything they could and did their very best. I was lucky and treated well. No I mostly blame myself and really have no idea why I didn't work harder. Beyond that, I'm sad that I didn't figure out that I wanted to play drums until I was an adult. You really can't beat the discipline of playing drums in a high school marching band or kit in a high school jazz band. The fundamentals are just mind blowing and I never had that.
Of course...there are flip sides to all of this. I can't deny that playing the cello gave me the basis for teaching myself both guitar and bass. Sometimes I still think in terms of the cello. Someone who is trying to learn the bass recently mentioned to me that the hardest thing for her is remembering the names of the notes and where they are. I beat myself up alot for not having a total mastery of the fretboard...but at a very basic level I know the notes. And I can't say when or how I learned that...it just came from playing the cello. I wouldn't know how to tell someone to learn that except...play the cello for 20 years...which is not helpful advice. It is not unlike "if you'd played drums in your high school band you'd be able to do that."
So I am where I am. I have to start where I am and move forward. The alternative is not moving forward...and then I will be even more sad 30 years from now. And I have to cut myself a break and acknowelege that I do make improvements and that I am light-years away from where I was in December 2005 when I bought that drum kit on a whim. I am even light-years away from where I was when I started learning Detroit 442 a month or so ago. Progress happens whether I see it or not and whether I give myself credit or not.
"What if this is not my best? Well I'm gonna die trying."
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tuning Drums
So...for the first several years I owned drums I never tuned them. The first time it ever came up was when we recorded the SPB album. The engineer came over to my house to track drums and played them and then had to tune them all. Looking back, he could not have possibly done a thorough job given the amount of time he spent...but it was still the most that had happened to those drums since I bought them (though I HAD replaced all of the heads, so I must have done SOME kind of tuning). Anyway...I proceeded not to touch them again for over a year after that. I remember Diaper Daniels from Cribshitter commenting that he always thought it was hilarious how low I had my snare tuned...like I was doing that on purpose, for effect. Ha.
So when I started taking lessons with EN we talked a bit about tuning and I brought a snare in and he gave me the basics. I bought a Drum Dial and a ratching key. All good stuff. But I still didn't really know what I was doing in terms of sound. When you ask someone about tuning drums the answer is ALWAYS "it's just personal preference." Well what the hell does that mean?
So after being unhappy with my sound both at the Wisco and at Legends, I started thinking that I ought to take my kit to Drums N Moore and have him teach me to tune it. Then, daunted by this prospect and realizing how stupid I was being, I took my extra 12" black tom (which I don't use) and sat down with it and screwed around. Here's what I learned.
1) When the top head is tighter than the bottom, the sound is sharp and "choked". I never really understood what "choked" meant before...but having heard it now I do. This is how my drums had generally been tuned because I was going by the settings recommended in the brochure that came with my Drum Dial. This was the sound quality I'd been hearing and not liking. Restrained. Not boomy. Not ringing out. Not full. Just dead sounding. Focused, but dead. This seems like the perfect kind of sound for a snare drum...but not what I wanted from my toms.
2) When the top head is looser than the bottom, the sound is flappy. Unfocused. Generally just not good to my ear.
3) When the top head is about the same tension as the bottom, the sound booms. It is full and loud. This is the sound I was looking for from my toms.
4) Generally I had tended to tune toms in the lower range, where sometimes there was even a loose lug still. This makes the tuning hard to control. So now I think it is best to start with all lugs finger tight plus perhaps a quarter turn at least...then tune up from there.
5) I'll have to double check my notes, but I think I have the 12" at 75, the 13" at 73, and the 16" at 70 or so. My maple snare I tuned to 82 on bottom and 88 on top. I'm still figuring out the steel snare. It is hard to make it sound good.
6) The bass drum is tough to tune. I'm still figuring it out. I got the black kit to sound pretty good with equal tension on resonant and batter. I think around 75. I don't have much muffling in this drum and it has a powerstroke 3 on the batter. The red bass drum I still can't get. 75 was way too tight...it made my leg hurt to play it at that high of tension. I think I've got it down to more like 65 now. This drum has more muffling and an old coated emperor batter head. With both bass drums it was really hard to get the lugs to all be at the same tension. I don't know if the drums are warped or if the heads don't sit flush or if the port causes uneven tension.
After I tuned the black kit I thought I had it all figured out...but the red kit didn't sound good at the same settings and I'm having to mess with the black one more.
So when I started taking lessons with EN we talked a bit about tuning and I brought a snare in and he gave me the basics. I bought a Drum Dial and a ratching key. All good stuff. But I still didn't really know what I was doing in terms of sound. When you ask someone about tuning drums the answer is ALWAYS "it's just personal preference." Well what the hell does that mean?
So after being unhappy with my sound both at the Wisco and at Legends, I started thinking that I ought to take my kit to Drums N Moore and have him teach me to tune it. Then, daunted by this prospect and realizing how stupid I was being, I took my extra 12" black tom (which I don't use) and sat down with it and screwed around. Here's what I learned.
1) When the top head is tighter than the bottom, the sound is sharp and "choked". I never really understood what "choked" meant before...but having heard it now I do. This is how my drums had generally been tuned because I was going by the settings recommended in the brochure that came with my Drum Dial. This was the sound quality I'd been hearing and not liking. Restrained. Not boomy. Not ringing out. Not full. Just dead sounding. Focused, but dead. This seems like the perfect kind of sound for a snare drum...but not what I wanted from my toms.
2) When the top head is looser than the bottom, the sound is flappy. Unfocused. Generally just not good to my ear.
3) When the top head is about the same tension as the bottom, the sound booms. It is full and loud. This is the sound I was looking for from my toms.
4) Generally I had tended to tune toms in the lower range, where sometimes there was even a loose lug still. This makes the tuning hard to control. So now I think it is best to start with all lugs finger tight plus perhaps a quarter turn at least...then tune up from there.
5) I'll have to double check my notes, but I think I have the 12" at 75, the 13" at 73, and the 16" at 70 or so. My maple snare I tuned to 82 on bottom and 88 on top. I'm still figuring out the steel snare. It is hard to make it sound good.
6) The bass drum is tough to tune. I'm still figuring it out. I got the black kit to sound pretty good with equal tension on resonant and batter. I think around 75. I don't have much muffling in this drum and it has a powerstroke 3 on the batter. The red bass drum I still can't get. 75 was way too tight...it made my leg hurt to play it at that high of tension. I think I've got it down to more like 65 now. This drum has more muffling and an old coated emperor batter head. With both bass drums it was really hard to get the lugs to all be at the same tension. I don't know if the drums are warped or if the heads don't sit flush or if the port causes uneven tension.
After I tuned the black kit I thought I had it all figured out...but the red kit didn't sound good at the same settings and I'm having to mess with the black one more.
TD, 7/9/2011, Legends and 7/23/2011, Mickey's
I seem to be having trouble remembering to post show summaries these days. Two shows in one post here.
Legends, 7/9
We played a sports bar on the west side as a post-golf outing event. We opened for ska band 4 Aspirin Morning, who rock. We played every Drain song I know on an outdoor stage next to a sand volleyball court. It was hot and bright and threatening to rain. The show got started about a half hour late and that meant way too much free beer was drank. Still, the show went well. I was really unhappy with the tone of my drums, which led to me retuning them before the next show to much better results. We got $150 total and free beer. They were supposed to feed us, but the buffet was put away before we could get to it. The show, as a whole, was far less obnoxious than I'd anticipated.
Legends, 7/9 Setlist
Set One:
Future Song
Bodies A Burnin
Haven't Seen U Lately
It's Alright
Sent It
Show Someone
Jack
One Is For Man
Vacuum Man
Set Two:
At the Door
Gotta Tell U
Easy Life
Going Down the Drain
Gun in Your Grave
Better N Better
Kiss U Kill U
Whole Damn World
Movin On
Mickey's, 7/23
We headlined (read: played really late) with Venus In Furs and The Type. It was hot as hell. I didn't drink at all. The show got started late but we got back on track. NH, from Venus In Furs, managed to break not one, but two strings on her bass (her bass and the borrowed backup bass, actually). I've never seen that happen before. Twan replaced both with used strings he had. I was super tired from doing Girls Rock Camp all that week and it being our busy season at work. I'm told we played everything too fast...but I just felt a little sloppy...like my brain and arms weren't quite connecting. All three bands used my drum kit, and since I'd just tuned it, they all thought it sounded great. I was getting close to thinking that I couldn't make that kit sound good, but now I think it is just fine for the foreseeable future. Like an ass, the next day I did GRC showcase and then drove to and back from Chicago to see Kelley Deal play...and it took me about three days to recover from all of that and feel human again, even though I didn't drink for a week.
Mickey's, 7/23 Setlist
At the Door
Gotta Tell U
Jack
HSUL
Going Down the Drain
Easy Life
Better N Better
Sent It
It's Alright
Bodies A Burnin
Movin On
Legends, 7/9
We played a sports bar on the west side as a post-golf outing event. We opened for ska band 4 Aspirin Morning, who rock. We played every Drain song I know on an outdoor stage next to a sand volleyball court. It was hot and bright and threatening to rain. The show got started about a half hour late and that meant way too much free beer was drank. Still, the show went well. I was really unhappy with the tone of my drums, which led to me retuning them before the next show to much better results. We got $150 total and free beer. They were supposed to feed us, but the buffet was put away before we could get to it. The show, as a whole, was far less obnoxious than I'd anticipated.
Legends, 7/9 Setlist
Set One:
Future Song
Bodies A Burnin
Haven't Seen U Lately
It's Alright
Sent It
Show Someone
Jack
One Is For Man
Vacuum Man
Set Two:
At the Door
Gotta Tell U
Easy Life
Going Down the Drain
Gun in Your Grave
Better N Better
Kiss U Kill U
Whole Damn World
Movin On
Mickey's, 7/23
We headlined (read: played really late) with Venus In Furs and The Type. It was hot as hell. I didn't drink at all. The show got started late but we got back on track. NH, from Venus In Furs, managed to break not one, but two strings on her bass (her bass and the borrowed backup bass, actually). I've never seen that happen before. Twan replaced both with used strings he had. I was super tired from doing Girls Rock Camp all that week and it being our busy season at work. I'm told we played everything too fast...but I just felt a little sloppy...like my brain and arms weren't quite connecting. All three bands used my drum kit, and since I'd just tuned it, they all thought it sounded great. I was getting close to thinking that I couldn't make that kit sound good, but now I think it is just fine for the foreseeable future. Like an ass, the next day I did GRC showcase and then drove to and back from Chicago to see Kelley Deal play...and it took me about three days to recover from all of that and feel human again, even though I didn't drink for a week.
Mickey's, 7/23 Setlist
At the Door
Gotta Tell U
Jack
HSUL
Going Down the Drain
Easy Life
Better N Better
Sent It
It's Alright
Bodies A Burnin
Movin On
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