Applied Rudiments

G

gbftats

Member
I was watching a drum clinic Billy Cobham hosted, and one of the people in the audience asked billy how much of what he plays is rudiments. He replied "90%".

For some of the drummer on this forum that have been playing a long time i ask you, do you you arrange solos or fills with rudiments in mind? For example "Im going to do a ratamacue to a 5-stoke roll yada yada yada", or when it comes time to playing you just through those ideas out the window and go for it?

I have this feeling that later on down the road these rudiments will just become a part of my playing and when i play back a recording i will hear the rudiments without thinking about playing them. Im not sure though.
 
gbftats said:
I was watching a drum clinic Billy Cobham hosted, and one of the people in the audience asked billy how much of what he plays is rudiments. He replied "90%".

For some of the drummer on this forum that have been playing a long time i ask you, do you you arrange solos or fills with rudiments in mind? For example "Im going to do a ratamacue to a 5-stoke roll yada yada yada", or when it comes time to playing you just through those ideas out the window and go for it?

I have this feeling that later on down the road these rudiments will just become a part of my playing and when i play back a recording i will hear the rudiments without thinking about playing them. Im not sure though.
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Yes, that will eventually happen, though you can work on creating ideas with them that you can use time and again. A ratamacue is a great sounding thing on a snare drum, but orchestrated around the kit, becomes a whole new beast. And that doesn't happen automatically from learning it on one surface. I think the process goes something like this:

1. Get it under your hands. At this point you'll be thinking "5-stroke Roll, etc."

2. Learn to orchestrate the idea on the kit to create musical ideas. At this point you'll still be conscious that you're playing a rudiment, but you'll be trying to find musical sounds/statements that the rudiment produces by being played on one surface or a combination of surfaces/limbs - i.e. a Paradiddle naturally lends itself to different musical ideas than Flam Taps.

3. Work on particular patterns long enough and you'll begin to be able to "hear" and replicate the musical idea so that you're not thinking about what rudiment it is; It'll simply be a musical sound/idea that you can pull out - hopefully - at will.

Make sense?

When Cobham is playing, he's playing musical ideas that happen to be produced from rudiments.
 
The rudiments are like building blocks that you practice until they are automatic. Instead of thinking 'I am going to play rlrrrllrll for this fill ' while you are playing you just realize what stickings will let you paint the picture you have in your head and if your rudiments are in order the stickings will just come out.

When I say 'paint a picture in your head' I mean that you can associate a picture with a certain rudiment and then while you are playing you only need to imagine a sequence of pictures to create a bigger montage. Many musicians do this already, but hey may not be aware of it. When you become aware of it, things get much, much easier to play, because you shouldn't be thinking much about all these little intricacies when you are playing. You should be listening instead.

My .02. Hope this helps.

K

(@Boomka... "If you think you're more important than the drums, you got another think coming. - Tony Williams". That is an AMAZING quote! Thank you! That is incredible on many different levels, just like Tony was/is!)
 
I see what you guys are saying. When I play i dont think about rudiments, i just feel the music. It sounds good, but im very limited. I like the idea of working rudiments out in a musical fashion around the kit to develop new ideas and create new flexibility around the kit.
 
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