Tagged As: Learn To Play Snare Drum
Question:
Im just starting on snare but i am pretty good for how long i have been playing. im looking for some advice on how much i should practice and what i should practice.
Answer:
First. NEVER practice without a metronome. Otherwise you dont know whether the beats you're playing are in time or not. Second. Dont practice with poor technique. You'll see people ram beats for the sake of ramming beats. The thing to remember here is that good technique and better sound quality will get you farther than mad chops any day. Next. Practice quality. Excellent accent/tap, stick control, TIMING, and rolls is what 99.9% of the music is about. Save the combo-rudiments for later. All that cheese dachutta stuff can lead to bad form if you're not prepared. Lastly. Did I say rolls yet? I cant stress double beat and triple beat enough. And the trick is to play these exercises rhythmically accurate and with a good wrist motion. It's easy to pinch and cheat with these. And remember, this exercise is all about strengthening your rolls, so dont practice double beat one way and play rolls another. In conclusion to this philosophy in a nutshell, Dont quit practicing. All the guys who stand in the middle worked for their spots and sacrificed something to be there, usually their free time. And dont give in to the critics, they're just the speed bumps on your way to success. The only way to know how long to practice--and even what to practice--is to ask yourself what you want to accomplish. If you want to play in any competing corps, or just have the basis for being a good drummer no matter where you use your skill, you obviously have to master the rudiments. But that doesn't mean you have to bore yourself to death repeating a book rudiment exercise over and over. You learn most effectively when you're completely relaxed, which occurs chiefly when you're having a good time doing what you're doing, not trying hard to do something else. So while you might start with a rudiment exercise, don't hesitate to mix exercises and mix rudiments in any way that entertains you. The important thing is to keep finding stuff to play that is so much fun that your practice doesn't seem like practice. Let me give you an example. Percussion is not my main instrument. Most of my learning has been on trumpet and then clarinet. When I played trumpet I hated practicing scales. Then I switched to clarinet because I wanted to play some Middle Eastern folk music--Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, etc. I'd always studied trumpet with printed music and assigned exericses. But I couldn't get any printed music for the Middle Eastern stuff I wanted to play. So I had to learn to play by ear from records. It seemed real hard at first. Then suddenly I realized that if I already knew the scale a song was based on, it was one hell of a lot easier to pick up the piece by ear. So suddenly I wanted to play scales all I could. I had a reason of my own, based on what I wanted to do, to make the scale practice meaningful. But even then I didn't practice book-type scale exercises. I played a scale every way I could figure out to play it, anything to keep me interested while I was working with the scale--just constantly varying speed, rhythm, syncopation, you name it. Within a few weeks I was picking up songs by ear so easily it was like a miracle.
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