Look into Pilates, Yoga, or Tai Chi for an alternative mindset.īe realistic about the hard stuff you practice. Not all of them, and not all the time, at least. Bob Moses's “non-independent” (or “dependent”, he'll say at other times) method is another example of what I'm talking about.Įverything is not a muscle- stop trying to develop playing skills like one. I lot of drummers use simple ostinatos, as well.
My general approach is oriented around exploiting singles and doubles, unisons, and simple multi-limb patterns for example. It means, look for ways to sound good with a minimum of technique. This doesn't mean you can't play busy, or that you have to play quarter notes the rest of your life. You're looking for the easiest way to learn to play creatively and appropriately in the moment while listening to the other players, playing the music, maybe reading, and not getting lost, while grooving the entire time. Very broadly speaking, though:īecome economy-oriented. This is a great time to re-read William S. How you actually engage that mindset gets very particular.
TAD CARPENTER DRUMMER HOW TO
How to economize that aspect is largely the subject of this entire blog, so there's not really a quick answer for that.
TAD CARPENTER DRUMMER PROFESSIONAL
Most of us are not doing a lot of commercial work like that, and we're more concerned with how to create a complete, professional creative performance in the moment. There are people who do that, and that's their job.
TAD CARPENTER DRUMMER PRO
If I were to apply a pure production mindset to drumming, I would probably be doing a lot with sequencing, using electronics, triggering, click tracks, quantizing and editing in Pro Tools to make the few things I had to actually play “freehand” absolutely perfect. They have an entire arsenal of tools and techniques that are essentially cheating, if you have the above attitude. You're producing on a deadline, and you can't just draw everything freehand directly from your mind onto the page. Take a look at an pre-computer cartooning or commercial art how-to book- we had books like that around when I was young- the entire project is based on doing everything the easiest, most repeatable way possible, while keeping the hard parts to an absolute minimum (which is not to say there are no hard parts). Work smarter, not harder, is what they say. Craftsmen in every field economize and mechanize, and use whatever tools are available to them to make their job easier, and give them reliable results. You should start with the one-line exercises, but for the examples we'll use our usual excerpt from Reed.ĭrumming students there's a great fear of “crutches” and “cheating.” The path of least resistance offends people's protestant work ethic, or it doesn't jibe with their athletic sensibility of no pain, no gain. We'll use the Syncopation section of Reed to make a pattern for both feet: the right foot plays the written part (ignoring the stems-down part, usual), the left foot fills in the remaining 8th notes. If you're far enough along in your studies to be messing with Dahlgren & Fine, it will be easier to use Reed. It's easier if we use our old friend Syncopation by Ted Reed. We could try to create similar patterns just using Stick Control, but it would require way too much mental effort for my taste. It's kind of a goofy idea, so just think of the exercises as coordination conditioners, rather than as an actual way of playing. The essence of that part of 4-Way Coordination is to play Stick Control-like sticking patterns with your hands while playing different Stick Control-like patterns with your feet. Looking at that book makes you go crosseyed after the 8th or 9th hour, so this is a nice change of gears that should help acquire at least the easier patterns out of that book. This is something that came out of practicing the harmonic independence section of 4-Way Coordination by Dahlgren & Fine.
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