Month: June 2015

Drummy Tip #24-How To Make $500/Week Playing Drums

I did this all through college, and you certainly can too. First, your skill needs to be at a level that people are willing to pay for. Once your skill is there, arrange your week this way:

Sunday- church gig—-$100

Monday-Thursday- minimum 4 students——————-$200 @ $50 each

Friday-Sunday- at least two nights of cover gig——————–$200

                                        =$500

How do you get church gigs and cover band gigs? Churches usually advertise on Craigslist, and most won’t pay. Keep checking, and if you find a church that doesn’t specify whether it pays or not, assume it does pay and ask how much, after your audition. If they ask why you should be paid, when they have members of the congregation who will play for free, explain that you are being paid for the convenience of them not having to spend hours to teach the drummer every song, because you come to church ready to perform. See my Drummy Tip on Charting for help on that.

How do you get cover band gigs? Well, you can find mediocre cover bands advertising in craigslist, and they will pay. The best cover bands hire people they know. That means you need to go to their shows, buy them a drink, chat, and be social. Get to know them on breaks. The minimum payment you should accept for any performance is $100. 

How do you get students? First, I don’t feel anyone should teach an instrument unless they have had extensive lessons themselves, from a reputable teacher. When you take lessons, you also are learning how to give lessons. To get students, you need to invest a little money in nice flyers and take them to music stores. You need to make relationships with the employees at the music stores. Sit down at the kit at the store and show them a couple things you think they will like. Also call the schools in your area and ask to speak with the band director, and ask them if you could meet with them about your private lessons program. Some schools will pay you to give lessons at the school. Just those things should be able to get you at least 4 students. 

Couple extra things-

1. Always pay your taxes. 

2. You can’t make money being shy.

Drumming:10 Things I Wish I Learned…Sooner

  

Drummy Tip #23-What You’re Really Paid For

This Drummy Tip is for drummers who make their living performing.

What you’re paid for-

1. Loading gear, and helping others in the band unload their gear.

2. Knowing the songs beforehand. You aren’t paid for showing up to rehearsals, you’re paid for your expertise in being able to learn a song quickly and supplying the right groove the first time you play it. 

3. Making the band sound good. You aren’t paid for flexing your drum muscles, you’re paid because you make everyone on the bandstand feel great.

4. Keeping the band on the same page. The band often looks to you for cues to the next section, and sometimes they will literally turn around and watch you to see when you cue them. In those situations, you need to make it obvious with a clear sounding fill. This means you need to be aware when a band member is trying to communicate with you, which means you can’t just stare at the drums all night. Some drummers, including myself, will wear a headset with a microphone, and verbally cue the whole band into each section. 

5. Putting on a show. No one goes to a show to see musicians in their own heads, staring off into space in deep focus. If you put out an energetic vibe, the band will do the same, and the audience will dig it. Remember, many people hear with their eyes.

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Drummy Tip #22-Snare Drum Stuff

Here are a few things about snare drums that are good to know.

1. It is usually a good idea to tune the bottom head tightly, because that will allow for the best snare response. Imagine you have a set of marbles. Drop the marbles on a tile floor. Now drop them on carpet. The difference you see there is the same difference you get with a tight bottom head versus a loose one.

2. Pay particular attention to the the tension rods adjacent to the snare wires. Those tension rods have the greatest impact on the snare response. 

3. If you have a wooden drum, and its overtones are too pronounced, you can roughen the inside of the drum with course sandpaper and that will reduce the overtones. Obviously, this is a drastic measure and irreversible so only do this if you are certain! You can also reduce the overtones by changing the hoop on the top of the drum. A die cast or wooden hoop will produce less overtones. The smoothness on the inside of the drum and the type of hoop have a large effect on overtones. 

4. Many people dislike the ringy sound that some drums produce, and they remedy this by covering the drum with duct tape and napkins. If that produces the sound you want, then go for it! But keep in mind that how you play the drum also affects the overtones. If you hit the drum in the dead center, you will eliminate a lot of that ring. Take a quarter and a marker and put the quarter in the middle of the drum, and trace a circle on the drum around the quarter. If you hit the drum in that circle, the ringing will be minimal. 

5. A word on snare tension – if you play very softly at the edge of the drum, and you don’t hear any snare response (it sounds like a tom) then your snares are too tight. Your drum should produce a snare response at all volumes if the snares are on. 

Drummy Tip #21-Instantly Improve Your Fills

There are three things you can do to drastically improve your fills. 

1. Make your fill a reorchestration or variation on the groove of the song. In other words, take the groove you’re playing, play it on another part of the kit, and your fill will make sense to anyone who hears it. Or if the fIll leads to another section (which it should, but I’ll talk about that in another post) orchestrate the next groove into your fill. 

2.Play your fill at the exact same dynamic marking as your groove, unless the song has a crescendo or decrescendo, or you’re moving into another dynamic marking. If you play your fill strikingly louder than the groove, and then go back to your original volume, it sounds out of place.

3. Incorporate your cymbals. If you’re playing the cymbals as part of your groove, and then you completely stop playing them to play a fill, it takes away from the momentum of the groove. Sometimes you can play fills that way, but most of the time if you incorporate the cymbals, it will keep the groove strong.

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Drummy Tip #20-Drumming Mistakes

Have you ever been in this scenario? You go to the snare drum to perform a piece for your teacher. Several bars in, you make a mistake and stop. The teacher tells you not to stop under any circumstances, and you try again. You make a mistake, and almost inadvertently, you stop AGAIN. You keep stopping even though you don’t mean to. 

This happens because that is how you practiced it. You played until you messed up, and then stopped. Here’s how to fix it.

When you practice an exercise or a piece, and you make a mistake, improvise a drum part until you get your bearings and can pick it back up. For instance, say you miss the inverted flam tap on bar 3. Play anything, perhaps 8th notes or flams, anything, and try to get back to the piece by bar 5. Try to get to where you only have to improvise one measure to get back on your feet. Then, when you are done, you can go back and work the measure that tripped you up by itself.

This is so important, because you will make mistakes in performances. Dave Weckl does, Buddy Rich did, everyone. The reason you don’t know about it is because they are experts at covering their mistakes by continuing to make music. Even when you are reading a piece of music, it is better to make up a measure or two than to stop.

Don’t forget to read my book! It has 10 must-learn principles that many people won’t tell you.

  

Drummy Tip #19-To Transcribe Or Not To Transcribe

Transcription seems to be a sort of pain point for many musicians. They feel they should be doing it, but really do not enjoy the process and find it tedious. Transcription is only a tool, and should be used as you feel necessary. It is certainly not any kind of requirement unless it is assigned by a teacher.

The thing that is important, even critical, is that you learn what came before you. We must all pick drummers we like and recordings we like of them, and learn their part, and try to capture their sound as best as possible, because it informs our playing and helps us to develop our own voice. 

Many great drummers in history have done this by ear, by listening and listening and listening, tuning their drums to sound like those on recordings, and learning to play that part. (Tony Williams, Art Blakey) This is actually the best way to do it and will have the most memorable impact on you. However, it takes a long time to do it by ear, and so we transcribe the part and then go to the drum set to learn it. When we do it this way, there will be some disconnect between what is on the page and what the drummer on the recording actually played, because much of the articulation and flavor of a drum performance cannot be notated. Thus, it is important to strive for the sound, and not to simply play what we transcribed. In fact, after the transcription is done, it may be a good idea to put it away and try to play it by ear. The act of having written the part down will help you to recall it. 

So, when should we transcribe something? When you either want to have a written record of that part for future reference to remind yourself, or to share it with someone, or when you want to take a more expeditious approach to learning a long part. 

When should we not transcribe something? When the part is either short, or we don’t have any time limits on learning it. 

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Drummy Tip #18-Drum DVDs The Right Way

When I was a teenager (let’s not discuss how long ago that was) drum videos were primarily on VHS and DVDs were a new technology. There was no such thing as youtube. To get any kind of video instruction, you had to spend $20-$40 for VHS tape. DVDs came out, and they weren’t any cheaper. I’d get home, pop that video in and watch the whole thing from beginning to end, soaking up every bit of wisdom they had to offer. After that, I would get up and go do something else, or go to sleep. 

Because I had that entire video, I would feel the need to get all the information I could out of it, and my method was to watch the whole thing several times. This rarely had much effect on my actual playing. 

There is a much better way to handle video content. Fortunately, many YouTube instructors have already figured this out and have made their videos accordingly. When you have long form video instructional content, you mustn’t try and watch all of it at once. You should take one concept, stop the video, and work on that concept until you have it down. Don’t feel like you need to hurry up and get through all the content. Some videos have enough content for months of practice, such as John Riley’s video The Master Drummer. If the first concept of a video is to learn to play a swing beat in time, work only that until you can do it in your sleep, then move to the next concept. 

Some of the best drummers in the world still work out of Stone’s Stick Control, still practice rudiments, still put the metronome at 40 and so on. Rushing through anything is a perfect destroyer of potential.  

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Drummy Tip #17-A Solo Exercise

There is always a quite a bit of mystery surrounding soloing and how to do it well. Almost always, a solo is bad because the drummer is not communicating, they are screaming at a wall. As an exercise, take 3 notes and play a rhythm. Arrange those notes in any rhythm you want. Now, construct a 32 bar solo using only those three notes and that rhythm. Use orchestration, permutation, expanding and contracting (playing the rhythm one subdivision higher or lower) and dynamics. Try to tell a story with just those 3 notes. Then, you will have a good concept of developing an interesting solo. Hopefully, you will see that a good solo is not about the chops, but taking something small and making it into something great.

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