Drum Lesson 1 - Applying the Theory

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

This second part of my post in regards to my first drum lesson that occurred on Monday, March 11, 2013 with my new drum instructor Jack I. Hall at Willis Music Store here in Louisville, Ky. This part of the lesson focused on the application of the Musial Theory with a series of practice measures that included a mixture of sixteenth, eighth and quarter notes. If you missed the first posting on in this series, check it here: Drum Lesson 1 - Musical Theory.

Here are the important points that these series of practice measures are going to help teach and re-enforce.  First, it helps to get the student reading the various notes to ingrain them into memory so that he/she can learn the new language of musical notation. Second, is to keep time by counting in sixteenth notes for the duration of the measure (1,e, &, a, 2,e,&,a, 3, e, &, a, 4, e, &, a) and by practicing the measures with a metronome.

Let me first list out the worksheet that he prepared for me to study and practice until my next lesson and then I will break each of them down and provide what notes and the keys to each.

The first measure below starts with two eighth notes, followed by four sixteenth notes, two eighth notes counted and ends with a quarter note. The key to this measure is keeping the time by keep counting in sixteenth notes.  Notice that in the first, third and fourth sets of notes, we have count in sixteenths, but wit do not play on the e and a of the first or second set of eighth notes, and we don't play the e, &, a for the quarter note in the fourth set of notes.  Remember that keeping time along with playing the beats of the various notes are goals of this exercise..

Measure 1

The second measure below starts with with a set of four sixteenth notes, followed by two eight notes and then two sets of sixteenth notes. Nothing really out of the ordinary here, these notes where introduced in Measure 1 above. Somewhat straight forward, just keep counting in sixteenth notes the whole measure.

Measure 2

The third measure below includes two groups of four sixteenth notes, followed by two eighth notes then another group of four sixteenth notes.  The first thing to watch out for in this measure is the first sixteenth note, it is one of the two variations that I mentioned in part one of this lesson.  The key here is that the e note (second sixteenth note) is not played and I included a sixteenth note rest there, however most of the time it is written with no rest. The second and third set of notes are basic, but notice that the last set of sixteenths are the same variation as the first in this measure; again the e note is not played.

Measure 3

The fourth measure below includes four sets of sixteenth notes.  The key to watch out for in this measure is the first set of sixteenth notes, which is the other variation that I talked about in the first part of this lesson with the a note (fourth note) not being played.  I included a rest here, but usually it is written without the rest.  The other thing to watch out for is the third and fourth sets of sixteenths, they are the other variation of the sixteenth note with the e note played (second note) not being played.

Measure 4

This last measure below starts off with three sets of sixteenth notes followed by a quarter note.  The key to this measure, the first sixteenth note is a one of the variations and the second is the other variation of the sixteenth note. The third set of sixteenth notes are straight and the quarter is just of course played on the beat of four.

Measure 5

There is nothing to complicated about these five measures, however they provided a good set for practice, getting your coordination going and visual learning on the various musical notation that you will encounter.  The keys to these are to watch out for the two variations of the sixteenth note and keeping time by counting in sixteenth notes (1, e, &, a, etc.) for the whole measure. I hope that you find this article useful and if you have any questions or comments, pass them along to me and I will give you the best answer that I can. Until next time!!!.

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Drum Lesson 1 - Musical Theory

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

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.

Basic Music Bar with Time Signature

Sixteenth Notes and Why Important

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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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A Musicians Journey Begins

How am I turning my aspiration into my new professional career? Before I can answer this, I need to give you some background on how I got to where I am now..

In January of 2012, I had a stress induced amnesia which has caused me to lose all my past memories and normal abilities / skills to do anything more than the basics of what it would take to do normal things.  By normal things, I could still speak like I did before, new how to drive a car, could do math, but what I didn't have was knowing who I was, who my family is, the skills that I went to college and spent many years honing.

On a cold day after returning home, having no memories and trying to make sense of everything, I sat in my living room sitting across from me was a digital drum kit, I couldn't image knowing how to play the drums, after all I did not know my own family and friends. So I looked across the room and asked my brother if I knew how to play the drums, and duh, the answer was "Of Course", after all they are sitting in my living room. He informed me that I spent a lot of time sitting behind my kit banging out tunes and playing along to the Xbox game Rock Band..

Not long after my brother said, lets fire up the game and see if anything comes back. Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I took to my throne and got basic instructions from my brother on how to play the game as I had no idea as to what to do.. After struggling for about two or three songs, something clicked, like a light bulb being turned on and in a dark room, my body just started playing to the beats. My brother and I was amazed, I could not explain how I was doing this it, but I was playing drums; to a game of course. After some discussion, my brother and I came to the conclusion that it must be muscle memory, developed after years of playing.  This also showed up later in the year when I went out and started to play golf; which I was really good at before my memory loss.

The Journey begins!

In August 2012, I put must thought into seriously playing drums; possibly in a band, or just to be able to do in a garage somewhere. I pulled out my drum books, and began to hone and advance my technique. I can say this, playing to a video game like Rock Band is one thing, trying to play a real song is another thing and trying to play something that would be respectable is another.

The next step that I considered to evolve my skills was to search for a drum instructor.  For several month's with no luck in finding someone that could mentor me in the Louisville, Ky area; so it seemed.  I believe it was just not the right time as I was struggling with money issues and trying to get a grip on this memory loss thing while also trying to foster a career as a golfer.

February 2013 Facebook comes to the rescue! We all know, love or hate this social media juggernaut, but of all places to find the answer that I was searching for an answer. Willis Music Store, whom  I had recently subscribed to their page, placed a post about them starting a guitar workshop / lesson group. Curiously, I replied to the message and asked if they had anything like this for drums or if they knew of any drum instructors. The reply came later in the week and to my surprise, they have drum instructors and with the reply, they included the information about drum instruction.  I could not believe this, I had bought my drums from them, my books, my sticks, cymbal stands and other items but never thought they would be the ones to have drum instruction. With this new information in hand, last Friday I signed up for my first lesson that will be on Monday, March 11, 2013 with my new drum instructor Jack I. Hall.

Looks like life really does present to you what you need when you need it as the story above can be a testament too. There will be many more posts in this series as I included things that I'm taught and document my progress and maybe by doing this can assist others with the information that I will be providing.

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