I've heard of people saying stuff about playing groups of 3 and stuff like that. Do groups of 3 in 16th notes mean you just play regular 16th notes, but you play like for example for that fill in the video, 1e+na2e+na, he played flam(1)-snare(e)-snare(+)-flam(a)-tom(2)-tom(e)-midtom(+)-midtom(a). Is that right?
Edit: Yeah I tapped 8th notes, the first and last of the 3 notes does land on the 8th notes. So the fill was just 16th notes...
Anyway how do you actually train your ear to differentiate between triplets and 16th notes phrased in 3s? Or training your ear musically for anything. How do you actually train that?
I needed a second to decipher what your wrote out, but yes: This is exactly what he's playing.
On to eartraining: First of all I think that eartraining is one of the most essential but yet most overlooked / underrated skills not only in drumming, but in music in general. Training your ear offers so many advantages, they are too many to name... Just to point out a few it gives you much more confidence and freedom to your playing because you get a better understanding for what is actually happening. It also let's you interact much better with your fellow musicians because you understand what they are playing as they play it and because you can relate better to what they are playing. Then there is the quite obvious bonus of stealing grooves and licks
I have trained my ears to a degree where I can almost instantly tell what a drummer is playing and how he is playing it (sticking) which gives me the ability to just go ahead and imitate what I like by writing it out and then playing it.
Ok, after the showing off part, here are a few pointers on how to work on this:
First of all - as with all things that you practise - there is no big secret to training ears. It is nothing but listening experience: Once you know how something sounds like, you can tell what it is when you hear it. Simple as that.
On the other hand this means, that you have to learn an awfull lot of rhythms and sounds step by step. Just like with all other things: There is also no real shortcut. But there are some things that you can work on and practise that will help you out a great deal as you go along. These are three different things (and of course this only includes rhythm-training. I am not touching on ear training for melody/harmony instruments where you have to distinguish between chords, scales and intervals as well - this right here is strictly for drummers). So here it goes:
1.: IMO the basis for all things are note values. Simple as that. You have to be able to play, count and read all basic note values with ease before you progress on to the next steps. The basic note values are whole notes, half notes, eighth notes, 16th notes and 32nd notes. Then there are all the corresponding triplets: whole note triplets, half note triplets, quarter note triplets, eighth note triplets and 16th triplets.
The way to learn these is by playing them to a click while counting out loud. There is also a ton of snare drum literature which is made up of these things. A good starting point for eartraining would be to have someone play you some bars from different snare etudes and then writing these out. Make sure that there are no flams/rolls in the etudes though as these things tend to make things too difficult in the beginning. Start easy by only using bars that focus on one or two note values, then go on to more difficult things or increase the tempo. Try to get to a point where you can write out 2-4 bars in 4/4 after listening only once or twice. Once you are comfortable writing out snare pieces that apply all the above note values you are ready for step two.
2.: Rudiments and Sticking Combinations. This is easy. Learn all the rudiments and internalise their sound. Also learn the most common and most used stickings and hand-foot combinations. These are the things that all the cool licks and fills are made up of, so the benefit of this is quite obvious. Then go ahead and do the same thing as above: Write things out that someone else plays for you. Wilcoxon's All American Drummer is a great starting point: Someone plays you bars from all these solos and you write them out. Once your comfortable, go to the next level by orchestrating things on the drums and writing out the orchestration.
3.: Syncopation and Rhythms that go over the barline. This is where the fun starts.
All the spice in playing comes from doing these type of things - it's the reason why some drummers sound boring and others sound great. Everybody can learn how to play rudiments.... orchestrating them around the kit using different note values and note groupings is a totally different story. Go ahead and learn how different rhyhms sound like. Start with something easy - like 8th notes:
Learn how different accent-patterns played over straight 8th notes sound like. Start with accenting every 2nd note. Then every 3rd note. Then every 5th note. 7, 9....
Once comfortable take the next note value: 16th notes. Groups of 2,3,4,5,6,7....
After that: On to triplets.
Everything on snare-drum only!!!! First learn how to play it, then how to write it out. Once comfortable, apply things to the drumset and start using flams, rolls, drags etc.
Once you are comfy with that, you're almost there....
4.: Apply everything to everything: rudiments in different note values and over different groups of notes like Paradiddles played over triplets or flam-accents played over 16th notes. Or a sticking in 5 with flams played over triplets..... whatever you can think of. Everything orchestrated around the drums.
Never forget that orchestration is the key to make things sound reallys spicy. vinnie could probably play a group of 2 notes played in quarter notes and make it sound like something really weird....
I hope this was helpfull. If you have any questions, just let me know.
