Drum Lessons For Beginners

1. Drum Lessons For Beginners: Welcome to the Music Coach online drum program, where you'll learn how to play the drums from scratch. My name is Todd Porter, and I'm a professional musician and educator, Canada, where I've been teaching and performing for the last 15 years. The Music Coach program has been designed to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible, because the real joy and music is being able to express yourself with other people, listen and interact. And so the whole course curriculum has been designed around this idea of teaching you how to play the instrument, but at the same time teaching you how toe have the skills you're gonna need to play. By the end of the course, you're gonna have the confidence to grown up friends and family and other people who play and get a jam session, because the goal is to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible. Program starts by learning how to pick your first instrument and you rent it or buy it and helps you move through how to put it together, make your first sound and learn how to play some scales and rhythms and harmony so that you can interact with other musicians as quickly as possible. This course is designed for complete beginners who are looking for a way to get into the musical game in a fun, fast and friendly way. You've always dreamed about playing the drums and just not knowing where to start to come to the right place. Thank you for your interest in the music coach online drum program, and I hope you as excited as I am to get started. 2. 4 essential elements of music: What is music? Music is the language of the planet, spoken by every society since the beginning of time. Music is a vibrational language that allows us to convey complex ideas that spoken or written language alone cannot adequately express music gives us an almost unlimited vocabulary for communicating emotional information through sound way. Are all born musicians Theo Idea. That some of us are musicians and some of us are not is so far from the truth. It's laughable. You are made of music. Your heart is beating steadily in your body, keeping the rhythm of your life flowing. Your ears and voice are constantly working together to shape your experience through the sound you make and sounds. You hear it is all music, therefore, essential elements to be able to play music on any instrument. They are rhythm, harmony, melody and your passion for music. To explain these concepts, we're going to use the analogy of a train train itself is you. And the passion that you have for music is the boiler. Inside the train, you were born with the deep passion for music, like every other person whose ever been born and come before you and everyone who will come after you now you might be saying yourself, I have no passion for music or I can't even remember a time when I did thistles just simply because it got extinguished in you. And the good news is it could be reignited and made to burn hot and passionate again. The key to starting any good fire is to start with the right amount of fuel and a little bit of air. This is the same in music. One of the biggest problems people run into is they get overwhelmed. This is like putting too much wood down and trying to light it with one match. A roaring fire always starts out small, and it's helped, along with just the right amount of fuel at the right time and a continuous flow of air fire and the boiler of your train is the single most important part of your musical journey . Now, for a train to go anywhere it needs to go along a track. You can't just have a train in the middle of nowhere, with no track and get a fire burning hot and expected to go somewhere. A railroad track has three main elements. Railroad ties, which are the wooden beams that go along the ground. And two tracks, one on either side with trains. Wheels sit on rhythm is like the railroad ties, which are evenly spaced and allow for the stability for the train to move. Once the tracks are in place, railroad ties air spaced in a way that is even and breaks up the distance between two points so that time can be felt in a consistent way. If you put your train on top of just railroad ties, you're not gonna be going anywhere, so let's have the next piece of track. Harmony is the piece of track that runs alongside the railroad ties. It's fastened securely to them, which allows the rhythm to pass freely underneath harmonies most often expressed as cords. Cords air simply a grouping of three or more notes stacked vertically. The most common use of them, his major and minor. Most people experience major chords, is sounding happy, and minor chords is sounding sad. Almost all music that you've heard on the radio or on television and in movies is made up of major and minor courts. Melody is the piece of track on the other side. Opposite the Harmony, the melody is the most recognizable and distinctive part of any song to songs can have the same rhythmic and harmonic structure, but melodies are completely unique to the song from which they come from. When you think of a famous song in your head, most likely you're thinking about the melody. A melody is just simply a pattern of notes moving up or down involving the rhythm and interacting with the harmony that is connected to once you have these three elements of track of railroad ties, which of rhythm Harmony, which is one of the tracks in the melody, which is the other track your train can now roll along. Then all you have to do is keep adding more pieces of track your train control further and further faster and onward in your musical jury. 3. Notes, and the musical alphabet: throughout the world. There are many different notation systems in music in Western Europe and North America. We use a 12 tone system with the musical alphabet toe. Understand the 12 tone system. We first need to understand how we measure the distance between two notes, their two main distances used in our system. They're tones and semi tones. The easiest way to see and understand tones and semi tones is on a piano. A piano is made up of white keys and Blackie's, and a tone is the distance between two white keys with a black in the middle or between two black keys with a white key in the middle. A semi tone is our smallest unit of distance, which is between a white key in a blackie or between two white keys where there is no black he in the middle. All scales and music are simply a pattern of tones and semi tones that repeats. The most common one is the major scale, which goes tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone on a piano. If you start this pattern on, see, there's no need to use any black keys because the pattern is built right into the keyboard of tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. If you start the pattern on any other key, however, you need to use the Black Keys to maintain the pattern. This is why we have sharps and flats to make up the 12 different keys inside of the system . 4. Harmony: harmony like the universe itself, is all about relationships. We're alive right now on Earth because of its relationship to everything else in our solar system. Any two notes played at the same time are considered harmony. Sound travels in waves that are measured in Hertz hurts measures how maney waves per second a note is generating a string on a guitar, for example, vibrates 440 times per second. Lower notes vibrates slower and higher. Notes vibrate faster human ears can hear in a range of approximately 31 hurts. Up to 18,000 hertz dogs, for example, can hear a much larger range. They can hear from 40 hertz all the way up to 60,000 hertz when two or more notes air played. At the same time, the sound waves interact with each other, creating two states of dissonance and continents, more commonly known as tension and release. Imagine the sound waves are like dolphins jumping in and out of the water notes that Aaron dissidents or tension never line up evenly so that the pattern of the dolphins being in and out of the water is never in complete alignment. This is a physical event and why some people experience tension in music as very uncomfortable. This technique is often used in movie soundtracks to enhance the sense of unease. Continents or release is having the dolphins come into a pattern where sometimes or all of the time they're at the top or bottom of their pattern together at the same time, much like our preference for spicy or sweet tastes, we each have a sense of how much tension and release we like in our music. And like a sense of taste, it can evolve over time, depending on what were exposed to the fact that there are no wrong notes is not just a spiritual state of mind. It's a fact. All that exists is tension and release or dissonance and continents and how much you enjoy . He is entirely up to your own sense of personal taste. Cords are organized harmony. Harmony is used most commonly to make up chords that air called triads. They're just simply cords that have three notes in them, cords are built like houses. There is a foundation which we call the route the third, which is like the main floor and the fifth, which is like the second floor of the house. The route is the note that gives Accord its name. For example, in a C chord, the route is see. The third of the note is the third note in the scale, so see is one is to and is three. The fifth is the fifth note in the scale. See is one D is to his three, Fs four and G is five. There are several different types of chords. The two most common are major chords and miners. What makes a cord major or minor is the relationship of the third to the root of the court . When it is closer to the fifth than the route, it is major, which is like moving the main floor of your house up slightly when it is closer to the basement, where the root it's minor. The way you move a note, closer or further away, is with sharps and flats to change a C poured from major to minor, you change the third, which is E. T. Flat. Most people experience major and minor chords by hearing them as happy sounds for major on and sad sounds for minor. It's always good to remember that music is a language that you were built to speak. And even when you're working on something that's a challenging concept, just know that with enough time and practice you'll be able to master it. 5. Melody: melody is the part of songs that most people identify with, since there are so many harmonic and rhythmic combinations melodious the most distinct part of any song. Close your eyes and think for a moment of your favorite piece of music. Chances are you're hearing the melody in your head. A melody is both rhythmic and harmonic, and if it is well constructed, it could be sung or played on its own and be clearly understood. Simply put, a melody is a string of notes and rests that move up and down in relation to the harmony underneath it. 6. Rhythm: rhythm is a word that has many meanings in music. This could be the source of unnecessary confusion for students. When they first begin. You may have heard the words time and tempo used in the same way. Let's break this down into the essential elements. Tempo is like a river. Think of a river for a moment. It usually flows at a constant pace, but it's not rigid or mechanical. When humans make music, it is a goal to be as consistent as possible with the tempo. But in reality it's alive, and it has subtle shifts, like the flow of a river Rhythm is how we interact with flow of this river. Imagine sticking your hand in the flow of the river for one second and then pulling it back out. Then imagine doing the same thing for two seconds and half a second. This is the equivalent to playing notes of different lengths. The river is constant, but how long we play the notes for is what makes it in the music. Rhythm is the most mathematical part of music education, but fear not. There is nothing more advanced than simple addition and subtraction involved. Imagine your favorite type of pie for a moment. Now, the size of the pie is constant. No matter how we slice it, the pie represents a bar of music. If you eat the whole pie yourself, it's like playing a whole note, which takes up the entire bar. If you invite a friend over and cut the pie in two, you have to half notes. If you cut it again, you have 4/4 tones. Cut it again and you have 8/8 in music. All time has to be accounted for again. Think of the pie if you have a pie and you cut it into 4/4 and you only want to eat one of the quarters. The other 3/4 still exists because the whole pie was baked. This is the same in music. So wherever there's not a note played, there has to be arrest to take his place. So each of the note values in music of whole half quarter eighths and so on all have rests that last for the same amount of time 7. Drums Setup and Buyers: welcome to the instrument set up and buyers guide for the drum kit. Now, when you're getting started playing the drums, one of the first decisions you're gonna have to make is so I want to go with an electronic drum kit or an acoustic drum kit like this one. The main factors to consider are where you're going to be playing and practicing and what your eventual musical goals are for practice purposes. And electronic drum kit actually gives you a lot more options than acoustic drum kit just because you can control how loud the sound is. An electric drum kit is going to sound about this loud when you're playing it. But the sound that it is on a drum pad now on acoustic drum kit, as you probably already comptel is gonna be quite loud. So unless you have somewhere to set up in play, where you can make noise without disturbing other people on the electric drum kit, maybe a good place to start. Acoustic drum kits ultimately are what's mostly commonly used when you're making music with other people and learning how to play them not just correctly, but learning how to play them at different volume levels takes a bit of time to get used to electric drum kits. Start at around 3 to $500 in price and come with some foot triggers and some pads and some sort of pads that look like symbols. And it will have some sort of interface that you can have a program in the sounds for each of the pads, and you'll need to have a good set of headphones as well. And then you just use regular drumsticks and you practice away like you normally would on a regular drum kit. If ultimately, your goal is to just play on your own and jam along with your own tunes than an electronic drum kit can be a great option for long term. Ah, but I would say ultimately, if your hope is to play music with other people than an acoustic drum kit is the best way to go. If you're thinking of buying an electric drum kit, there are three main price points. There are student level, intermediate and professional in the student level pricing you're looking at starting at around $300 up to five or $600. Intermediates are going to start in the 5 to $600 range and go up towards 1000 and then professional levels are going to start at 1000 and go up into the five or $6000 range, Mostly what you're getting in the difference in quality is the controller end of it in terms of the amount of sounds and options you have when you program it. And also some playability stuff like they're going to be higher quality pedals and the rubber and everything is going to be higher quality on professional level. But certainly we're starting out. Ah, student level electronic drum kit is a good place to start. I always recommends in my students. If possible, don't buy the absolute cheapest thing because any quality that's being lost by companies trying toe cut cut prices and cut corners, you're gonna notice it the most right at the bottom. And often you get a significant increase in quality from the lowest price to the next one up. So even though you might be only spending 100 to $200 more, somebody's you get quite a huge jump in quality by just going up a little higher in the intermediate electronic drum space, you're just again getting mawr, better quality sounds and better quality equipment and professional level electronic drums . I would say there's no need to spend that kind of money unless you specifically want to play Elektronik drum sounds on Lee. Because if you're gonna invest over $1000 in Electron a drum kit, you're probably unlikely to also have the budget to invest in a real acoustic drum kit. And ultimately, if you're able to, it's good to have both. Now on Acoustic Drum Kit Side, there are a couple things to consider. There are child size sets, which are great if you've got a little person in your life, and they are often very inexpensive and fairly durable and good for Gillette. Kids just play around on. They usually start in the $200 range and go up to three or $400 and usually they come with with everything you need. They'll come with all the pedals, the drums themselves and usually one symbol. Sometimes that attach is right into the bass drum, and like I said, if you've got a little person in your life, It's kind of a good That's a good starting place because ah, full size drum kit can only be made so small and little people kind of their legs were just not gonna be long enough until they're probably around 10 years old before they can really sit at a real acoustic full size drunk it. There are three main price points for acoustic drunk. It's There's the student level drum kits, the intermediate and the professional level. On the student level drum kit side, you can get a a drum kit, which will come with usually five pieces, which are the kick drum snare drum. They'll be to rack toms, a floor Tom and a high hat stand, and usually you'll get high hat Cymbals and a kick drum pedal is well and sometimes one or more right or crash symbol, and the base price for that is around 4 to $600 and intermediate drums are going to start in the 7 to $800 range and go up towards $1000. And then professional level drum kits go up from there, up into the many thousands of dollars. Now, one of the great things about drum kits is so many of the parts are interchangeable, so you can start with ah fairly based level drum kit and upgrade many different kinds of parts of it. Um, for example, when you play drum kit, a lot of what you're hearing is you play the snare drum a lot, So if you get a very basic drum kit and you're not happy with snare sound, you could just buy and different snare drum. And it really upgrades the sound quality of your drum kit with just one upgrade. Nothing like that is your kick drum pedal. It's the when you have a cheaper drum kit. It's one of the places you really feel the difference. Really. High end kick drum pedals are very smooth and even all the way through, and they often have two chains, so they're really their super durable. Ah, and again you can upgrade just that part. So this drum kit is what's called a pearl export. Siri's and it's ah, very famous. Lots of people have them. They're not too expensive, brand new. They cost about $900 I've had this drum kit for a really long time and it's it sounds great , and I'm very happy with it. In acoustic drums, the size of the drums affects the prices well. There are different kinds of drum kits for different kinds of drumming on the very small end after you have the Children's drum sets are what are called cocktail kits, and they're designed to be very compact, very lightweight and for playing cocktail parties essentially so you could fit it in a little corner and played quite quietly, and it would sound good going up from there. You're gonna have a jazz kit, which will have a much smaller bass drum than this, and the other drums will often be smaller. Everything will be a little bit more tight and compact. This drum kit here is is a fairly standard size. It's a 22 inch bass drum. Ah, 14 inch snare drum. There's a 10 inch Tom. There's also a 12 inch time that comes with this kit that I don't use and a 16 inch floor Tom. And these are all very standard sizes for a full sized drum kit, and this could be used in rock and reggae. As a very general rule. The size of the bass drum will affect how big the bass drum sounds. So the smaller it is, the more of a thumping you're going to get in, the bigger. It's going to get more of a booming sound in terms of symbols. Hi hat Cymbal zehr fairly standard sizes. The hardware in a high hat stand varies greatly if you're playing really hard and hitting. If you're playing louder, more aggressive music, you're gonna want hardware that's really tough and durable, and again it's just more expensive. But as a beginner starting out, you can get sort of a lower end set of hardware and stands. Ah, and usually they'll be fairly consistent. The symbols are the next piece and that fairly this is a fairly standard set up. I've got to crash Cymbals and one ride Cymbal, the right symbol. We usually be larger, and it's usually the most expensive symbol to buy. You can often get a set together, like the high hat Cymbals, couple of crashes and a ride Cymbal in one thing so that all tonally match symbols all look the same. But the kind of metal in the way it's manufactured is varies greatly so they have different colors and sounds, and there they sound different, depending on where you hit them. So when you're first starting out, I'd recommend getting a matching set. And then as you go along again, you can upgrade different pieces, different symbols at different times when picking your drum sticks. There's a few things you want to consider. Drumsticks are designed to be different sizes and weights, and in a very general sense, the bigger and heavier the stick, the louder it's gonna be with with less energy. So there's two schools of thought. Some drummers I know like to play with a really heavy stick and use it very lightly so that there's less wrist and arm motion to generate more sound. And other people like to play with very light sticks and hit a little harder because they like the feeling of it. So the system for most drum kits is going to be a number with a letter, and as the numbers get larger, that sticks actually gets smaller, so a three is gonna be a little bit bigger than a five, and they usually are A's and B's. Every company does it slightly differently, but When you're in a store, you can pick up some drumsticks and kind of feel the weight of them. And I would recommend trying a few different weights of sticks to find what feels right in your hands. You'll you'll get a feeling for what you like. When a stick is too light, it'll just not feel quite right in your hands. And it Certainly, if the stick is too heavy, you'll you'll feel that you don't quite have the speed because it's always a trade off between how fast you can move and how consistent you can make your sound. If you have an acoustic drum kit and you're looking to play a little bit quieter for practice purposes is a few things you can do. The first thing I recommend our would've called blast sticks and these air simply ah, whole bunch of very thin pieces of wood that air taped together, and they disperse the sound so that you're not getting nearly as much of a direct transmission of energy into whatever you're hitting. So here's a stick. Here's a plastic so I can swing my arms and wrists at the same velocity as I would with a stick and get a much quieter sound now. The only drawback with blast ICS is that you can't really practice any rules because this the blast ICS don't bounce off of the snare drum, especially like a regular stick does. So they're good for big motion movements and practicing time. But for more subtle things and skipping the symbol, skipping on the symbol and things like that it won't really do that. They're also upset of plastics are quite a bit more expensive than regular drumsticks. Regular drumsticks will be in the sort of 5 to $15 price range, and blast IQ started $20 go up. So definitely, if you're gonna buy a pair of these, don't lose them. Hang on to them if you wanted to practice roles and mawr stick technique, but you can't be making any noise or anti may making very much noise because of where you live. Ah, practice pad is an excellent thing to own these air again, not very expensive, and you can set it on top of your snare drum. Or you can just set it on a table, and it will simulate the bounce that your sticks air getting when they're hitting the snare drum. And for specific snare drumming techniques, this is a great way to practice. You don't need headphones. You don't need ear plugs because it's very quiet and you can really hear how it sticks are bouncing and get a good feel for how they're moving on the practice pad. A really important piece of equipment when playing the drums is some sort of ear protection . Because the drum kit can be very loud, it can do damage to your hearing. Over time, there's sort of two approaches you can take. One is to get earplugs, which you can get really cheap ones, even from the drugstore that air soft foam and they just go into your ear. Always be careful. Don't river ram anything right down in your ear. And this will cut out a lot of the high frequencies from the symbols, which could do a lot of damage. And they'll leave some of the low frequency so you'll be able to hear your kick drum, which is nice if you wanted to play along with music when you're practicing on the drums. One thing I recommend is a really good set of headphones that are made for drums. So these air Vic Firth and what they are is they're designed for drummers. So there they fit over your ear and they're essentially like an industrial level set of ear protection, like you'd see it an airport or in a factory or something where people are around things that are really loud. So blocks out all the sound. And then it has the headphone cable built right in. What I found is that these really allow me to keep the volume low on the track that I'm playing, and so I don't have to feel like I've got a blasting in my ear. To be able to be at the same level is the drums and a regular set of headphones, even if they're high quality. But they're not made for drumming. You're gonna find they have to crank up the volume really loud toe. Have them be louder than the amount of sound that's leaking in the sides. And nothing I really recommend against is ear buds, which are the ones that used to come with the smartphones. And things like that that go right in your ear are not ideal for playing drums. Part of it is that the speaker and the headphone is really close to your ear drums, so if you are cranking it up, you're going to get a lot of damage right away. And also, your ear drum really needs a little bit of air between the sound that's happening and you're actually your drums for to process the sound properly. So I said headphones like this their little expensive. These were about $70 I believe. And but it's totally worth it because you're hearing, really, once you start to damage it, there's no coming back. So I look it and go for a small investment to protect my hearing. It's totally worth it now. It might seem like a silly thing to think about, but because your feet are is important part of playing drums as your hands are, I always like to make sure that I practice with same shoes or boots that I'm gonna be playing with when I'm playing with other people, because the way that your feet interact with the pedals in terms of how much grip your shoes have, how much your shoes way, whether they have a hell in them or not, it's gonna affect the touch feeling you're gonna have when you're putting the high hat up and down or using the bass drum. So definitely I practice with I know what shoes I like to wear when I'm performing or playing with other people, and I make sure that I bring them down and and play with them, especially for weight. If you're if you like toe wear. Ah, really light running shoe all the time and you're playing all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I'm gonna you know where these boots or something that I have on you're gonna feel a big difference in your legs and how the technique is going to be a little bit different. Some people like to play in sock feet. I don't usually recommend that for a couple reasons. One is when you're ultimately playing drums with other people. Having shoes on for safety is a really good thing, cause things do tip over and they'll land on your feet. And it could hurt, um, and also just in terms of the grip on the paddles themselves, it's good to have some amount off grip on your feet so that you get something consistent and definitely don't play in your bare feet, mostly just for germs and foot fungus and things like that. And you don't want other people playing your drums and bare feet either. So always find a good pair of shoes that you like and stick with them. Now, when you're setting up your drum kit for you, there's a few things you've got to consider that are really important. One is the height of the stool. You're gonna want the drum throne. Teoh. Have your legs be on a 90 degree angle going down. If your drum stool is too low, your legs are going to be up above your hips and your legs, especially right around your hip joint, are going to get really tired quickly. So you're gonna get fatigue if you're sitting too low. If you're sitting too high, you're gonna lack the power, and the controller really hit the pedals hard and hit them consistently. It's always like to make sure get a really good drum throne. Ah, one thing to look out for. Unfortunately, with a lot of newer ones, you're going to see a plastic. It'll be a metal screw controlling a plastic ring holding a piece of metal Any time you see plastic trying to hold metal, this is cheap and no good and will probably break. So get a good drum throne that's really easy to adjust where there's metal holding metal together, and that will be really consistent. The next step is to get all of the drums surfaces to a good level. So some people like to have their snare drum up really high. And depending on whether you play with what's called traditional grip or match grip when you play the traditional grip, some people like to have the drum up a little higher or even angled away from them, which has more from the marching band style. Um, for match grip, I recommend having it be completely flat and up a little bit higher than your knees. One thing you'll notice is if you're hitting the snare drum and your hand or your stick is hitting your left thigh, then you probably your snare drum is a little bit too low. Ah, the other notes. If you're hitting the rim a lot, not on. If you're hitting the rim a lot and you don't mean to, then probably your snare drum is a bit too high, so these are kind of some things to think about when you're reaching forward to Iraq, Tom, you want to feel like it's right there at the end of your extension, so you don't want to feel like if the lean forward into it and you also don't want to feel like it's too close. So you're not getting enough power. The floor Tom should be at the same height level is the snare drum and again should feel comfortable to hit it and also a comfortable movement around the drum kit with your hands. You don't want to feel like you're reaching way over or having to reach back when it comes to the floor time with the high hat again. It's a very personal thing. I like to have it up. Maybe four inches off. The snare drum depends on how much on top of the high hat playing you're doing and how much sort of on the side you want to be doing. If it's too low when you're playing, you'll click the sticks when you're playing in cross position, and if it's too high up, you won't be able to play on top of the high hat, so it's good to find a happy medium with symbols. I like to have them near the end of my arm extension for both hands, because sometimes you're going to be playing a crash symbol with your left hand and somebody's you're playing with your right hand. Now, if you're left handed, you're just going to reverse all of this stuff around. Germ kits are easy to switch, either right handed or left handed. Really, make sure to take the time to feel comfortable with your drum kit before you start playing . Ah, an extra two or three minutes of really feeling like everything is exactly where you want. It is really important for your long term ability to play without injury and to minimize fatigue. If you're noticing that any part of your drum kit feels like it's a stretch or reach or it's too close or it's too high or too low, really take the time to get it said, exactly the way that you like in a lot of modern drumming, there is the use of to kick drum pedals and a lot of students asked me, Should I get this right away? It's a little bit more money of thing to think about. With that, I don't generally recommend starting out with the double bass drum pedal. The main reason is, is that the high hat is really an important part of your sound on an entire drum kit and as soon as you get into ah double bass drum pedal, your kind of neglecting the subtlety of the high hat. For certain styles, however, you need a double bass pedal. If you're playing really fast, aggressive, like heavy metal on a lot of newer heavy rock, the you can't play the drum parts without a double bass pedal because the the basis the bass pedal is going so fast, you can't do it with a single bass pedal. So that's the only thing I'd say is, if you're really in love with a kind of music that really needs it, then maybe you want to start out there. But as a general rule, um, I like to say keep your foot on the high hat and get usedto playing double strokes as fast as you can with one bass drum pedal with an acoustic drum kit. If it's going to be living in one location, like it your house, you don't really need to think too much about cases or bags for any of the drums or Cymbals . But if you are gonna be traveling with the drum kit, it's really important to transport things safely so that the drums don't get scratched or damaged. And the symbols don't get cracked and scraped. Ah, basic symbol bag is just a big open thing that has different sleeves in it that you can slide the symbols into, and it'll have some kind of a zipper. Usually it will also have a spot for you. Keep all your drumsticks and a civil bag is a great thing to have, because oftentimes, if you're going to rehearsals or other, someone else may have a drum kit of their house. And you may just want to have your own symbols because you like the sound. You can just grab a symbol bag and take all your symbols with you for the drums themselves . There's two types of cases. You can get hard shell cases, which I don't really recommend unless your professional in your touring. They're big, they're heavy, they're expensive. You can get soft, soft cases for the for all of the drums, and they're usually more affordable. They give you the basic protection with you that you need, which is a little bit of soft protection, and mainly to keep things from scratching and banging into it. Because if you just put the drums themselves in the back of a car and one things falls into another, it might leave a big scrape or crack, especially if you're in a cold climate. So if you're gonna be moving your drums around a lot, I definitely recommend getting some cases for the drums and a symbol bag the hardware itself. You can sometimes go a little cheaper on that. Hardware is usually very heavy, so you're going to need something some kind of a heavy duty bag. Um, lots of people have seen use hockey bags or some kind of like a big camping bag. Teoh. Keep everything inside. Definitely make sure it's has a strap. Another good option is some newer pieces of luggage. Have wheels on them, so you can stick everything in there and then roll it 8. Learn how to hold your sticks and where to place your feet.: I welcome the week one of drum lessons in the Music Coach program. Today we're gonna get you started on some basic fundamentals, like how to hold your sticks and where to put your feet on how to hold your body to get started on playing the drum kit. The drum kit is truly a fun and exciting instrument to play, and it's one of the few instruments were both your feet in both your arms and your whole body. Get involved in the making of the music. It's one of things I love about drums now to get started. Every drum kit is a little bit different. This is a fairly standard set up, and I'm going to talk for a minute, just about what the names of all the drums are. My right foot is on the kick drum, which is sometimes also called the bass drum, and it's played with a pedal like that. My left foot is holding these two symbols, which are called the high hats, and they also go up it down with my left. The drum right between my legs is called the snare drum because it has little metal chains on the bottom that allow it to rattle. You can also turn them off so that it sounds like a regular drum, but we're gonna leave them on for now. The drummer in front of Me is called a Rack Tom, and the drum to the left of me is called a floor Tom. I also have two symbols, a crash symbol and a ride Cymbal, and the main difference between these two is the size. The crash Cymbals a little smaller on the right symbols a little bigger now. The drum kit has been around for most of the 20th century and into the 21st century. It's a collection of instruments that used to be played by individual people in marching bands in a marching band. It used to be someone's job just to play the bass drum, and they would have a big mallet and then usually play on both sides, and someone else will be playing the snare drum and they don't strap around and they'd be playing like this and someone else would be playing Cymbals and making them go together like this. And when music moves from being out in the street to being in nightclubs, and in theaters that people started to realize. How could we get all this to be in one place and have one person do it? Because there's not always tons of space to have different people playing different instruments, So the drum kit is an amalgamation of a bunch of different percussion instruments. In this week's practice video, we're going to start by learning how to hold the sticks properly. So what you gonna do is hold the stick between your thumb and pointer finger like this, and you're gonna want to leave enough space at the bottom of the drumstick so that your hand can close around it with a little bit of space leftover says why it's a little different for everyone, depending on the size of your hands, so I can't tell you exactly where on the stick to grab it. You'll have to work on that in your own. So once you grab it like this, this is called the Fulcrum, which is the pivot point where the stick swings from most of the grip that you're using on the stick is happening right here. Then you're gonna rest the hand, then you're gonna rest the stick in your hand and close your fingers gently around it. Now you don't want to grip the stick, your just mostly holding it between the pointer finger and the thumb and what's your hands together like this. You're gonna turn them over and your posture so your back should be straight and your legs should be going straight out in front of you, and your arms will form a triangle. One little thing about how high to keep your stool. You want to keep your leg at a 90 degree angle, so if your legs air coming up above your hip or are pointing way down in your seat needs to go up or down to the alleged coming straight out and down. Once you have your good posture going and you're trying already, you're gonna work on just making a sound on the snare drum. So to do this, you wanna let the stick bounce so we don't push the stick into the drum. You let it go on. Let it drop in. Bounce like this on. Eventually, when we're doing single strokes, you'll let this stick bounce and pick it up away from the drum like this. All right, we'll see in the practice video 9. Drums week 1 practice: first, pick up the drumstick in your right hand. Pinch the drumstick between your thumb and the side of your index finger close to the fingertip. This is known as the fulcrum, where the pivot point and is the only point in which you squeeze the stick. Now turn your hand over palm facing up and let the handle of the stick rest in the center of your palm. Wrap your fingers around, stick comfortably, holding it with all of your fingers. Be sure to avoid holding the stick at the very end. Instead, leave one or two inches of the stick beyond your pinkie finger. Turn your hands over again so that your palms are facing downwards and reach your arms forward. Turn your hands over again so that your palms are facing downwards and reach your arms forward. Make sure that your sticks they're pointing straight out from your shoulders and your arms and shoulders should be making a triangle shape with stick and your body. Now with your arms in a triangle. Take a break breath in when you breathe out. Let your right stick drop and hit the snare, drum and bounce. And when it stopped bouncing Lift it back up Take a big breath in And when you breathe out let your left hand drop and do the same Let's try that one more time Take a big breath in when you breathe out Let your right hand drop on the snare drum Take a big breath in And when you breathe out Drop your left hand Now you're gonna play whole notes on the snare drum Onley alternating between your right hand and your left end So when the click track starts, you're gonna be counted in and you're gonna hit the snare drum and count to four and then you're going to hit it with your left hand and count to four. 12 Ready? Go My hand. 234 Left hand. 234 Right hand 234 Left hand 234 Right hand to three for left hand, too. 34 Right hand, 234 left hand. 234 Now we're gonna do the same thing with half notes. So two clicks for each stroke. 12 ready? Go right to to right to To right to to two left to now Quarter notes. So one click for each stroke. One to you. Ready? Go. Okay. Left. Okay, left, right, left, right, left. Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go! Okay, Right. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Okay, left. 10. Learn how to use your feet on the drum kit: I welcome back this'll Week to drum lessons in music. This week, we're going to start adding in your feet now. Like I said in the first week, the drum kit is a really unique instrument that both your arms and both your feet are really involved in almost everything you're doing, and at first it can feel a little awkward getting it all coordinated. You probably don't remember learning how to walk or climb, but when you watch a little kid do it, it's a little awkward. At first, they're trying toe make everything happen in the strait sequence. Another little thing that's difficult about the human body is the right side of your brain is controlling the left side of your body and the left side of brains controlling the right side of your body. So we're kind of cross wired, so be patient with yourself and take the time to really let the information get all the way into your body. Drumming is something that you have to know about, but you mostly have to experience and feel it for to really work. This week, we're gonna get started by playing the kick drum with your right foot and the high hat with your left foot. Now there are two different techniques for how your feet work on the pedals and they apply to both feet. There's a technique called hell down in which you swing the bass drum beater in and it bounces back. This is a little bit more advanced, and it's used for double based techniques and getting the base room to really go back and forth very quickly for our purposes. We're gonna go with the hell up technique, and we're gonna sink the beater into the skin. This is more commonly used in rock pattern, which is what we're gonna use in this program. So for now, you don't have to lift your heel way up just a little bit off the back and also gives you a little more power to push the kick drum, and we're gonna use the same technique for the high hat. The reason for the hell down technique on the high hat is to let them be lose control. How much they're opening and closing. For now, we're just gonna be hell up on both feet. So for starters, we're gonna be going kick drum and high hat. It feels a little bit like walking. So try and feel the whole rhythm in your whole body. Another important thing about using your feet especially, is the point at which the rhythm happens is when the beater hits the skin. Not when you start thinking I should lift up my foot. So if you want the rhythm to be in time, you have to move earlier before the rhythm happens. So when you're listening for the click track really trying aim the beater right for the beginning of the beat You know, first you're gonna it's gonna seem like you're moving early, let it land in the right place and the same with your high hat. The last thing we're gonna add in this week's practice video is adding the backbeat which is played on a snare drum. Now in water music like jazz and R and B and rock and roll that's happened the last 100 years or so. The big difference is that the emphasis of the rhythms we play our on beat two and beat four most music. Before that, especially European classical music, all the emphasis was on beat one and beat three if you don't understand what I mean by the beats in the bar, there's some rhythm videos that go ahead of the program that you can check out. It'll explain all this, but for now we're gonna get used to counting that the kick drum is going to be on one and three and the snare drum and high hat are gonna be on beats two and four. Eventually, you're gonna end up playing this which eventually is going to lead us into a regular rock pattern, which sounds like this way. All right, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 11. Drums week 2 practice: when you take a big breath in and when you breathe out, play the kick drum using the hell up technique. Then take a big breath in. Now when you breathe out, play the high hat using the hell up technique. Now let's try it again. Big breath in and when you breathe out, play the kick drum and then a big breath in. When you breathe out, play the high hat. Now you're gonna alternate between the kick drum and the high hat with your feet playing whole notes. So four clicks for each foot, starting with the kick drum. 12 Ready? Go Kick drum 234 High hat 234 Kick drum to 34 High hat 234 Kick drum to three for high hat , too. Three for kick drum to 34 High hat 234 Now you're going to do the same thing as half notes . So two clicks for each 12 ready? Go kick drum to high hat, too. Kick drum to I had to kick drum to hi hat too. Drum to high hat, too. Now you're going to do the same thing using quarter notes so one click for each drum. 12 Ready? Go kick. I had I kick high kick. High hat, pick. High hat, kick high hat, kick high hat, kick. High hat. Let's try the same thing One more time. 12 Ready? Go kick. I kick high kick high kick. High hat, kick high hat kick. I kick high hat kick. Now we're gonna do the same thing again with your feet playing Quarter notes. But I want you to add your left hand. Playing the snare drum at the same time is your high hat. Foot one to ready. Go! Kick, kick! High hat kick high kick. I had kick high kick. High kick. High hat. Kick! One more time. One. Do you ready? No, I had a kick. Kick! Kick! Kick! Kick, kick, kick! 12. Learn your first rock drum pattern: Welcome back. Three drum lessons. This week we're gonna complete our first rock drum pattern, and we're going to begin exploring playing eighth notes on different places on the drum kit . One thing I wanted to start out with, though, was talking about breathing now in the practice videos. In the first few weeks, I had to do some breathing in and then breathing out. When you make a sound on the drum kit, it's not necessary to breathe out to make the instrument make a sound the way it is on a trumpet or saxophone. But it's really important to remember to keep air flowing through your body. In some ways, it's easier when you play a wind instrument to keep this in mind, because you're forced to be breathing deeply all the time, but on instruments like the drums or the guitar or the piano, Sometimes it could be a problem where your body tightens up and you're not getting enough oxygen. So try and remember to keep breathing deeply as you're playing, especially as you start doing things that are more and more complicated. The tendency to hold your breath and tighten remember to keep breathing deeply while you're making your sound All right, So to complete our rock pattern, we're gonna add eight notes to the high hat. So eight notes are gonna be two strokes for each click of the Metrodome. Now, what I want you to do is play them with your right hand. So rather than alternating hands, which we're gonna do later, I want you to play with just your right hand because it's gonna complete our rock pattern. So for starters, you're just going to literally playing eighth notes thing. We're gonna be adding in both feet with the eighth notes. So we start with the kick, and then the high hat will be like Then we're gonna add in our left hand playing when the high hat opens and closes to complete a rock pattern. Now, once you have both hands and both feet going with the Metrodome, you may have this weird feeling like time is speeding up or slowing down is a totally natural thing. Your body is not equally proportioned with muscle and speed, for example. Often, if you're right handed, your right foot might be a little bigger than your left foot or your right year we look like we're symmetrical, but we're not so getting used to playing in time on an instrument like the drums, it takes a bit of getting used to. Your body has to do it. You'll feel yourself speeding up and slowing down. You'll notice that one hand or one foot might be faster than the other there also traveling different distances, depending on what you're doing. So just be patient. Try and listen for the rhythm of the click track and remember to keep breathing deeply. All right, great work, and we'll see in the practice video. 13. Drums week 3 practice: Now you're going to start playing eighth notes on the high hat with it held. Closed with your left foot. Now. Eighth notes are going to be two strokes for each click on the metro. No. 12 Ready? Go. 121212121212121 to try again. 12 Ready? Go. 1212121212121212 Now, I want you to play the same thing on the high hat, but add in your feet playing quarter notes. One to ready, so pick, Pick, pick. I pick, I pick, I pick, I pick, I hat kick straight again. One Teoh. Ready? Go. Kick has kick. Hat, kick. High hat. Now add in the snare drum at the same time Has your high hat foot and keep those eight votes going on the high hat. 12 Ready? Go! Kick, kick, kick, Kick, Kick! Kick Straight again. One to ready. Go! Kick, kick, Kick! Now I want you to play eighth notes. So alternating right hand and left hand in different places on the drum kit using the metro . No Now you can choose. Depending on the drum kit, you have to play different patterns. So you might start in the snare drum, and then play the rack, Tom, or start on the floor time and move to symbol. We're gonna do it with the Metrodome. 12 ready? Go! 12 Ready? Again. Ready? Go! 12121212 Ready? Go! 12121212 Ready? Go To 1 to 2. 14. Learn your first drum fill: Welcome back for Week four Drum Lessons in the music program. This week we're going to get started on playing your very first drum fill. Now Drum fills our great way to break up the pattern of the part that you're playing there also an excellent way to signal that there's a change coming in the form like that. We're moving to a new section of the song or we're going into a solo. Learning where and how to use drum fills is an excellent way to give music shape. It's one of the things that really makes a really live drummer so much more interesting than a drum machine. Even though you can program a fill into a drum machine, it never quite has the human feeling of the way that you were gonna play it and feel a certain kind of rhythm. Her first drum fill is going to be 2/8 notes on the rack Tom and then a crash symbol with the kick drum at the same time. Now the reason we most often play crashes with the kick is it gives an extra punch, so the kick drum is a very low sound, and the symbol is a very high sound, so it gives you this pushing sound together rather than by itself. So it first thing to be a little bit cumbersome to remember to always get the kick drum to hit at the same time as the symbol like before. Remember to lift your foot early and push in on the beat. So in the practice video you're going to hear 123 Now in the practice video, you're also going to see me stopping the symbol each time. You don't have to do that when you're practicing on your own. I'm just doing that so it's a little easier to hear the next bit of voice over that's happening so you can just let it ring until the next part. Then we're gonna work on putting the fill in the right place in the bar so this drum fill takes up one beat, so it's eighth notes at the end of the bar, and then the crash is the beginning of the next bar. So in order for it to fit, we're gonna play three beats of the rock part and play the Philip the End. It'll be 13 like that, and we're gonna work on playing it on its own, playing it at the beginning of the part, playing it at the end of the part and then eventually playing it in a big, giant circle. Lastly, in this week's practice video, you're gonna play along with song for the first time. What I want you to do is play just the regular rock meat all the way through the a section of the song. If you're feeling adventurous and you want to try putting a fill in, you can go for it otherwise, to see if you can keep a solid as you can all the way through the track. Keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 15. Drums week 4 practice: Now we're gonna work on playing our first drum fill, which is going to be 2/8 notes played on Tom, followed by a crash symbol with the kick drum at the same time. First, try this totally at a time. Take a deep breath in, then play right left. Try it again. Take a deep breath in and play right. Left. Crash. Remember to get the kick drum in there at the same time Is a crash nimble? Let's do it one more time. Deep breath in. Right left crash. Now try playing it with the click track will count three beats than play. Right. Left crash. And then we'll leave a whole bar in between. One to ready. Right. Left Crash 34 123 Right. Left Crash for one, 23 We left Crash 34 123 Left. 34123 Left way to play the basic rock beat for three beats and then play your drum. Fill and stop! 12 Ready. Go! One, Right, Left. 34 13 Left. 34123 Right. Left, Crash 2341 23 Left. 34 Now I want you to start with the rock fill and come back into the drum part to finish out the bar. 123 Right, Left, Three straight again. 123 Right, Left Crash. Three for one more time. 123 Left. Three. Now see if you can play the whole figure, starting with rock drumbeat, then playing the fill and then coming back into the drum. Part 12 Ready? Go! 123 Left. 413 Right, Left, Crashed. 341 three. Right, Left, crash 413 left. Three. Now I want you to play the basic rock drumbeat part along with the track for the a section of our song. 12 Ready? Go! - Let's try that again. 12 Ready. Go! 16. Learn to play the rock pattern in the open position: I Welcome back. This is Week five drum lessons. This week we're gonna be working on playing the same basic rock pattern. But in the open position, all this means is that instead of playing the eighth notes on the high hat, we're gonna play them on the ride Cymbal. Now what this does is it gives you another color to work with. If you think of sound in terms of colors, is a very tight sounding sound. This is a much more ringing kind of sound. Now, also, what's great about a ride Cymbal is you can also play in different places on it to get different kinds of sounds. So towards the outside, it's a little lower and wash here. And as you move in towards the centre, the's sound gets tighter and higher pitched more like a belt, and you can even play right on the belle of the ride Cymbal. This gives you a lot of different options in terms of your dynamics, like how loud you playing. Generally speaking, open position is often used when the song is getting louder, like in a course. For example, which is it gonna be like it is in our song. So to start practicing, you're just gonna play the same B. It takes a little getting used to. You think your hands doing the same thing, but because they're uncrossed, it's gonna feel a little different in your body. So again, just be patient and trying really keep them locked together. Another little challenge will play with the rights of because it's washy. It can be sometimes easy toe. Get a little lax with your right hand cause you won't be able to hear us crisply as you can in the high hat trying really zone in on the right hand and make sure it's nice and tight with the Metrodome. The last thing we're gonna add this week is adding in some crash symbol accents as part of our B section of our song. So because the B section in our case is a little louder and bigger at the beginning of every four bar section, there's a crash symbol with the kick drum, including the very first beat of the B section. There's a pickup in the melody, and then there's a crash on and kick that starts off the powder. So if I counted in like this is like 123 bop bada like that. If you're playing the crash symbol, it's part of the eighth notes cycle that you're playing with your right hand. So you have to just get from here over here in the same timeframe as you would if you were just here the whole time. So in the practice video work on seeing if you can add those accents and get comfortable playing the open position, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video. 17. Drums week 5 practice: now into practice playing the basic rock beat in the open position. So the only thing that's different is your right hand is gonna be playing the eighth notes on the ride Cymbal instead of the high hat. Let's try it first with the click track 12 Ready Go. One thing. One thing. Three for one. Now let's try the B section with the backing track. - How try the same thing again and this time, see if he can add in the crash Cymbals at the end of every four bar section. - Now try the same thing again with the crash Cymbals in the same places way. 18. Learn your first kick drum variation: back in Week six of drum lessons in the music Coach broker. This week we're gonna work on your first kick drum variation. Now the rock rhythm has its basic backbeat component, which is that the kick drum is on beat one and three and the snare drums air on B two and four. But one of the innovations that started to happen is rock music. Developed is where the kick drum is in. Relationship to the snare drum can be moved around by adding more kick drums or by playing fewer of them or moving around around beats to and for the one we're going to use in the chorus is simply, instead of playing 1/4 note, we're gonna play 2/8 notes on the kick drum. So we're gonna play kick there. Now, getting used to playing the two kicks in a row takes a little bit of time because so far you've only been playing a single kick and then the foot kind of stays doing nothing. So think about playing eighth notes like that. Now, the other thing we're gonna do is we're gonna add this into our B section that we've already got going So we're gonna keep those crash Cymbals at the end of every four bars, and we're also gonna have this kick pattern so the whole thing is going to sound like this now. A very common thing when you have to play eighth notes anywhere on a drum kit is your body will tend to speed up because your mind is trying to get used to this idea that more is happening and your mind doesn't have as much flow as your body does. Your body is constantly moving in motion and there's things pumping and blood is moving and water and things are digesting. There is a flow going on inside your body constantly. Your body knows how to flow and how to put things in the right place. Your mind, on the other hand, works a lot more like a computer, a calculator, and it just thinks I'm doing more. So I just if I can do it as fast as I can, even better And this doesn't work so great in music. So there's a bit of ah, letting the mind get quiet and letting the body do the work in order to get the notes to be placed in the right spot. The other we're gonna do is connecting the A section to the B section of the song. We're gonna play a stop. Now What we're gonna do is we're gonna play the kick drum floor, Tom on the snare drum all at the same time. And and that's gonna come at the end of the last bar of the A section. So you're gonna hear a countdown in the practice video where you're going to play in the rock beat and you're gonna hear like that. So at the end of it, you're just gonna play all three drums at the same time. And that leaves a space for the melody to lead us into the B section. All right, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 19. Drums week 6 practice: now in the B section. The kick drum pattern changes You're gonna be playing. Kick, snare, kick, kick, snare. Let's try that with the Metro No. 12 ready? Go Kick snare kicks, kicks, kicks, Kick kicks. Now try pulling the whole pattern with the click track in the open position with your right hand playing the right symbol. 12 ready? Go. Theo, Theo Tics. Try playing this new pattern along with the track way. Now try the same thing on your own. - Now you play the entire form of a BB and add in the snare drum floor, Tom and kick drum Stop after the second, a 12 ready go. 20. Learn how to change from eight to quarter notes: Welcome back. This is Week seven of drum Lessons in the Music Coach. This week we'll start to work on alternating between quarter notes and eighth notes with your hands while you're keeping your feet going with quarter notes. This is a really important skill that sometimes gets overlooked, which is keeping your feet going consistently even while your hands are playing different rhythms and moving to different places on the drum kit. The most common things you see when people take drum solos is that their feet will either stop or their feet speed up and slow down, depending on what's going on with their hands. And again, it's because your body is cross wired so the right side of your body is rich in your brain is controlling the left side of your body and vice versa. You're also gonna find that certain things like your right hand and your right foot will always want to be doing the same thing at the same time and the same with your left. So this starts to break up that pattern so that you're not always playing the same rhythm at the same time with your right foot and right hand and left foot in left hand. So in this week's practice video, you're gonna get your feet going steadily. Start up by playing the same rhythm at the same time right foot, foot, hands and but then also being able to play eight notes just and also being able to go between the two rhythms. Now I could talked about last week as you're switching gears between playing quarter notes and eighth notes and back. Your sense of time and how it's passing is going to be changing, especially as you go from a slower pattern to a faster pattern. Most people tend to speed up, and the opposite is true. As you go from playing eighth notes back to quarters, most drummers tend to slow down. This is why playing with the Metrodome or a backing track. It's so important because as you're playing, your drum fills, which is where most drummers usually fall apart. You're gonna feel what happens when you come out of your drum fill or out of your pattern and feel where the time is and trust the Metrodome, because your sense of what's going on is probably gonna be off, and you eventually learn. Like what I'm thinking about playing a fast drum fill. I know that I have to play it slower than I think I should for it to actually be in time. So keep up the great work we'll see in the practice video. 21. Drums week 7 practice: this week, you're gonna work on playing quarter notes and eighth notes on the snare drum while keeping quarter notes with your feet. I want you to start by playing the kick drum and the high hat foot as quarter notes along with the click track. And then we're gonna add in quarter notes on the snare drum alternating right and left. 12 Ready? Go. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Foot. My foot. Foot. Right foot keeps going. Now, I want you to ask in your hands, starting with your right hand. 12 Ready? Go. Right. Blessed. Right, right, right, right. Left, right, right, right. Let's try that one more time. Get your feet going 1st 12 Ready? Go Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Foot. Right foot. Here is the hands one. Ready, right, Left. Right Now you're gonna get your feet going again. And this time we're gonna play eighth notes on the snare drum. 12 Ready? Go! Right foot. Foot. Right foot. Foot. Right foot! Foot. Here we go with hands. 12 Ready? Go! Right, right. Left, right, left, right, left. Let's try it again. Get your feet going First one to ready. Go Right foot. Left foot! Right foot! Left foot! Right foot foot. Get the hands ready. 12 Ready? Go! Right, right, right. Left, right, Left. Right. Now we're gonna alternate between quarter notes and eighth notes. Starting with quarters going to eighths and back to quarters again. Feet 1st 12 Ready? Go. Right, Left right. Do with hands. 12 Ready? Go! Right, right. Notes. Right. Left, right, left, right. 22. Learn how move quarter and eight notes around the drum kit: Hi. Welcome back. Thing is Week eight Drum lessons in the Music This'll Week We're gonna expand on playing quarter notes and eighth notes. This time we're gonna work on playing around the kid away from you and then back towards the centre because the drums each give off a slightly different tone because of the size and depth of them. It's a nice musical thing to be able to move from the snare drum to the rack Tom to the floor time and also to be able to move in the opposite direction. Now, when we're going from the center up and over, it's important to start with your right hand so that when you're finished, if you go right, left, right, left, your right hand is ready to move in the direction which you're going. And the same is true but opposite when we moving in the other direction. If you're going to start on the floor, Tom and move to the rack Tom and back to the snare. It's important to start with your left hand, so you have left right, left, right, which leaves your left hand open to reach over. Here at the temple were doing the side. It may not seem like such a big deal, but when you start playing very fast, complicated patterns, having your correct hand free to move a millisecond early can make the difference between being able to play the Phil and not so. It's really important to practice the fundamentals early on correctly. So when you think about going to the right, start with your right hand. When you think about going to the left, start with your left hand. Remember, we're always moving and flow, so we're doing this even at a slow tempo to give yourself the best chance to be able to do it. The other thing would be working on is alternating between quarter notes and eighth notes. And like I mentioned last week, it's really important to pay attention to how it feels inside when you're switching between quarter notes and eighth notes, and also now the new dimension of moving your arms while switching between a slower pattern to a faster pattern or the other way around. Because as your body reaches out, especially reaching over your whole the way your body mechanically is working changes, especially when you're on the floor Tom, your left arm, so your right arm is going to be in a very different position that it is when you're playing on the snare drum. It takes a little getting used to feeling time when your body is moving in different positions, it's also really important. Make sure your drum kit is set up so that you're not reaching and also that you're not cramped so that you feel an even flow when I reach up to my rack. Tom, my arms were not fully extended. I have a little bit of band left in them, and when I reach over to the floor, Tom, it feels comfortable, and I keep my back straight. This is why the set up for your drum kit has got to be specific to you. And if you're playing somewhere where there's other people using it or you're borrowing someone else's, make sure to take the time to set everything up so that it feels comfortable for you before you start to practice. All right, keep up the great work, and we'll see in the practice video 23. Drums week 8 practice: Now you're gonna work on moving between quarter notes and eighth notes over the drum kits. Start by playing 4/4 notes on the snare drum. 4/4 notes on the rack, Tom, and then 4/4 notes on the floor Time. 12 Ready. Go. Another rack. Time. Right, Left four. Time left. Striding in 12 Ready? Go, Frack. Tom Floor, Tom. Right now, moving in the opposite direction. Starting on the floor. Tom, we're gonna play the same pattern. But I want you to start with your left hand. So you're gonna go left, right? Left, right. Before moving back to the rack, Tom. And then back to the stair drum. 12 ready? Go Rack, Tom left running. Snare straight again. 12 Back to the four. Time. Ready. Go back to the lab. Now let's try going forwards using eight notes. So starting with your right hand on the snare drum. Moving to the rack, Tom, than to the floor. Time. 12 Ready? Go! Right. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left Is trying again to already left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left Now it's try going in the opposite direction. Starting on the floor. Time with your left hand. One, two. Ready? Go! Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, straight. Again to ready. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Right. Now you're gonna try alternating quarter notes and eighth notes. Starting on the snare drum with quarter notes. A throats on the rack, Tom. And then quarter notes on the floor. Time. 12 Ready? Go, Frack. Time. Right, Left, right, left, right, left. I tried again. 12 Ready? Go! Left, right, left, right, left. 24. Learn how to play a second drum fill: Welcome back. This is Week nine. Drum lessons in music This'll week We're gonna learn a drum fill so it's gonna be a little more complicated than when we learned before. It has a fun name. I learned this one from a guy on the Internet who calls it Pat Boone. Debby Boone, Pat Boone and Debby Boone were people from the seventies were actors, but it sounds like it got the easiest way to remember it. What we're gonna do is you're gonna be playing the snare drum with your right hand. Then play the rack, Tom, with your right hand. Then you're gonna play right on the snare drum than the right and on the Tom. And then you gonna play a crash with the kick drum. Show it to you one more time. All right, E again, like we talked about before. It's really important. Get that kick drum in there at the same time when you hit your crash symbol. The next part we're gonna add to this drum fill is a slow, dynamic buildup using eight notes on the floor, Tom and snare drum at the same time. Now, when you play a try and build the energy up. This is a really great thing on the drums because you're the loudest instrument in the band almost all the time. It's you control when when things go louder or quieter more than any other instrument. So that brings up to things that are challenging. One is you have to learn how to play quiet enough to not bury everybody else and play with good time. And you also can control when you want things to get louder or quieter suddenly. So if you could build up by playing starting quietly and build it up, it adds something nice to the music. When we combine the two parts together, they sound like this. Show you one more time. Now we're doing just the first part. It takes up to beats, so it's gonna be at the end of the fourth bar in our pattern. When we add in the second part of our hill, which are the Building eight notes, it's gonna take up in entire bar. So you're gonna end up playing three beats of the rock part and then a full drum bar Fill now how long a drum fill last four is really important so that you always end up in the right place in the next part of the song. So that's why I'm often talking about whether it's a to be Phil or a four beat Phil. It's really important to know the difference now. Later on, after you become a lot more comfortable on the drum kit, you'll just feel whether it's 23 or four beats and where it goes, you won't have to count as much. But for now, it's important to remember the counting so that you begin the fill in the right place and don't throw everything off because again, also playing drums is awesome. But because you're the loudest instrument and you're the one holding the time, the tightest. If you fall apart in a drum fill, it has the biggest effect. If you're playing clarinet and you miss a note, it doesn't usually tend to throw everybody off in the same way that a dozen drums if you start the drum, fill in the wrong place, keep up the great work and we'll see in the practice video 25. Drums week 9 practice: this week, you're gonna learn how to play a simple rock fill. You're gonna start by playing snare drum, then the rack Tom, then right, left on the snare on the rack time again and then kick and crash at the same time. So it's gonna go snare Tom snares. And here's what it sounds like with the click Track 12 Ready, Go snapped Tom's because it's Phil takes up to beats. We always have to make sure you count the 1st 2 beats of the bar before replay the Phil. Let's try it with the Metrodome CV play Just the snare Tom. Sneer, sneer, Tom! 12 Ready Go one To snare Tom Sniff their tongue tried again to ready and 12 Toms was at in the crash. Double dent. One two. Ready? Go! One to stare. Tom's 123412 Tom's. Now let's try playing it from the rock beat. I want you to play one bar of the rock beat than the 1st 2 beats of the second bar and then play the Phil 12 Ready? Go! 134 12 Ready? Go! One, 31 Scared Tom Tom. 12 Ready? Go! 11 Tom Snaps there, Tom. Now, see if you can put the fill at the end of a four bar phrase. So we're gonna play three full bars of the rock beat than the 1st 2 beats of the fourth bar and then the Phil 12 Ready? Go! 1332331 Tom. There, Tom. Right again. 12 Ready? Go Won t three t one to snare Thomson there, Tom. Now we're gonna add in eighth notes on the snare drum and floor, Tom, that lead into the Phil we just learned so that what you're gonna play is 1234 But boom! Pop up home. Here it is with a click track 12 Ready and Tom sniffed there. Tom, start by playing the floor. Tom and snare drum together four times as eight notes. 12 Ready? Go. Let's try to get 12 Ready? Go. Now is try and play the same thing and play the 1st 2 notes of the other. Phil, you're gonna play 1234 Snare Tom. 12 Ready? Go! 14 Scared Tom. Straight again. One Teoh. Ready. Go for Tom. Now let's try putting both drum parts together. One to ready. Go forced Tom. Sniff their tongue. 12 ready? Go! 12 Three for way Now have a drum fill that takes up an entire bar. So where it sits in the four bar phrase is in the fourth bar. So now I want you to play three box of a rock drum pattern and then play this fill in the fourth bar one to ready Go 13 to 3. Tom Tom 12 Ready? Go! 123 three, 3412 Force Tom's Tom. 26. Learn how to place your drum fills in the correct place in the arrangement: Welcome back. Week 10 Drum lessons Music This'll Week We're gonna work on taking our drum fill and placing it in the right place in the arrangement so that it lines up with the beginning and ending of different sections. We're in a place are one bar drum fill at the end of a four bar phrase. Now, music is divided up, most commonly in four bar phrases. When you first start learning, the lot of counting is involved in making sure that you're always in the right place. But I promise you that actually play for a while, you're just gonna feel where four bar phrases are. And if you listen to almost any popular song written in the last 80 years, you'll hear that where things tend to change. Is that the end of groups of four bars? So we're gonna be playing three bars of the regular rock beat, and then playing are one bar fill, which is this so it's really important to count along in your head. Even counting out loud while you're practicing is a great way to go about it. I'm just going to show you one time quickly. One. Do you three here comes our film. One of the things we're gonna work on is coming out of the Phil and right back into the part. So the end of the Phil, that kick drum that's going with the crash symbol is the beginning of the next bar. So as soon as you play this, we're gonna go like that, you're having trouble lining them up. The best way to practice it is to go really slowly like this, go kicking, crash together and then right away to the high hat one more time. Like everything else we're doing. It's a lot about coordination and getting the information into your body. So remember to keep breathing, keep focused on what's going on. But try and remember that the information has to get deep into your body before it's really going to be able to come out in your playing. One of the thing you can work on playing this fill with the open position as well. So try these different things out in the practice video and on your own. All right, we'll see in the practice video 27. Drums week 10 practice: this'll Week. You're gonna work on playing the drum fill from last week, coming to it from the rock pattern and going back to the rock pattern. We're gonna work on this by playing one bar of the rock pattern than the one bar drum fill and then back to one bar of the rock pattern. 12 Ready? Go one. I want to force Tom's Tom Ford tried again. One. You ready? Go! 134 more Tom snaps there, Tom again. 12 Ready? Go! 1234! 1234 Star Tom snaps there, Tom. Now see if you can do it four times in a row. 12 Ready? Go Won t force Tom Tom. 1234 times Forced. Tom. Tom. Try putting this Phil at the end of a four bar section along with the track. 12 Ready? Go one. Do 34! Two! 2343 to 3 to four. Scared Tom Tom, you three for 3 to 3 to four. Tom's Tom. Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go! 134 to 2343234 Four. Snared. Tom sniffed there, Tom. 2343234124 Snare Tom snapped there, Tom 28. Learn how to play the stop that connects to two different sections of the song: Hi. Welcome back. Week 11 of drum lessons This'll Week We're gonna get heading towards the end and putting all of our pieces together So the first thing we're gonna work on in this week's practice video is playing the stop that connects the A section to the B section. But as important is knowing whether the stop is it's equally important to be ableto enter after the stop going into the B section. Now the track that's playing along Sometimes we won't have the melody with it. So there's gonna be no rhythm happening in that one bar. So you're gonna have to learn how to feel that time going by without any reference. And this is a really important skill. Your whole body is rhythmic, and you're built to be able to feel time and distance. It just takes a little bit of trusting yourself to know where that IHS. So in the practice video, you may feel like you stepped into a big hole when the whole band stops after the but just see if you can feel how far it is to the other side, a little bit like finding a way in the dark. So The other part we're gonna work on is being able to play Phil at the end of every four bar phrase Now in the practice video. Sometimes I'm gonna be playing just a simple Phil. But I really want encourage you to try and do your own thing. And remember that the purpose when you're practicing is not to get everything perfect. In fact, if you're getting everything perfect when you're practicing your not practicing anything hard enough, So try out new things, go for things and have it not work out and try and find your way back. It is equally important skill to be able to get back on the horse, so to speak, in the middle of a song and these practice videos air designed for that really take advantage of it. And then in the end, you're going to see if you can play all the way through the A B B section and see if you can catch where the stop is on your own. Feel that gap, play a fill in it and then come back solidly into the B section. All right, excellent work and we'll see in the practice video 29. Drums week 11 practice: this week, you're gonna work on playing the rock drum part in the a section heading towards this stop that connects the a section of the B section. At first, I just want you to leave this stop blank and then play the B section for the 1st 2 bars after the stop one. - Let's try the same thing again. One. - Now let's try playing the same section again. But this time I want you to make up your own drum. Fill in the stop between the A and the B section one. Ready to stop? Let's try the same thing again. One. Ready to stop now I want you to play through the entire form of the song and see if you can catch the stop without me telling you where it's coming and added a fill at the end of each four bar section 12 Ready Go 30. Learn how to put all the parts together and play the whole song: I welcome the Week 12 of drum lessons in the Music Coach program. Congratulations. You've made it to the end of the program. The skills you've picked up and learned go far beyond music. The ability to follow through on something like this program all the way to the end is a great accomplishment. I want to congratulate you and remind you that you've begun a really great journey and hopefully you're gonna continue on and find ways to play with other people and keep playing in the jam room and try out different things and really make this musical journey your own On this week's lesson. What we're gonna work on is putting together our ability to improvise or solo on the drums during the form of the song. Now, improvising on most instruments began as a way of embellishing the melody and sort of adding something new in your own personality to the music. And I think it's one of the most exciting parts about playing music, especially with other people, is bringing my own creativity and expression and listening to other people's and them inspiring me and me inspiring them and if becoming more than it was when it began. Now, at first it can feel a little awkward and clunky improvising cause you're just a beginner and starting out. But just remember, it's like learning to speak a language when you learn how to speak English. You didn't have fully formed thoughts and ability to express complicated ideas right away. It happened through listening to other people and developing your vocabulary and learning. Music is the same thing. The way learning how to play quarter notes and eighth notes is like the beginning vocabulary. And there are other rhythms that we're gonna add in later that are going to make your rhythmic ability even more sophisticated. And like I said last week, don't be afraid to go for something and have it not work out these practice videos air designed so that the practice video is not going to speed up or slow down or stop for you unless you click Stop. The band keeps going in the jam room. It's the same thing so you can try something and have a totally fall apart to drop your stick and just keep trying to express yourself and find new sounds again. Huge congratulations, and we'll see in the practice room 31. Drums week 12 practice: this week you're gonna work on improvising or taking a solo. What I want you to do is play the A section normally the first time. Then take a solo over the second a section. Then once we get into the B section, I want you to do the same. Pattern will play a regular B and then take a solo over the second. Be 12 Ready, Go way. - How will try the same thing again, but reversed the pattern. So take a solo over the first day, Then play the regular rock part. Then take a solo over the second B and play the regular B section. After that 12 ready Go. Finally, I want to see if you can do the same thing again. But this time using a track that doesn't have the melody, it can be harder to keep track of where you are without the melody. So try and keep it straight in your head When you're on the first day. The second day, the first B and the second be 12 Ready? Go 32. Jam Room 60bpm: 33. Jam Room 80bpm: 34. Jam Room 100bpm: 35. 7 key steps to starting a band: And right now we're going to talk about how to start a band with either your friends or family. Playing music with other people is truly the richest experience you can have in music. So it's a great goal when you're just starting to learn an instrument to try and bring more people in. It's the same. If you play a sport you're gonna wanna do with your friends, you're gonna wanna do with your family and social time, a way to really express yourself. So unfortunately, for a lot of people they have no experience with how to put a band together, how to make it function properly. In a way, a bands no matter who's in it, is like a little mini tribe. And there are dynamics between people and how people communicate to each other that are important. There's also some accountability which is great to learn in terms of if you're deciding on some goals, like we're gonna learn the songs, everybody has to go out on their own and learn their own thing and come back and be accountable to the group that they're in. The first step is to choose what instruments and what kind of banded is you'd like to have. Some big decisions that you're going to want to make right away is, what do you want to have a drum kit, for example, depending on the style you want to play. Now, a drum kit is an amazing instrument, but you may not have the physical space or the ability in terms of volume to play music that loud. And a full drum kit also influences. For example, if you're gonna play an acoustic guitar with a drum kit, it's very limited how loud you can play on the drum kit without having to have the guitar amp through a guitar, through an amplifier. So that's sort of 1 first big decision you have to make. Then beyond that, you might want to think about what kind of style of music you're moved by and what kind of instruments maybe are already in that style of music. So if your favorite band is made up of, you know, electric guitars and bass and drums. And it's big and it's allowed us raucous, and that's what you wanna do. Then you probably want to organize yourself in a way where those instruments are part of the picture. But if on the other hand, you're like, I really like, you know, classical woodwind instruments. You know, I like flute and clarinet and oboe. And so those are things to think about and finding friends and family who can share a common vision of what kind of music you want to do is your first step. Once you're into choosing instruments, it's important to make sure that they're divided up in a way that will allow you to make good music and have everybody's voice be clearly heard. So you may find out that you've got two people who really want to play guitar and you might be able to make that work. What has to happen then is you have to adjust what parts everybody's playing so you can hear each other properly. But you may decide that, you know, somebody else really wants to play the guitar and I kinda wanna play the guitar, but I've always thought about playing the bass or I've always thought about playing the saxophone. And it's a chance to challenge yourself and move into new instruments. The great thing about learning second, third instruments, if you already know one, is that all of the musical knowledge that you've gained on the first instrument comes with you to the second one. So it's never really like starting over. And the more instruments you learn, the easier they get to learn, because you're just taking more and more information with you to the next experience. Just like with your own personal practice habits. Having goals as a band is really important. And every band has different goals, even professional ones. So if you may have a goal where you say, I really want to be able to play at a talent show at my school in a year. Like we, that's our, that's our goal, that's what we wanna do. Or I want to be able to play at this fundraiser or maybe the goal is I just want us to be able to once a month get together and perform just for ourselves and the songs that we really, really like. Or we want to be able to play together on holidays. Or there's certain colony music we really want to be able to play whatever those goals are. It's important to just have them be clear and have everyone understand what they are so that everyone can draw their focus and attention towards getting yourself to those goals. It's also important to make time to reset your goals when you get to where you wanna go, don't just stop. Go. Well, now that we're here, where do we wanna go next? Whether you're in an amateur band or professional band, it doesn't really matter. Scheduling time for your own practice is equally important as scheduling time for the bands practice. One of my teachers has a great saying that I love. He always told me, said, a rehearsal is not where you go to learn your part. It's where you go to learn everyone else's part. So in that sense, when you come into a rehearsal, you should already know the parts that you're going to play, at least to a general level so that you can see how they plug in and go together. And for that to happen, you'll need to schedule time on your own to practice. And generally speaking, the ratio of rehearsal time to practice time is somewhere around two to one. So if you're planning on having a half an hour rehearsal, you're probably going to need a half an hour to an hour of total practice time to make yourself ready for that rehearsal. And change a little bit depending on, you know, you might choose a song that you actually really know. So you don't really need to do too much to get ready. But as a general rule, you want to keep that in mind. Scheduling time for the band to rehearse, and also picking a place for that to happen is the next key step. The location is really important because you're going to want to be in a place where you can make the amount of noise that your band is going to be making comfortably so that you're not disturbing your neighbors or other people who aren't involved in your musical project. So a couple options are, you've heard of the classic ones. You know, garages can be great if you have one because it's usually a separate from the house enough that you can make a little more noise of the bothering people. Basements tend to be pretty good for the same reason because most of it is underground. If you are in an urban area, it can be very challenging because so many apartments and buildings are close together. But there are rehearsal rooms that you can rent by the hour, and they often have everything you need in them to play. They'll have a full drum kit. They'll have guitar amps, base amps, they'll have keyboards, even they'll have a sound system with microphones if you want to sing. And you pay by the hour. So you sometimes pay about $15 an hour and you just walk in and you play as loud as you want. They're usually soundproofed and made in a way that you can play as loud as you want. So it's a good option. And if you have three or four people together, if everybody chips in a little bit of money and you're doing it once a week or once every two weeks. It's not that expensive and it's a nice option. Scheduling the time for rehearsal is similar to scheduling your own practice time. You're going to want to check in with everybody about what their schedules are and when ideal times r. And depending on what stage of life you're in, this is going to have a huge difference if you're planning on starting a band with a bunch of 16 year-olds like year 16 and all your friends are that age. You have different schedules than somebody who's in their forties or fifties. So you want to think about when it's going to make the most sense for everybody and when it can be convenient, where everybody can be present and focused and enjoy the process and not be waking up too early, going to bed too late, trying to rush there in a real hurry. Inevitably, in any kind of tribal situation or band situation, there are gonna be conflicts. People have strong opinions about music and about their own parts, and about how the music should go and should fit together. So it's good to have a plan in place for how to resolve those conflicts. And when he combined this plan with a general sense of an agreement between people about how to communicate in conflict, this can alleviate a lot of unnecessary tension. A really simple example I'll give you is, if you're playing a part that I don't like and I communicate to you in a way that implies that I'm also not liking you at the same time. You're going to feel defensive as soon as I talk, even if my eyes, even if you agree with the idea, you're probably going to defend yourself because you're like, Hey, you're telling me you don't like me. And this is just primal human to human stuff. So learning how to talk about the music without talking about the person is a really important skill. And if you think about the language you're using, you can really become skilled at this and say, I'm feeling like the part that you're playing isn't fitting together with this other part over here. As opposed to, I don't like what you're playing because it's not working with this. So I'm talking about the same thing, but you can probably feel even through the video, there's a different energy to it. And how everyone communicates has to be carefully negotiated so that everyone feels safe and they can really express themselves clearly. Because ultimately you got to remember that making music together as a very vulnerable experience. And people need to feel like they can take chances and that it's safe. And one last thing, also, remember to take the time to really cheer each other on, makes a huge difference if somebody speaks up about something that you're doing in a positive way, this doesn't have to be manufactured or phony. But if you hear someone playing something and you're really digging in and it's like you're feeling it may start to tell them like that's a great, you're like you're playing that amazing and like what you came up with his sounds great. And I'm really digging in. This kind of positive real reinforcement just creates this sense of everybody is rowing the boat together in the same direction, which is part of what makes playing in a band feel so amazing. You feel like you're part of a team and everybody's working together towards the same goal. So learning how to do that is also important. You may come from a cultural background or a family background where there just wasn't a lot of encouragement. So I know you have to use something that sometimes you have to cultivate and learn how to do. But it's really important and it makes a huge difference in the sense of togetherness that you have in a band. 36. General gear guide: Music coach. And this is a bonus feature where I'm going to talk about some general tools that every instrumentalist should have with them. They're not very expensive, but they're gonna make a huge difference to the quality of your practice. And also if you're rehearsing with other musicians, the things I got in front of me are two different music stands and a tuner and a metronome. So first, let's talk about the music stands. There are two basic types. This one is a solid music stand. It does fold up. They're a little bit more expensive, but there are a lot more practical to use, especially if they're just going to live at your house. I'd recommend spending a little more money getting something that's a little more durable. Because the other option are these wire foldable stands, which are great for traveling with. But because they're not solid, things can fall through the screws and everything on them are usually a little bit cheap and it'll sometimes bend easily. So the difference in price, these wire ones are going to be sort of 20 to $30. These are going to be closer to a $100. But in the long run, I recommend getting a good solid music stand. If you're going to be in one location. A chromatic tuner. If you're playing an instrument where pitch is going to be an issue, which is almost every single instrument, with the exception of the drum kit and the piano. You're gonna need to know whether you're playing sharp or flat and how to make adjustments. And the only real way to do that is with a chromatic tuner. These will cost you around $30 and they have basic functionality. They take a AAA battery. One nice thing that's happened in the last few years is most apps stores for smart phones have some kind of a free tuner. And even for like a dollar or two, you can buy a more advanced version. So if you don't feel like having a physical one, I have owned these for a long time, so I've got them. You can download something to your smart phone and make sure to use it to be constantly checking in to see where you're at or you playing sharp or flat and certain registers. And a note for guitar players, you might think that a guitar tuner, which is something that's sold in stores, would be the right thing for a guitar or bass. And in fact, the guitar tuner isn't really useful at all because it's always checking to see what string you're on. It's trying to figure out, are you on the sixth string, on the fourth string. And we actually want us to be able to know is that string I'm playing, playing the right note. The other reason this is important is if your guitar gets really at a tune, a guitar tuner won't really give you a relative sense of where you are. You'll have to get a close before it's even usable. So I don't even recommend ever even buying a guitar tuner. Metronomes track time. And this one looks like the same as the chromatic tuner, but it basically is set, you can set it to how many beats per minute. Which a simple way to think of it as 60 beats per minute is like the second hand on a clock, because it's 60 clicks in a minute. And if you had a 120 beats per minute, you'd have two clicks for every second. A good metronome, we'll have a couple of important features. You want to make sure you get one that has the ability to plug headphones into it. Especially if you're a drummer, because the speaker on this is never going to be loud enough for you to hear it while you're playing drums or even to be honest, playing most instruments. So you want something with a headphone adapter and you also wanna make sure that you have something where you can easily change the tempo. So they all have the ability to change the tempo, but some of them will go up in increments of three or four. Just make sure it's something that you can adjust the tempo evenly. And last but not least, it's important to have one that you can clearly, visually see as well, that it's easy to see the display because sometimes when you're playing, you're going to want to just check and check on visually where you're at in terms of the time. And much like the tuner, you can download these off of most apps stores, there's almost always a free one. Sometimes they're not great. But for a dollar or two, you can upgrade and get a more advanced metronome, which will work great. And this is going to cost you about $30. So a dollar or two on an app store to upgrade the free version is often what I recommend for my students. 37. How to create a furtile musical home: I'm Todd, the music coach, and welcome to this video where we're going to talk about how to create a fertile ground for a musical home to grow. I'm sure that you've had the experience of walking into someone else's house for a party or a holiday. And it seems like everyone is musical, like people picking up guitars and sitting at pianos and singing along. And it just seems like it's all natural and it's happening and it's really beautiful. And you may have wondered like, how does that happen? How do those homes happen? And unfortunately, you might think, well, those people are, that's a musical family. And their, their musical, and I'm not, and that's the reason why we don't have that. And that's a complete and total lie. The truth behind it is that those people found a way to create a fertile ground for people to feel safe and express themselves and challenge themselves and set goals so that they could play music together. And they probably did all of this without even really knowing that that's what they were doing. So I'm going to lay it out free, explain how this actually happens. So in my family home, there were no musicians. My parents loved music, but they didn't play. I didn't grow up watching people play. And both my brother and I ended up being professional musicians. So you might go, How did that happen? And there were a lot of things that my parents did that I think they didn't even realize that they were doing. One really simple thing is we listened to music and we talked about what we liked about it. And hearing them share that with me was really invaluable. And we took long car rides. We would listen to, I know that my parents, there was an oldies stations that they really liked, which was like fifties and sixties rock. And we had dialogues about like who is that artists and when did you first hear that? And they would share stories with me about where they were when they heard that song or what kind of meaning it had to them. So a great way to set this up for yourself is in your own home, you can initiate it. And a great way to do it is to allow everyone a chance, even if you've got little people in your life to share a piece of music that they feel moved by. And feeling moved by music can be all sorts of different feelings. It doesn't have to just make B the song makes me feel happy. It can be this song makes me feel sad or the song makes me feel like agitated, or it's just what you're looking for, something that makes you feel something. And a good forum for that is to go to the living room and decide that we're going to we're going to spend a half an hour doing this and everybody gets to pick one song. You might wanna set some ground rules where, you know there's not gonna be any songs with any swearing editor inappropriate, whatever for your family, you feel as appropriate. And then while you put your song on, everybody agrees to be in silence and really listening. And this just developed so much good ability, not just for music, but just the ability to sit for three to five minutes at a time and really listen to what's going on around you is such an important life skill that will really have a huge impact on everyone. And you might want to set some other very simple ground rules, which is, it's like the everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten, which is if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't have to say anything. It's better not to say something really negative. Because. People are sharing something that means something to them. And learning how to have that dialogue is important to be able to say, it's not to my taste, instead of it's socks or I don't like that song or it's the same way that we teach each other how someone prepares a beautiful meal for you and it's something you don't like to eat. You can talk to them about that in a way that's not going to hurt their feelings in music is the same way. You can then expand on this game by adding in some other artistic elements. One really fun one that I like to do is do the same thing, put on a piece of music. Everyone gets to bring something that they feel moved by. And everybody just takes a piece of paper and during that time, they just draw or sketch something that they feel is connected to their experience of that music. And then everybody can share that with each other and talk about, well, I shaded this thing this way because it made me feel good to think of a cloud, or it made me think of a tree, or it made me think of this or that. And again, it's, it's an exercise in not being critical. It's just expressing yourself through art while listening at the same time. And another variation of it can be to do the same thing of having a listening circle and have everyone write down an idea for a short story. Something that they either through the lyrics, if it has that kind of thing in it or if it's instrumental, just talk about ice. You know, I'm seeing a story about somebody walking their dog in the woods when I hear this. And again, as long as no one is being harsh with each other about it, it's a really neat window into how we all experience music differently. Making time to watch movies that are about famous musicians are famous music is also another great way to help get a really fertile ground for music going in your own home. There are tons of great documentaries about all sorts of things, about the backup musicians in Motown or you know, even about famous composers like Mozart and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. You can watch and discuss and talk about what their music, the music of that artist, or what the story of that musician, how it, what you thought about it and what it meant to you. The more you share your own experience with other people about how music moves you, the more it grows inside of you and more passion that you have for it with all of us traveling and car so much these days. Another great musical fertilization that you can do is to plan on having music on car trips and really having people listen for a lot of us. Actually, the best stereo that you're going to own is going to be in your car. Car stereos are usually quite high-quality, So it's a great way to experience music. One thing that's happened, unfortunately, as we've gotten into more individual devices of smartphones and mean it started with Walkmans and CD players and things like that is we tend to experience music isolated. Each person will have earphones in and be in their own world experiencing music, which in a way is great. It's nice to have some personal time with music. But one of the things we've really lost is the connection and the sharing of our joy with each other. So trying to set that up on, on travel, times together with your family can be great or with your friends and just talking about and sharing it and letting everybody have a turn with the stereo and okay. 38. How to create a sucessfull practice routine: Hi, I'm Todd, the music coach. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to set yourself up for long-term success when you're practicing music and learning an instrument. The biggest challenge I've found, not only for me personally, but for most of my students. It's not the technical requirements of whatever instrument they are playing, or even how much innate ability that they have when they start. The biggest challenge people have with consistently making progress in music has to do with their practice habits. And for most of us, we have a negative reaction to that idea. Even practice habits, discipline these things. We feel like we get tense about it. And adjusting your relationship to those ideas will open you up to being able to fully embrace all of your abilities and really take giant leaps forward in your playing. I know for me personally, I realized early on I had to change my relationship to what I thought practicing meant, how it worked, what I thought discipline meant. And I had to really re-frame in my mind what it meant to play an instrument. This has a lot to do with where the way we're, we're perceive learning a musical instrument and society unfortunately is largely negative. You've probably seen this mostly what you get fed in the outer surroundings is that some people have talent and some people don't have talent. And when you go to a concert and you watch someone play, you think, well, they're just have it. And that's why they sound amazing. And this doesn't in any way reflect reality. It may be that they had some natural ability, but there's thousands of hours that went into what you're seeing when you see someone performing in a professional context. Then the question becomes, well, how did they get from not playing it all to having the discipline and the patients and learning the right things to get all the way through that process. And although musicians will give you a variety of different answers, I think the best way to do it is to find a healthy way that's realistic and is repeatable. So what first key to having real success in your practicing is to set goals. Because like anything else in life, if you have an idea of where you wanna go, It's a lot easier to tell where you are in that journey. Rather than just a loose idea of like, I want to learn how to play this instrument. And if you have that thought and it just sort of dissipates out into the air. When things get difficult, you're more likely to quit because it's like, where am I in the middle of that journey? As opposed to you could say, my goal is I want to, for example, I want to play the piano and I want to learn how to play these three songs in the next year. And he may have no idea how you're gonna do it, but even just having that goal is going to help propel you along. And when you hit rough patches, you can check in with yourself and your goals and you go, Am I doing the things that I need to get to my goal? A good goal to think about when you're playing a musical instrument is how to get to a place where you can make music with other people. Music throughout human history has always been a community event. It's only in the last few 100 years that it's sort of moved into conservatories and into school settings. And we've isolated from each other. And somehow we've lost the idea that the point of it is that you can actually make music with another real life human being. So my suggestion, if you're not quite sure what goal to set, I'd pick a goal that involves eventually playing with other people. Whether that's joining a band or just playing with a friend and going like my friend also plays the guitar and I want to be able to play the same song so we can play together. Another really big key to long-term success with practicing is finding a consistent time of day that you're the best frame of mind and being to practice in. And this is different for everybody and which is why there is no one answer of everyone should practice like at five o'clock or I mean, that's not helpful for anybody. We all have different lives and different schedules and commitments. I suggest you experiment around with it a bit. I found for me personally, I feel the best practicing early in the morning. And for me it's just I find my mind is very clear and relaxed and I haven't been sort of inundated with emails and phone calls and other commitments. And I set aside a small amount of time, not every day of the week, but four or five days a week. Because I'm a professional musician, I have to work on a lot of things, but for you it might be one or two times a week and I block off that time and when I'm there, I'm as present as I can be and I'm working on my goals to get me closer to where I wanna go next. Some things to think about, about when the time of day is going to be, when you're gonna practice, are make sure you have had enough sleep. So waking up too early if you're going to bed too late is not going to be ideal. Make sure that you've had something to eat. If you're really hungry, like if you get home from work or school and you're starving, it's not going to be ideal for your nervous system in your body to be in a calm place. So make sure that you've had something to eat. But you also may find you don't want to play right after you eat something because you might feel a bit full. So these are things to think about about where in your day you're going to plan to have your practice time. When it comes to practicing, quality is so much more important than quantity. Unfortunately, you may have even already heard from other music teachers that you gotta practice for an hour every day or half an hour every day or so many hours per week. And this information isn't really helpful because the quality of the time you're putting in is what's really important. If you were to take the same approach to eating food and say, well, the way you get nourishment and your body is you sit at the dinner table for 45 minutes. It's missing so much of the point. There are so many other factors. Are you eating too much or you are not eating healthy foods? Are united eating at all? Are you just sitting there and practicing music is the same. You can sit down with your instrument for an hour and not only make no progress, you can actually regress because if you're reinforcing bad habits, then you're not actually you actually making your playing worse. So what I like to tell my students is focus on the quality. Five minutes of really focused practice can change your life forever. I know for me it's that way. I had this. I had to start out by getting the routine working first rather than trying to figure out what I was going to even practice. So picking a small thing and being consistent with it. And when you're there, challenging yourself to do a little more of it each time is the best way to go. Now in life, things are gonna come up. You're gonna get sick. You're going to have to travel places. You're going to have holidays, all of these things. And it's important to be flexible with your practice routine and to think a little bit into the future. And so for me, for example, when I'm planning, when I'm going to be practicing, i'm taking into account some of those factors, the ones that I can control anyway. So like if I know that I've got family coming to visit and I'm going to be busy entertaining people and doing things. I will suddenly is put my practice routine on hold to give my full attention to that. Knowing that when the time is right, I'm going to come back and be fully focused rather than trying to ram in practice time when you're distracted with other things. The same can be true of getting sick, having a cold and flu, something like that. I would say it's good to have a break from things. And always when you're practicing, you want to be in a good frame of mind and being. Because you're not just practicing musical information, you're training your body to have a relationship with the gaining of musical language. And if your body is in a frenetic state, every time you do that, when you go to touch your instrument, it literally will reset your brain to feel anxious and upset. Now the other side of that is that if you can train yourself to be calm and presence every time you're with your instrument. Pretty soon after a while, you'll just go over and pick it up and your body will come into a calm place. Before I practice, I like to take a moment and before I even touched the instrument or put it together and just see if I can get myself. I sometimes close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and try and get myself into a very calm place because I want to reinforce that with everything that I'm learning. If you don't have any experience with meditation, I highly recommend that through whatever form you can find, you find a good practice that's small and to the point where you can get yourself into a calm and relaxed place before you start. Another key element to actually getting towards your goals is to make sure to always be challenging yourself. There's this fine line when you're learning new things between going over what you already know and challenging yourself to do something new. And the balance, you might think, well, once I learned how to do a few things, I'm only just going to ever wanna do those things over and over again. But what will happen is you'll start to get bored with what you can already do. And a good thing I like to tell my students is you should always be feeling a little bit uncomfortable when you're practicing. And I don't mean like nervous and agitated, but you should be doing things where you're not getting it right all the time. Because you want to be that's a sign that you are actually working on something that's making you better. It's the whole point of practicing in the first place. I work on things on my own so that when I go play with other people, I can have more things that I can express. Not so that I can just repeat the same things that I already know how to do over and over again.