reproduced in any form or by any means without the expressed writtenconsent of the publisher.www.hudsonmusic.com
7Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
Music is my life.
Everyday is a new adventure and an opportunity to explore.
This book is a result of my love affair with music; more than two decades of inspiration,experimentation and curiosity. I am constantly in search of new ideas and ways to improve mymusicianship, and the exercises contained here are the ones that have provided me with the bestresults.
My favorite thing about this material is that no two of us will come out the other side with the exactsame content. These concepts are reliant on your own ideas and intuition. We are all a uniquecombination of our influences. The more you can allow your influences to coexist in an honest way,the closer you will be able to express your true self.
My intention is not to show you exactly what to play or how to play, only you can decide that foryourself. I hope the concepts in this book can help unlock your creativity on the drums, and inspireyou to develop your own musical identity.
What I am most interested in is what YOU will create.
EXPLORING YOUR CREATIVITY“Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort.” - Fred Rogers
Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
D.R.O.P.When I was younger, I used to practice in a very deliberate way. I would focus on specific musicalstatements – grooves, fills, etc. — and work on them until I could consistently play them “correctly.”I did this more and more to expand my vocabulary, but I had no way of changing these ideas once Ihad learned them. However an idea came in was the same way it was going to come out. As I startedplaying with more musicians in a wide variety of styes, I realized it would be impossible to developthe amount of vocabulary needed to serve the music in all of these different environments. It was thenthat I started to reprogram the way I practice. Instead of creating and preparing specific ideas athome—and hoping that they would be appropriate for the music I was playing—I began to focus moreon the way in which these ideas were built. I started to investigate the different tools that arefundamental in creating new ideas. By focusing on these tools, I gave myself a much better chanceto create musical statements that were true to each moment.
In the following chapters, I would like to share with you the four tools that I use most often to createnew musical statements on the drum set.
Dynamics - the volume at which an idea is played
Rate - the rhythmic subdivision used to play an idea
Orchestration - where on the instrument an idea appears
Phrasing - where an idea exists in relation to the pulse
It doesn’t matter whether are you playing a jazz gig in a restaurant, a pop gig in a football stadium,or just jamming in your parent’s basement with some friends, you can use these tools to help youcreate personal musical statements in each moment.
* * *
“Themost important thing about art is to work. Nothing elsematters except sitting down every day and trying.”
- Steven Pressfield
* * *
There are no shortcuts.These concepts require disciplined and mindful practice.Be patient. Put in the time. Do the work.
Let go.
Be yourself.
Create.
And most importantly, HAVE FUN.
8
18 Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
R R 4Leaving Space
One of the most musical decisions we can make is to leave SPACE. Silence is an incredibly powerfultool and what you choose not to play is as valuable a musical choice as anything we choose to play.
Let’s try an experiment:
Play this:
Now play this:
How did the placement of the accent sound in each example? Did you find one example morecomfortable than the other? Often times it is easier to play that accent in the “correct” place whenyou play all the notes in the rate. But we don’t want to have to play all the notes all the time (thatdoesn’t sound like a very musical decision to me!). We have to work hard to make the notes that youdon’t play of equal value as the the notes that you do play.
A strong INNER pulse is the key to leaving space. In order to play the rate variations on the previouspage with confidence, your inner pulse needs to be unflinching. These variations provide all of thedifferent ways to leave space within one beat of each rate, and it is important to develop a strongrelationship with each individual option. Quite often, we play things that are the most comfortable tous, so we need to work hard to get equally as comfortable with ALL of them. The more options wehave, the better chance we have to serve the music.
With the combination of a strong inner pulse and deep understanding of the rate variations, you areon your way to start to creating your OWN phrases inside the music.
CREATING YOUR OWN PHRASESYou’ll notice that on the following “Leaving Space” pages, I have left empty manuscript lines for youto create your OWN phrases. The light gray stems are a representation of the rates from which we arebuilding our phrases.
There are two different ways you can build your own phrases:
1. Composition - Decide in advance which notes to play
2. Improvisation - Decide in the moment which notes to play
You may draw in the noteheads of the notes you choose to play (composition), or you may choose tocreate new phrases in the moment using the provided template (improvisation). What I like best aboutthese method is that it’s virtually impossible for two of us to create the same phrases… and that’s howit should be! The more of your own personality you can inject into these exercises, the more you willlearn about the musical statements that are unique to YOU.
“Silence allows for deep listening and mindful response…”
Thich Nhat Hanh
19Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
Here are two eight-bar phrases I created using our eighth-note variations.
Please use the space below to create your OWN phrases.
c
c
R R 4Leaving Space
1.
2.
Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset20
Using only triplet variations, here are two eight-bar phrases I discovered.
Your turn. Get creative!
c 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
c 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
R R 5Leaving Space
1.
2.
Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset 33
The drumset is capable of seemingly infinite sonic possibilities. It doesn’t matter how big or smallyour kit is, or what brand of drums or cymbals you have; any quality instrument contains a world ofsound waiting to be explored. The instruments you choose to play should inspire you to express yourtrue self in the music.
Discovering the sounds inside of each instrumentIt is important to study each element of your kit with great detail. Experiment with different tunings,different heads, different sticks, and take notice of how each change creates a new sound.
For example, I’ve spent countless curious hours exploring only my snare drum, asking myself:
. What happens if I change where I hit the drum: The center? Off center? Closer to the edge?
. What about at different dynamics: Quiet? Loud? Extremely loud?
. What if I place something else on the head: A cymbal? A t-shirt? Another head? Some rocks?
. What if I use a single ply head? Double ply? A marching drum head?
. What if I use a brush? A mallet? A pencil? My hand?
. What if I hit the rim? The shell? What about flipping the drum over and playing the snare wires?
This is just the beginning. Do this kind of exploring for all the elements of your kit. The mostimportant characteristic in this pursuit of sound is curiosity.
All of the sonic results you find will be of equal value and can have their own unique musical application.The more sounds you can create, the more music you can make.
The organization of these discovered soundsAfter we have explored the musical possibilities within each element of our kit, we can start toexamine ways to organize them collectively. Combining these sounds in a musical way requirescoordination between the limbs and freedom to move around the kit.
There are certain motions or paths that are more natural for our body than others. For example, goingfrom the rack tom down to the floor tom is more comfortable for a lot of drummers then going fromthe floor tom back up to the rack tom. (Which path do you use more? Why?) We shouldn’t make amusical decision based on how easy or difficult it is for our body to achieve. We should make thedecision based on the sound that we are looking for.
The following exercises are designed to help you develop an understanding of all the different pathson your kit and open your mind to the wealth of orchestration possibilities.
ORCHESTRATIONo The arrangement of a musical composition (or improvisation)
34 Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
Snare Drum
Tom
Floor Tom
Ride
Crash
Hi-Hat
oAs you can see on page 32, my drumset consists of a bass drum, snare drum, rack tom, floor tom,hi-hat, crash cymbal, and ride cymbal. Excluding the bass drum (we will get to that later), there aresix different instruments I can play. So from whichever drum or cymbal I am playing, there are fivepossible destinations. It is important to familiarize yourself with each unique “path” between any twosounds:
30
UNIQUE
PATHS
ORCHESTRATION PATHS O 1
Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset 35
o O 1
Here’s an exercise that uses single strokes that move between two voices. Start by playing eight noteson each instrument, then seven, then six… all the way down to one note on each. Think of these notesas 16th notes and play a quarter-note pulse with your left foot.
Take it slow at first. The goal is to relax and get a good sound.
ORCHESTRATION PATHS
Refer to the video to see me demonstrate this exercise on several different surfaces and at different tempos.
48 Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
c 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 5 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
o O 7IMPROVISED ORCHESTRATIONS WITH BASS DRUM
Here’s my attempt:
Now try to improvise your OWN phrases exploring new orchestration possibilities with the bass drumwhere the rates are changing in different places.
3.
63Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
p
Chances are you’ve heard this phrase before. You might have even played it. It is a very familiar soundand I bet that most listeners would assume that the crash with the bass drum lands on beat one.
In the following exercise, we will move this phrase around to hear the musical result of beginning andending our phrase in different places in relation to the pulse. Don’t let the sound of this fill trick youinto assuming it ends on beat one!
Our goal is to develop the freedom to confidently play a phrase anywhere in relation to the pulse.
*The double bar line in the following exercise represents the top of the form. Experiment playing withdifferent forms: 16 bars, 8 bars, 4 bars, etc. Whether the crash at the end of your fill falls on beatone or not, it is important to make sure the top of your form always lines up with the double bar line.
**Play these exercises with a metronome! Better yet, choose an album that inspires you and try thesephrasing exercises in that context. Look for songs that I have clear forms so you can really hear themusical effect of moving these phrases around the pulse.
64 Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
p p 1PHRASING FILLS: 16ths
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69Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
p p 5PARADIDDLE PHRASING
Another way to develop confidence in moving ideas around the pulse is to focus on a familiar phraseand play it starting on each note of a given rate. A good way to do this is to simply add a bass drumnote to the end of the phrase.The bass drum note pushes the start of the next phrase to the next noteof the rate. Rudiments are a good place to start. For example, play four paradiddles followed by onebass drum note, and loop that. Do the same for three paradiddles, two paradiddles,and finally oneparadiddle; all followed by one bass drum note.
1.
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70 Exploring Your Creativity on the Drumset
p p 6PARADIDDLE PHRASING
Let’s go back to “THE LOOP” and play these paradiddle and bass drum combinations.Four paradiddles followed by one bass drum:
