You've clicked on this video because you're
ready to start to improve or develop your drum soloing ability. If that's the
case, stick around. If you're new to the channel make sure you subscribe before
you leave because we're dedicating the majority of this year to helping you do
just that. For all my regulars Let's get down to business.
Queue intro! Alright so I'm gonna kick this thing off with the first of four videos, four exercises that I'm going to show you guys to do.
This is going to be
the first in a sub-series of videos that I'm calling "Progressive Subdivisions" so
take whatever you know up to this point about playing drum solos and just put it
all aside for the time being because we're going to break this thing right
back down start from the ground floor Now you guys have heard me talk about
solos before and the basic underlying kind of structure underneath
it and the fact that it's really just subdivisions with a whole lot of colour
right? So that's how we're gonna build up our ability to solo. We're going to
start with that. There is definitely an art to it later on alright but you get
overwhelmed if I get into all of that stuff too early.
So we're going to start
with the ground floor and just crawl before we start walking again. Now the basis of what I'm going to talk about today is in a previous video that I
recorded probably a year ago now called "How to Develop Rock Solid Timing." If you
saw that then you're prepared for what's about to happen. If you didn't see it
take a couple minutes to check that video out just so you get an
understanding of what I mean by subdivisions. Once you have all that information this series of videos is going to start to
make more sense to you. So the idea and the purpose behind these first four
exercises: building blocks. We're gonna build our ability to solo
literally one subdivision at a time. Now while we're doing these exercises you're
going to build the five most important components of playing any drum solo:
your improvisation, your musicality, your dynamics, your vocabulary, and your timing.
Alright, so this is basically how it works man We're going to focus on the
8th note subdivision and the idea is we're gonna sit around the kit we're gonna pick a nice slow comfortable tempo and what we're
gonna do is we're going to play 8th notes around the drums. But here's the thing because there's a lot more to it than that.
The idea is to get as creative and as musical as you possibly can with just 8th notes. Don't play anything else
alright? Just 8th notes. So you're just going to take everything that you've got, whatever level that you're at right now and you're just going to play 8th
notes around the drums. You can do it however you want: you can play unisons, singles, hand-and-foot combinations, whatever you want to do. But again all
you're gonna play is 8th notes. So this is going to take away the attention
from all of the other notes in the spectrum.
You've got one letter of
the alphabet to work with. So this is going to force whatever you got in here out Now this is a super effective way to start to build up your improvisational
skills because you're going to be making it all up, right? So we're working at a
slow enough tempo where there's no pressure, okay? and
you're not performing, okay? you're just doing an exercise here so take your time stay within those 8th notes and just play what you got in front of you Now
you can make this exercise very musical through the use of dynamics loud and soft.
I want you to think like this. You know what I mean? Like as far as volume
goes imagine there's a fader behind you and every once in a while
push it up, bring it back, push it up bring it back, gradually push it up again,
you know what I'm saying? You're gonna vary your dynamics through
this whole thing with single hits, double hits whatever This is also going to
build up your vocabulary because during this whole process you're gonna learn
some new phrases. You're just gonna be making stuff up. You might do
something that you really like, play it a few more times until you remember it and
it just becomes another part of your musical vocabulary. So as far as how to
play this exercise it's very simple man you have an 8th note pocket.
Shut all
of the other subdivisions off. So this is our tempo *snapping tempo 84 BPM* all right you're just going to
be thinking 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and *snap* and 2 and 3 and 4 and that is your blank canvas you can fill those
slots in the grid up with whatever you want and that's it. So the cool thing
about this exercise is that it doesn't get boring
as a matter of fact the longer you do it the more fun it gets so you can
literally if you want you can do this 15 20 minutes at a time without even
breaking a sweat 15 minutes is gonna feel like three minutes now while you're
actually playing this exercise I want you to consider 4 important things these are things that I want you to keep in mind the entire time, alright? Number 1
the use of bar structure think about bar structure
while you're playing.
Don't just start hitting stuff at random and then decide
you know to hit a crash whenever you feel like hitting it make it intentional
and make your phrasing even so you can do it however you want 2 bars, 4
bars, 2 bar, whatever you want to do but keep the bar structure in mind when
you're doing this Second thing of course again use of dynamics make sure you're
playing loud and soft put as much emotion into those 8th notes as you
possibly can Third thing which is super important the use of space space is a very important and valuable tool when you're playing in
general but especially during a solo. The space that you leave between the notes
is just as important as the notes themselves so go ahead play some stuff
let it breathe play some more stuff Let it breathe, you know what I'm saying? Space is okay. You don't have to fill every single slot with a note and then
the fourth thing and the final thing that I mentioned before we before we get
into it this is super important LISTEN to your drums.
Learn how to enjoy the
sound of your drums. sometimes you've got to stand back and let them speak, you know what I'm saying? For instance this cymbal here, I love this
cymbal to death. Sometimes I'll hit it and then I just stand back so I can
listen to it decay you know what I mean? Or I'll just tap my ride cymbal to just listen to what it does that kind of thing. Your toms if your
toms are tuned really well you're going want to hear them when you hit a
floor tom and it sings out just stand back and let it sing out. My 10 inch, I
love the sound of my 10 inch so you know I'll use that often during play
and I just like to absorb the sound of my kit because it's very much part of
the solo So now that I've fully explained how to
do this thing I'm gonna play an example for you I'm
just going to start it click and do this exact exercise so you can see it and
then afterwards you can go do it for yourself So that's it, that's all there is to it
man so hopefully that gave you an idea of
just how musical you can get with just the one subdivision and the beautiful
thing about it is that you really don't need a ton of technique to do it so if
you if you've only been playing for two years or so you can still do this.
If
you've been playing for 10 years or more it's just gonna end up being more fun
for you. Now I'm gonna leave this one lesson with you for a couple of weeks It's super important that you do not get ahead of yourself all right?
I'm giving you enough time before the next lesson to really practice this
as often as you can I'm gonna try to space these lessons out every two weeks so make sure you take advantage of the time and do this as often as you can for
as long as you want Always remember man you're only going to
get out of it what you put into it. So that's it I'm gonna leave that right
there make sure you grab my play along track album "Solo Comps for Drummers" this
is gonna be something we're going to be using during the course of the year and
there's gonna be songs so I'm gonna be giving you some homework, some
recommended tunes to play along with later on down the road but you can pick
it up now and you know check some of the tunes out.
It's available pretty much
anywhere you can download music so check that out also make sure you go check out
the online merch store I got a ton of really cool t-shirt
and hoodies in there there's a lot of new items to that you might want to
check out the shirts and hoodies have been selling quite nicely thanks to
everyone that's been picking them up and sending me pics thanks for watching this
video Share it if you dig it Comment and subscribe we'll see you in the next one.