Catagory: lessons
Drumline, according to Kelley
I took lessons for a very short time while I was in high school. The only real reason that I decided to take lessons at all was because I was going to be auditioning for the University of Georgia drumline on snare and I knew that I had very little chance of making it unless I spent some hard-core time drumming with someone who had already run the Collegiate and DCI percussion gauntlet. So Ryan Parker, my drumline instructor for 4 years became my private instructor.
While I only took lessons from Parker for about 4 months, I learned infinitely more than I could have on my own. Having that outside insight into my ability made all of the difference. It actually made me wonder how much better I possibly could have been had I started taking lessons as soon as I got to high school, or even earlier. Needless to say, I left my small town roots and traveled out to Athens, GA for auditions at UGA and to my surprise made the snare line…one of only two freshmen from about twenty or so auditioning that year.
Now, at the first lesson I took, Ryan (or Parker, as we called him) asked me a question before we ever played a note. The question was, “what is the golden rule of drumming?” I had to stop and think for a minute. I mean, there were a million things that came to mind. Could it be something to do with technique? Maybe something about tempo? I had no idea. After a moment of silence Parker told me that the golden rule of drumming was simple:
ALWAYS PLAY AS LOUD AS COMFORTABLY POSSIBLE
This rule seemed somewhat peripheral to me at this time. What did it really mean? I had always figured that if you played at any certain height that you would be playing with the correct dynamic. I mean, 3 inches is 3 inches right? Well…I was wrong.
There are several different ways to play at every height. You can tell if someone is confident by how loudly they play. In reality, the Rule doesn’t have anything to do with playing loudly, but it has everything to do with confidence. At that time I was pretty cocky. I thought I could play anything you put in front of me, and to a certain extent, I could. However, there were times when I would play a passage that I wasn’t very sure of at a noticeably lower dynamic volume. This is attributed to my confidence with the passage. I found that another lesson I had learned would both clarify the Rule and skyrocket my playing ability. The lesson being that you should play loudly through every part of a piece so that even if you played something incorrectly it could be heard. This allows your instructor to pin-point any mistakes and fix them immediately.
I started forcing myself to play stronger all the time. I made sure that whenever I played at 6 inches that I was playing mezzo forte consistently. I boosted my confidence by learning things slowly and working them up to speed, all the time maintaining a constant dynamic and height. I even started taping pennies to the butts of my sticks to build muscles while playing as loudly as I could at all times.
The great thing about the Rule is that it does not refer to just one aspect of drumming. In essence it touches on ALL aspects. When you apply the Rule to any exercise, cadence, rudiment or show piece you find that you learn the pieces quicker and play them more confidently.
I now begin all of the lessons I teach with the same question. I focus on the idea of maintaining dynamics and have seen amazing results from many of my students. If you instill confidence in yourself then you make it possible to play anything. Your attitude towards drumming improves with confidence and you begin to understand exercises and rudiments as the building blocks of percussion music. It becomes natural habit to play confidently and eventually you won’t even think about it, you’ll just do it.
I completely agree with this, I think its not only a confidence issue, its also a fact that as the student learns a rudiment it helps the to FEEL it, to KNOW that they have played a specific sequence of strokes and this ultimately not just gives them confidence but also helps them to physically learn it through muscle memory.
My one issue with the technique which I have experienced in the past and presently with my lead snare is that while it gives the player a strong sound, If they are not sure when to back off it can cause them problems in getting rudiments faster and also can be damaging to the hands . . . but in principle I agree and it is something that I spend a lot of time trying to explain to members of the lines which I teach.
From tom patterson on May 3