a question for drummers?

Question

how do you develop or work on your independence? Here's an example, I want to do a beat with the bass drum and keep the hi-hat at quarter notes, but when I try, I do the bass notes on the hi-hat or vice-versa. thanks and God bless you all.

Answer 1

A common and the bane of drummers any where.

Ya gotta count, my man. Concentrate on the hi hat, on the quarter. You won't be able to handle anything else, initially. Play something simple with the rest of your appendages, boomp boomp chop, with eights with the right hand on the ride.

Do that, then expand. Speed doesn't count. Fast is easy. Keep to a slow tempo at first, and build your strength. Then, in a few weeks, we can start to work on syncopation.

You can contact me through this site for mo info.

Answer 2

a great exercise that my drum teacher used to have me do is to hold down a beat with bass and hi-hat with your feet, and then do quarter/eighth/sixteenth/triplets/whatever on snare. bass drum hits on all quarter notes, and HH hits on 2 and 4. At the same time, snare drum plays eighth notes or sixteenth notes or whatever you choose.

practice this exercise at different speeds and with different hands on snare (like you could do sixteenth notes all RRRR or all LLLL or RLRR LRLL, etc)

I suppose if you wanted to you could leave off the BD on 2 and 4, so that it's alternating BD and HH to gain better independence between your feet too.

hope this wasn't too confusing!

I also recommend the book "The 10 commandments of R'n'B Drumming" by Zorro - it's a great book, i love it!

Answer 3

Try masturbating with one hand and making a sandwich with the other. If you can do that, then you are not only independent...but totally self sufficient.

Answer 4

just gotta start out slow and gradually get faster after you get more comfortable at it