want to learn how to play drums? read this

seveneleven · Post by **seveneleven** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:45 am

Liquid just calm down plz

GTea was a bit on the alchy side when the post was written... but still you both make good points....plus i can do most of the stuff you mentiond and i havent had any drums lessons :\

ShammerS · Post by **ShammerS** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 10:58 am

My two cents:

I've been playing drums for about 5 years now, the 3 most recent of which were snare only (mizarching band) along with a full set.

There's no one way to learn the instrument, but this 'guide' isn't half bad for someone starting out.

For a glimpse at godly drumming, listen to a Tool album, feat. Danny Carrey. He will blow your mind, especially if you're a fellow drummer who understands the difficulty in hand/foot coordination and can recognize godliness when you here it.

I think IndyDDR's drummers should post some vids or mp3's of their works.. like, 30 sec. clips for amusement. =)

sam · Post by **sam** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:03 pm

i've played *a lot* of instruments as music is one of the few things i enjoy.

piano, saxaphone, kit-drums, guitar, bass, choir and snare.

out of all of them, the hardest in terms of mental dexterity would be piano or guitar if you're going to talk about intricate stuff like what SRV does and flowing with music. The whole problem really is music theory. it ties all these instruments together and shares with one another. That's why when most people get into music they start with piano. You learn the basics of both ends of the spectrum, trebel & bass clefts and you are taught all the basics in music theory like keys and modes.

You can then take another instrument say guitar and learn what the arrangement is (frets are half steps 5 frets through most the strings you're up to the next string) and can do some pretty easy keying with some basic music knowledge.

Saxaphone is hard because of the reed. reeds are a fucking bitch. also the lung dexterity is what got me. Being a pot smoker well...my lungs blow ass.

Drums really I just bought this book that had the basic 32 rudamentaries and worked with that and then moved to a kit once I had snare down.

I would say overall piano is the hardest because it combines so much together. You can have songs that start out with your basic bass/trebel cleft and work you way around the piano and oops now you're reading both trebel clefts and then they change to bass. it just takes a lot of mental capacity to read the stuff fast and make the connection with your hands.

Spazz · Post by **Spazz** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:09 pm

Green Tea wrote:
liquidblue aka DBV wrote: Drums = easiest to pick up, hardest to master.
Guitars/String Instruments = medium to pick up, medium to master.
Piano = hardest to pick up, easiest to master.
you are an idiot.... guitars are easy to pick up, easy to master... I have nearly mastered guitar in 4 years of playing.... I've played piano for 10 years and I'm nowhere near mastering it. I play 7 instruments and I say piano is the hardest BY FAR! unless you have mastered them you have no fucking room to talk. Piano you need to dedicate your life to to master. Guitar is a hobby. And drums aren't hardest to master either, because alot of drummers never took a single lesson. Find a master pianist that never took a lesson, they don't fucking exist so don't post your ignorance...

EDIT: yea if you call playing fucking chopsticks mastering the piano, it's easy. Try playing real songs like rachmaninoff. Oh and the fact that you referred to piano music as "tablature" makes you more of a dumbass and proves you don't know what you're talking about. so thank you and don't talk about what you have no fucking clue about

GreenTea... flaming someone? After telling me not to? And then getting own so hardcore it's not funny? kekekkekekeke

Oh, and Seven, I don't care how much alcohol she had in her system, it's toooooo funny. Let them duke it out.

XeRo · Post by **XeRo** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:39 pm

OMG, I hate to take sides with you in a way on this one Spazz but...doesn't Green Tea remind you of that fuckin' kid off of the old peanuts cartoons just not...what is his name again, "Shroeder"?

seveneleven · Post by **seveneleven** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:13 pm

Spazz wrote:
Green Tea wrote:
liquidblue aka DBV wrote: Drums = easiest to pick up, hardest to master.
Guitars/String Instruments = medium to pick up, medium to master.
Piano = hardest to pick up, easiest to master.
you are an idiot.... guitars are easy to pick up, easy to master... I have nearly mastered guitar in 4 years of playing.... I've played piano for 10 years and I'm nowhere near mastering it. I play 7 instruments and I say piano is the hardest BY FAR! unless you have mastered them you have no fucking room to talk. Piano you need to dedicate your life to to master. Guitar is a hobby. And drums aren't hardest to master either, because alot of drummers never took a single lesson. Find a master pianist that never took a lesson, they don't fucking exist so don't post your ignorance...

EDIT: yea if you call playing fucking chopsticks mastering the piano, it's easy. Try playing real songs like rachmaninoff. Oh and the fact that you referred to piano music as "tablature" makes you more of a dumbass and proves you don't know what you're talking about. so thank you and don't talk about what you have no fucking clue about

GreenTea... flaming someone? After telling me not to? And then getting own so hardcore it's not funny? kekekkekekeke

Oh, and Seven, I don't care how much alcohol she had in her system, it's toooooo funny. Let them duke it out.

dude Teas a guy.... :\

Spazz · Post by **Spazz** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:44 pm

seveneleven wrote:
Spazz wrote:
Green Tea wrote: you are an idiot.... guitars are easy to pick up, easy to master... I have nearly mastered guitar in 4 years of playing.... I've played piano for 10 years and I'm nowhere near mastering it. I play 7 instruments and I say piano is the hardest BY FAR! unless you have mastered them you have no fucking room to talk. Piano you need to dedicate your life to to master. Guitar is a hobby. And drums aren't hardest to master either, because alot of drummers never took a single lesson. Find a master pianist that never took a lesson, they don't fucking exist so don't post your ignorance...

EDIT: yea if you call playing fucking chopsticks mastering the piano, it's easy. Try playing real songs like rachmaninoff. Oh and the fact that you referred to piano music as "tablature" makes you more of a dumbass and proves you don't know what you're talking about. so thank you and don't talk about what you have no fucking clue about

GreenTea... flaming someone? After telling me not to? And then getting own so hardcore it's not funny? kekekkekekeke

Oh, and Seven, I don't care how much alcohol she had in her system, it's toooooo funny. Let them duke it out.
dude Teas a guy.... :\

Neh, had him confused with Mosh. Still about as annoying, though.

Green Tea · Post by **Green Tea** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:49 pm

I think we all learned a valuable lesson today.. friends don't let friends post drunk. (and you don't mess with manager menus at work with a hangover and accidently delete everyone's hours o.0)

sam put it alot better than I had the mental capacity to explain... there are many different keys you have to learn through repitition and much practice... guitar I think is a million times easier than piano just because you will get nowhere near the intracacies of a piano piece (please don't try to argue with this, if you have a guitar song where you have to play an 11 note chord please let me know

)

Guitar has effector pedals, not to mention the tuning of the guitar can add millions of different possibilities to what you can play, and while I know a piano has tuning, it's not as easily doable as tuning on a guitar, nor does it have that big of an effect, not to mention as well that tuning a piano can throw off a pianists' entire flow because piano keys center around a "set" sound much more than a guitar does.

ok I just want to say piano doesn't have different tunings, it's tuned in one way to A 440 and that's a single key. I don't consider effect pedals to make guitar that much harder

. And a pianist's flow will not be offset by different tunings because all pianists (who perform professionally) learn all the scales. This is 12 per type of mode.. all pianists should know the 12 major modes, then they should also know the 12 natural minor modes. more advanced pianists know the more "obscure" modes (which some are far from obscure for guitar) pentatonic is not that common in piano (unless you're dealing with progressions) lydian, dorian, melodic minor Whatever floats your boat.

oh and I'm a classical guitar player

I don't do electric. Guitar playing requires alot of left hand dexterity, almost more than piano in some cases. But the difference is that in guitar, your left hand is moving fast, and your right hand is picking/tapping with the left hand. In piano your right hand 90% of the time is doing something completely different.

"remixing" symphonies really isn't that much of a task. I write my own songs all the time, and can improvise any style from jazz to baroque classical for an infinite amount of time. Yet I am nowhere near mastering it.

one thing though: beethoven did have hearing until he was 32, then he started losing it gradually and had a mental breakdown... then he started writing music based on vibrations, you had that part right. However, Beethoven did do lessons... he was forced by his father from the age of 6 to practice 8 hours a day on the piano and would force him to stay up late to play for guests at the house. So he didn't really pave his own way because he could still hear at the time

. (but on the hearing thing, he did write alot of his most famous works after he was 32 and had trouble hearing)

EDIT: with the mental dexterity being between guitar and piano as sam said I agree with, even though the piano as many parts going on.... the guitar still requires alot of thought with your movements, to make sure they're precise.

seveneleven · Post by **seveneleven** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:51 pm

Flaming in 3.....2.......1

elcuebee · Post by **elcuebee** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 3:25 pm

Green Tea wrote:I think we all learned a valuable lesson today.. friends don't let friends post drunk. (and you don't mess with manager menus at work with a hangover and accidently delete everyone's hours o.0)

sam put it alot better than I had the mental capacity to explain... there are many different keys you have to learn through repitition and much practice... guitar I think is a million times easier than piano just because you will get nowhere near the intracacies of a piano piece (please don't try to argue with this, if you have a guitar song where you have to play an 11 note chord please let me know )

Seriously, go download Eruption solo by Van Halen and Big Sur by Buckethead. Those are EASILY just as hard and complicated in thier own way as any piano classical masterpiece. To pull either of those off, your hands have to be moving around twice the speed of most piano songs.

ok I just want to say piano doesn't have different tunings, it's tuned in one way to A 440 and that's a single key.

that's funny.. then how come i've read all over the internet that if your piano starts to sound off, you can open up the "hood" basically and tune it to get it back in tune? i'm talking classical grand pianos here...

I don't consider effect pedals to make guitar that much harder . And a pianist's flow will not be offset by different tunings because all pianists (who perform professionally) learn all the scales. This is 12 per type of mode.. all pianists should know the 12 major modes, then they should also know the 12 natural minor modes. more advanced pianists know the more "obscure" modes (which some are far from obscure for guitar) pentatonic is not that common in piano (unless you're dealing with progressions) lydian, dorian, melodic minor Whatever floats your boat.

And that was my point all along. Piano is even more basic than drums if you think about it in that way, because the 12 major and minor modes are just like hand positions or patterns for drums, I know they're only hand positions and they're much more in depth than that, but I still say drums are far more complex just because in piano you only use two hands, regardless of the fact that you use 10 fingers, and SOMETIMES your other foot.

The thing that I think you don't get because you're not a pro drummer is that on higher levels of drumming, you seriously have to have PERFECT rhythm. Moonlight Sonata wouldn't work at all if translated to drums (if you get what I mean) because it doesn't keep perfect tempo/BPM and flies all over the place in offbeat chords.

And yes, effector pedals would open up a whole new realm of diversity for guitars, just as playing an electronic piano would open up basically "relearning" the keyboard for every different sound on there.

oh and I'm a classical guitar player I don't do electric. Guitar playing requires alot of left hand dexterity, almost more than piano in some cases. But the difference is that in guitar, your left hand is moving fast, and your right hand is picking/tapping with the left hand. In piano your right hand 90% of the time is doing something completely different.

This explains everything, if you're not playing electric and you're not playing heavy metal songs, no wonder you think guitar is easy.

Not playing heavy metal electric on guitar is like saying i've mastered the drums after being able to play all of Green Day's or Incubus's songs on the drums.

You know how to bend the strings on a guitar right? do basically "hold notes" and all of the special little things you can do with the strings, etc. so your hands aren't always just doing the same thing.

"remixing" symphonies really isn't that much of a task. I write my own songs all the time, and can improvise any style from jazz to baroque classical for an infinite amount of time. Yet I am nowhere near mastering it.

He doesn't write any of them down though, that's my point.
And if you can do this, yet you don't think you're anywhere near mastering piano, how come you think you've mastered guitar when you don't even try playing heavy metal or anything?

one thing though: beethoven did have hearing until he was 32, then he started losing it gradually and had a mental breakdown... then he started writing music based on vibrations, you had that part right. However, Beethoven did do lessons... he was forced by his father from the age of 6 to practice 8 hours a day on the piano and would force him to stay up late to play for guests at the house. So he didn't really pave his own way because he could still hear at the time . (but on the hearing thing, he did write alot of his most famous works after he was 32 and had trouble hearing)

Ok, then I was wrong there. However, when instruments were first invented, SOMEONE had to learn them without lessons, so at some period in time, there was someone who became a genius at the piano without lessons.

EDIT: with the mental dexterity being between guitar and piano as sam said I agree with, even though the piano as many parts going on.... the guitar still requires alot of thought with your movements, to make sure they're precise.

Ok, that's fine. I still don't get why you think drums are so easy though... try doing the tab in my guide, if you can do that, then tell me drums are easy... hahah

Original Sin · Post by **Original Sin** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 4:06 pm

Everyone's skills are different, but for the record, I'd say that guitar and piano are on the same level of mastery, or very close to it, as a baseline. It just takes a certain kind of person to master each instrument.
Guitar and Piano play, essentially, from the same music. Piano music can be played on guitar, and visa versa. The difference is, a piano's keys and notes are all layed out in front of you, where on a guitar, they are not. Hitting notes on a guitar is not just a matter of pressing the keys, you first have to find the note, and know how to hit that particular note. (There are different ways to do it for each string, and each octave, to get the best sound from each.)
Also, playing multiple notes at once require a great deal of speed, and flexability. Bar chords, for one, are a bitch, especially if you have to switch them on the fly.

Sure, piano has it's difficulties as well, but you always have the luxury of knowing where everything is. It's right in front of you, and it's sequential. The hard thing about piano is reading the music, and actually being able to understand it, and play it, on the fly. I could never do it, and have never seriously undertaken learning the play the piano for what it is. Mastering Guitar AND piano is not something I really feel like devoting my life to.
I do have a keyboard I use for my music, and I can play it, but only after I've predermined what I'm going to play, and how it's going to sync with the music I've already written with my other instruments.

Drums CAN be difficult to master, but it depends on the person playing them. If you have a good, natural sense of rhythm, and good coordination, drums are a breeze, regardless of training or knowledge. If you do not, it will take years and years of intense practice to learn how to play them properly.

Each instrument has it's difficulties, but no single instrument is the easiest, or the hardest to play, because it all depends on the person playing it. Playing drums or guitar without a sense of rhythm will take you years to overcome, while trying to learn piano without an understanding of music can take a lifetime to master. It's all relative to the person, and their particular talents.

So, let's cut the flame wars about who's instrument is the best, and the hardest. It doesn't make you look bad-ass, kids...We're all JUST as necessary to each other in the music field, remember that. No one's going anywhere without us.

Green Tea · Post by **Green Tea** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:09 pm

actually I don't think I ever said drums were easy

I said you can pick it up without lessons. But yea I know they're not that easy... I actually had a hard time picking up drums at first (which I suck horribly at drums. and why I think starting guitar is easier than starting drums) And don't diss the classical guitar

at least it's not punk rock. I'm not talking about simple songs, I do alot of songs similar to classical gas. and I couldn't find Big Sur by buckethead... but I do know buckethead pretty well so I can imagine

(btw have you heard colonel claypools bucket of bernie brains? excellent album, like primus but more strange)

oh the tuning thing, we had a bit of a miscommunication.. over time, the strings lose their tension, and require professional tuning about every 2 months (if you play alot). I thought you were talking about changing the key of the piano that way o.O. I don't consider myself a master at piano because there are millions that are better than me. I play a wide variety, but there's so much more I can still learn. My guitar I consider myself close to mastering the classical style (not specifically said before I know)

You are very correct about keeping tempos though... unless you are playing with other people, tempos tend to be rather free (other than baroque music).

elcuebee · Post by **elcuebee** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:01 pm

Ohhh, ok, now it makes much more sense. Yeah, I can see how mastering a certain style wouldn't be that hard.

Miscommunication between us obviously, now i get what you mean.

And yeah, how drums are a pain for you but guitar is easy, drums are easy as pie for me (within a few months I could play half of system of a down's songs) etc.

hascoolnickname · Post by **hascoolnickname** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 12:08 am

If you taught yourself and you think that you are good can you actually read? Most people I know that taught themselves either can't read, have no rhythm, or can only play one pattern. If you can play more than just straight time and more than one style of music then you are mediocre. Actually, if you can play just that you are better than the drummer from "HIM" -they would be a lot better if their singer/songwriter wasn't all like, "omg six six six satan death omg I'm so hot topic gawth please buy my album"
If you think you are good try doing some easy snare stuff like inverted flam taps
If you play set you should at least be able to do sixteenth note tripplets in 4/4 and keep 8th notes to the high hat.
If you play slower than 180 bpm I laugh in your face.

elcuebee · Post by **elcuebee** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 12:30 am

wow, you have no idea what you're talking about.

hascoolnickname wrote:If you taught yourself and you think that you are good can you actually read?

Yup. I can read easily, taught myself in one day. DDR probably helped with that a lot.

Most people I know that taught themselves either can't read, have no rhythm, or can only play one pattern. If you can play more than just straight time and more than one style of music then you are mediocre.

I can read, I have rhythm, and I can play probably in the range of about 75+ patterns. 30 or so at least that I made up completely on my own, or edited from previous patterns i'd heard before.

If you think you are good try doing some easy snare stuff like inverted flam taps

What the hell are inverted flam taps? I've been on mxtabs.net forums for two years and i've never heard that in my life. I can do flams easy though.

If you play set you should at least be able to do sixteenth note tripplets in 4/4 and keep 8th notes to the high hat.
If you play slower than 180 bpm I laugh in your face.

Sixteenth note triplets in 4/4.. you realize that makes no sense right?

You can't *do* triplets in 4/4. That would be 3/5 or something like that. 4/4 means.. 4/4.

However, yes, I can do that, are you kidding me? I picked that up in about a week just from playing some incubus and linkin park stuff.

And wow, if you play slower than 180 bpm you suck? Damn, I guess the jazz drummers of Yoko Kanno's band suck dick then huh? Shit, that stuff's just e-z 2 shoes huh? Lmao... speed doesn't matter at ALL with drums.

Speed is useful, true, but speed isn't the essence of true drumming. true drumming is being a backbone to the music, adding in flavor to the music, but being able to keep perfect time as well.

It definitely takes skill to go batshit on the drums like Slipknot or Berzerker or As I Lay Dying, but they're doing a "controlled" go batshit on them, and as some of their other songs prove, they can do slow, rhythmic, complicated drums as well.