Monday, March 11th, 2013
I arrived a couple minute early to
Willis Music Store (Insert Link to web site here) on Hurstbourn
Parkway here in Louisville, Ky as I was eager to to meet my knew
instructor and began my this new journey. After entering the store,
I informed the guy behind the counter that I was here for a drum
lesson with Jack Hall and seamlessly out of nowhere Jack appear. We
exchanged the normal greetings and off to the back we went to Jacks
private training room. The lesson consisted of two parts, the first
was based on theory, things that I already knew such as what a bar
is, the time signature, what a measure is, the various notes, and how
each of the notes are counted. The second part of the lesson was to
apply the theory that Jack provided to me to the drum kit. Since
there is so much to talk about for the music theory section, I'm only
going to concentrate on this for this posting.
Music Theory – The building blocks
for everything that will be
Lets get right to the guts of this! My
instructor pulled out a piece of paper that had on it a number of
bars listed on it, nothing else. He informed me that drummers use a
bar that consists of five lines, each of the lines and spaces are for
various items of the drum kit. See the image below named Drum Basic
Bar Graph. For this lesson however, we are only concerned with the
third space, which is used for the snare drum notes. If you are a
truly beginner drummer, below is what a basic bar looks like that
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| Basic Music Bar |
He proceeded with to introduce me to
the time signature, which for now is 4/4. The number that I am to be
concerned with for now is the top number of 4. This number indicates
how many beats there will be per measure. See the Image named Drum
Bar with Time Signature.
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| Basic Music Bar with Time Signature |
Sixteenth Notes and Why Important
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| Sixteenth Note |
He then moved right in to explain to me
what sixteenth notes are the basis of a measure, that each measure is
built upon sixteenth notes and that in keeping time all musicians
count in sixteenth notes. This sort of took me be surprise, but
opened up my eyes as to what I was having so much trouble with, how
to keep time within a song. I also found it odd that he would start
with sixteenth notes as the books and videos that I have acquired
over the past couple years have always started off with quarter notes
or whole notes, showing this tree starting with whole note,
subdivided into half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth
notes, etc. However, before I could ask about this, he informed me
that almost all music introduction is wrong in that they start out
with these other notes, which they should indeed start out as I am
showing you. This makes sense if a measure is based on the sixteenth
note and the other subdivisions break down upon this, why would they
note introduce this first. A question for other masses I believe.
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| Sixteenth Note Rest |
So what does a sixteenth note look
like? What does a bar of sixteenth notes look like? How are they
counted? Jack explained all this next. First take a look at the image
below that I have created in the likeness of what Jack wrote out for
me. This is the a single sixteenth note and its accompanying rest
value. Note: a rest is a place holder for a note, but it is not
played within the measure; you rest for that note(s).
That's it, it's just a dotted note
filled in with a stem and two flags. To further that, in order to
show that two sixteenth played in session, a two bars are added and
replace the flags. The image below shows a bar with a measure of
sixteenth notes and how you would count these during reading or while
playing a song.
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| Sixteenth Note Grouping w/ Count |
As I mentioned above, Jack explained to
me, sixteenth notes are the basis for a measure and this is where I
will live as a drummer and what I will use to keep time within a
song. Ah the missing piece that I have been looking for and that in
which that has been giving me so much trouble. More on this later
when we get to the second part of the lesson. Sixteenth notes are
counted as 1, e, &, a, 2, e, &, a, 3, e, &, a, 4, e, &,
a noting that there are sixteen notes per measure, that it, that's
all the most that you can have.
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| Eighth Note |
Eighth Notes – Subdivision of
Sixteenth
The first subdivision of the sixteenth
note that he introduced me to is that of eight notes. Below is an
image of an eighth note and its accompanying rest. It is a filled in
dotted note with a stem and one flag.
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| Eighth Note Rest |
Notice that there are only two eighth
notes within the four sixteen note sections, which consist of eight
notes per measure. Notice that I included the time signature of the
sixteenth notes with the bar of eight notes. See how in order to
count the notes, you would still count in sixteenths but only play
the eighth notes that are listed. Eighth notes are counted by 1 &,
2, &, 3, &, 4 & and compared to sixteenth notes, it would
mean that you would not play on the beats of e and a. This means that
it's like having a rest in between each of the eight notes for the
notes not being played. This was huge for me. As it meant that I
would still count in sixteenths, 1, e, &, a, 2, e, &, a, 3,
e, &, a, 4, e, &, a, but only play the notes on 1, &, 2,
&, 3, &, 4, &. This further strengthened the importance
of keeping time by counting in sixteenth notes.
 |
| Quarter Note |
Quarter Notes – Subdivision of
Sixteenth
The next subdivision of the sixteenth
notes would be introduced to me in this session is that of quarter
notes. The quarter note is a solid note with a stem and no flag;
refer to the image to the right for a picture of the note, and its
accompanying rest value. NOTE: quarter notes do not have a beam to
join them.
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| Quarter Note Rest |
This next image is what I recreated
based on what Jack wrote out for lesson for the quarter notes.
Notice with the quarter notes, there is only four per measure and
that they are only played on the count of 1, 2, 3, and 4. However,
using the same sixteenth counting you would not play on the counts of
e, &, or a, which would mean that you would rest on those values.
Like the eighth notes, I would still count in sixteenths, 1, e, &,
a, 2, e, &, a, 3, e, &, a, 4, e, &, a, but only play the
notes on 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Sixteenth Note – Variations
So he has explained the basic notes
that I need to be concerned with, but he's not done yet. He
explained to me that there are two variations of the sixteenth note
that are very important along with with the proper way that I need to
play the notes with my sticks (called sticking in drummer speak).
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| Sixteenth Note Variations |
This first variation you play on the beats of
1, e and &, but not the beat of a. This means you would play
three notes in a row and rest on the forth. The important thing
about this is how the variation of the normal four beat look. In
this image, you will note that there is two sixteenth notes joined by
a double beam, but looks like an eight note next, this is not the
case, but is what I thought at first. It's just how they represent
this notation. Also notice that I included the sticking that should
be used with this combination of notes, R (right), L (left) and R
(right). This would be the same with as playing the normal sixteenth
note, except that you would you not play the fourth note.
At this point, Jack took a moment to
discuss about reading music notation and point out that like seeing
the word Pearl on a drum cymbal, I don't actually read the word, my
mind knows what the word is and I just recall it from memory. I now
have to do the same with the note values along with these variations
so that my mind just recalls what needs to known about the symbol
that represents a note value. In other words, learn the language so
that it's second nature.
This second variation you play on the beat of
1, &, a and rest on the e; refer to the image labeled Sixteenth Note Variations above.. Important to note here that there is a
single beam that joins the first not to the second two notes, and
they are joined together with a double beam. This was something that
I had issues with when trying to learn on my own with books and
videos. I thought it was a eighth note and two sixteenth notes
combination. But now I know they are sixteenth notes, with the
second note not played. The sticking to be used for this variation is
R (right), R (right), L (left). This would again be the same as if
you were playing straight sixteenth notes, but the second note that
would be played with the L (left) stick would not be played.
This concludes my post on the first part of my drum lesson. As you can see, there was a lot of material that Jack and I covered. I hope that if you are reading this, you can take something away about music that you had not know before. If you have any questions, please send me and email or leave a comment below!
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