I don't wanna play exercises like 'exercises'.....

stellar92010

Senior Member
When I just start learning them I play them slow and mechanical...as soon as they are in muscle memory I play them hitting every accent and beat with nuance and touch, like I was playing in front of 20,000 people. I don't want exercises to sound like exercises. i want them to sound like music. (easier said than done)

Anyone with me on this one?

I do understand the necessity of grubbing through exercises slowly with a metronome when first learning them. But when I got them down I want to throw away that ball and chain that are the exercise hanging around my neck.
 
You're right, we want things to be musical. But with the "yin" there's the "yang" and there's a gradient between mechanical vs musical.

Take a Paradiddle for instance. Play your "lead" hand on the hihat and the other hand on the snare drum. RLRR LRLL or LRLL RLRR. Playing every one of those notes the same velocity will create something clunky and mechanical, stale and ugly. But playing everything quiet EXCEPT the first note of each will give you a result that is quite pleasing because there's a lot of motion going on underneath.

But understanding the mechanics will assist you in developing further the musicality that a Paradiddle contains, and there's a lot of it. So getting good at the mechanics will better define your ability to create music. It's like reading a dictionary and learning a word. You learn what I like to call a "ten dollar word" and apply it in intelligent conversation. That makes you better.

Well, there's not much difference between the language spoken and the language meted out by a pair of sticks. It's all vocabulary.

If I were to have listened to all those who told me that my technique was all wrong, chances are I'd have hung it up a long time ago. Play drums for what it does to spark your soul. Drumming is not a competition unless you're into that sort of thing.
 
Well, if I don't feel anything but mechanical from playing I don't think I would want to play. (but i understand the neccessity of nailing the mechanics of it). When I learned bass and guitar the day I discovered playing 'musically' as opposed to technically was the day I became a musician.

Thanks for the advice.
 
That's all good, but some exercises in my opinion you really need to drill like single strokes, doubles, so technique items. I only grew when I started working on my chops from the mechanical point of view
 
I wanna play exercises like 'exercises'.
Until I get the hang of them. THEN it's time to incorporate them into something musical. (And if you add just a tiny amount of creativity basically any exercise will sound musical in no time.)
 
Its easy to play something musically but with poor technique. You can duck out on notes and accents that you can't play.

But, then you get stuck in a rut of being one dimensionally musical. You play the same thing over and over.

My recent epiphany took far too long to come, but now I realise how much more is open to you on the drum kit when you have more technique hidden in your subconscious.

Applying musicality to technique is easy. I've never met any drummer with great technique who didn't play with musicality.

To me right now it boils down to a practice regime that includes exercises played like exercises but also time playing and having fun.
 
When I just start learning them I play them slow and mechanical...as soon as they are in muscle memory I play them hitting every accent and beat with nuance and touch, like I was playing in front of 20,000 people. I don't want exercises to sound like exercises. i want them to sound like music. (easier said than done)

Anyone with me on this one?

Sure, that was the way I did things, pretty much exclusively, for a long time. It's good to be able to make something stupid sound like music. Since I've been in my 40s I started appreciating that there are times when you need the ability to play mechanically, and also that playing in a way that feels mechanical physically to you does not necessarily sound mechanical to the listener. So I have more appreciation now for doing clean, uninflected, "mechanical" practice. Since I've already spent a lot of time doing pure music, I think I spend most of my practice time-- maybe 75%-- that way.
 
What ever exercises you play, you should somehow apply it to the kit. Put a rhythmic feel behind the exercises and see what you come up with when applying it to the kit. Add your own accents, not the ones in the exercises (unless you like the way it feels and sounds). That's pretty much putting your feel to what you are playing. It doesn't have to be a complete exercise. It could be only part of and exercise if it sounds good. String stuff together, and you end up with some pretty cool drum riffs or rhythmic themes. It could be a drum set book or a snare book. If it sounds good, apply it to the kit. This is where you creativity comes in to play. After a while you will develop a good drum vocabulary, that you can apply, when playing in a band to all types of music.
 
I understand that it can be boring to play exercises. To be honest I also prefer to play songs instead of practicing, because the reality is you seldom practice when you're just playing on top of songs.

Nobody said it was easy, and again it depends how far you wanna go, but trust me, if you don't work on your chops like exercises you cannot go very far. Took me 15 years to understand that.
 
This is a fairly easy one and something I've done as long as I've been "practicing".

Simply work on your exercises to music. Try to make the exercise "work" with the melodies and rhythms of the songs. And change songs when you need to change tempo.

It's a great way to "hear" musical possibilities while "practicing".

D
 
This is a fairly easy one and something I've done as long as I've been "practicing".

Simply work on your exercises to music. Try to make the exercise "work" with the melodies and rhythms of the songs. And change songs when you need to change tempo.

It's a great way to "hear" musical possibilities while "practicing".

D

This is amazing advice and it also reminds us of the importance of learning how to musically integrate new techniques into our playing.
 
Try to find etudes and practice those instead of rudiments...
I personally don't mind playing rudiments mechanically but I have read from a piano practice researcher that it's actually bad to practice anything mechanical and everything should be musical, even if it's technique that needs to be achieved. Etudes serve that purpose in piano and other classical instruments, I haven't looked up etudes for drums yet but I know there are some...

I'm not sure about this or that I agree with him but it's an researched opinion anyway.
I will personally work on both, both etudes and mechanical technique stuff(playing rudiments to a metronome)
 
Acutally I haven't played many rudiments, just single and double stroke. And drag-tap, flam a bit.

My teacher has me working on accents and rebounds, and a couple of linear time patterns from one of the Chaffee books. And a ton of grooves, just about any groove you can think of.
 
I have been guilty of not taking exercises to the next level. Many times I have learned the mechanics of an exercise and can play it through adequately. To really make it become a part of your vocabulary I think it is important to work on going in an out of the exercise in the way you would in a song. so if the exercise is a fill, going back and forth from a beat to the exercise fill and if the exercise is more of a beat/rhythm, practice breaking it up with other beats, or variations with fills. Often with repetitive exercises, we can get them going and can stay pretty steady, but starting and stopping is a whole other animal. This is where we find ourselves hesitating or skipping a beat making a transition from one to the other.
 
Back
Top