My experience with the speed drumming is a strange one. Basically, one October day, while picking up some drum sticks at a local music store, I noticed drummers using a device called a “Drumometer. This “drumming speed” measurement device used a practice pad for a striking surface with an embedded piezo trigger. The trigger was connected to a counter-timer computer brain that had a count and a timer display.
Your physical body can always do what you mind can conceive. Before you know it you will be producing you own style that others desire of you. It all starts in the mind.
A typical drumstick has a tip, shoulder, shaft and butt. The tip, also referred to as bead, is the top-most part that strikes the drum. Traditionally, the tip is made of the same hard wood as the rest of the stick.
The sound that you like and your drum’s best sound may not be the same. Let the drum have it’s way. Here are a couple of tips to deal with drum noise while practicing.
Sometimes the drum heads may even puncture when the hit is hard. If all this still does not provide you with good reasons to go for a new one at regular intervals, then you should realize that once it becomes weak it is difficult for you to play the roll or the fast chops. As a drummer you should change your drum heads after every six months.
However, six months is not an ideal time. If you have been playing the drum too often lately, consider changing it even though you may have changed it four months back. Signs that should tell you it is now the time for you to change are indents and cracks.
Improvement: Each practice session should create a challenge for the musician to accomplish something never previously done. This could be a new rudiment, piece of music, or exercise, it could also be a new tempo for an old exercise, etc. And the tempo does not necessarily have to be faster – just different
Drummers like Zigaboo Modeliste and Johnny Vidacovich mixed second line with syncopated funk, developing a style called “second-line funk drumming”. This style was popularized in many famous bands that came from New Orleans like the Meters (see below). Second line drumming often involves a 3/2 son clave not dissimiliar to the Bo Diddley beat although it doesn’t necessarily always follow that rule, and Second line beats are also called “Street Beats”.
