Drumming Tips and Reviews For Acoustic and Electronic Drums!
In the most straightforward terms, “breakbeat” comes from the beat the drummer played in soul and funk tracks during the break (when the rest of the band took a breather). Breakbeat as we know it today stems from hip hop production, as a lot of hip hop tracks used those drum breaks as the basis …
Read More Classic Breakbeat Drumming Tips!
If you are a drummer and/or a drum teacher, it is often useful to be able to set up basic exercises for your students or yourself. I am going to show you how to easily do this in Finale. Finale is a professional music notation software that can be used for everything from simple exercises to …
Read More Setting Up Exercises and Drum Beat Notation in Finale!
I’ve met so many musicians who are scared of 7/8 because it feels unfamiliar and wrong, so instead of pushing themselves, they just add another eighth note (or quaver for you Brits) to the bar. I once walked past a bar and heard the cover band inside playing Pink Floyd’s Money in 4/4 instead of 7/4 and …
Read More Practicing and Grooving In 7/8!
If you are a drummer and/or a drum teacher, it is often useful to be able to set up basic exercises for your students or yourself. I am going to show you how to easily do this in MuseScore 2.0. MuseScore 2.0 is a powerful open source notation software that can be used for everything …
Read More Setting up Exercises and Drum Beats in MuseScore 2.0!
It is not unusual when working on writing out a musical number for an ensemble to get through everything and then come to the drums and be totally stumped as to what to do and how to write for the instrument. You have beautiful strings, a hard-hitting horn section, but when you get to the …
Read More Drum Notation Basics!
There must be something in a drummer’s DNA that makes them such fiends for improving their hand speed. Every drummer seems to want to be the fastest, despite the fact that, in your day-to-day drumming life, you very rarely need to be the fastest. Who am I to stand in the way of your quest, …
Read More Develop Hand Speed!
I was fortunate to live within walking distance of one of the best custom drum builders in the world, Greg Gaylord. Greg’s company, Drum Solo (www.drumsolo.cc which is now down but he now works for Craviotto Drums) is well known for producing some of the best sounding – and best looking – drums on the …
Read More These Drum Building Tools Produce World Class Custom Drums!
Essentially, there are two methods to grip drum sticks. They are the traditional grip and the matched grip. It’s fun experimenting with both methods. I use matched grip about 70% of the time. I switch to traditional grip because of tendentious issues. If I feel my forearm or wrists tightening up or getting a bit sore …
Read More Traditional vs Matched Grip – How to Hold Drum Sticks!A mallet is a hand-held beater that features a head linked to a slim shaft, and used in pairs for drumming or other instruments. There are different types of mallets. The type used on drums is the felt mallets, also known as cartwheel mallets. They come with heads that have layers of felt. The player …
Read More How to Use a Mallet on the Drums
When it comes to double bass pedals, there are two products of the same brand that you should consider: the DW 3000 and the DW 5000 double bass pedal. But how do they compare to each other?
Read More DW 3000 versus DW 5000 Double Bass Pedal