IMO no course of drumset study can forego this step and be successful.Īnyway - quite a bit more than my 2 cents on that. And it is the end result of that study that I carry with me out into the world of playing with other players. The "book" study makes the real study of drumming (listening to, figuring out, copying and imitating other drummers) go a lot better.
At least for me, the end product of "book" study doesn't translate directly to playing out in the world. Until it becomes something I know - just like the hundreds of other tracks I've been doing that with since I was 10.įor me, book study and technique study have little end result except how they facilitate my doing the above. Then maybe onto something else - with the idea of coming back to that new track tomorrow or the next day and digging into it some more. Sometimes learning specifically what the drummer on the record played - sometimes just working from the sense of what he played and coming up with similar but different possibilities.Įven today, if there's been just to many days in the studio or on the road (in neither place am I ever playing all that much compared to the hours and hours spent being there) and I'm feeling stiff, not fluid or lacking in endurance - or just want to play something different from where work has been centered lately - into the shed, headphones on, popping on any number of the 100's of CD's I've got in iTunes - to play an hour or so of Hendrix, or Steve Vai tracks, or Hendrix, or Mahavishnu, or some big band stuff - working out the kinks, building the endurance back up, the fluidity - or pull up some new track that I've been wanting figure out - sketch it out if necessary, but however just start sussing out what the player's doing and working through it - and then play along - over and over. Don't get me wrong, I love the clear understanding of rhythm that learning how to read brings and learning the building blocks of technique makes everything so much easier and approachable - but the mechanics of what a drummer does, how does he function musically?, how should drum parts fit together in a song? - all of that came from hours and hours and hours of playing along with records and CDs. Looking back I would trade all my other forms of study (reading, private lessons, etc.) before giving up the lessons learned from the masters of drumming via listening then playing along with their recordings.
But that certainly didn't mean practicing without music - just the opposite. Fine for the occasional change of pace or for making little demos. In my personal drum studies, drummer-less tracks or music-minus-one type play alongs were of very limited use.
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