(upbeat music) (rhythmic drumming) – On to lesson six of my Fastest
Way to Get Faster series. This one is called
The Illusion of Speed. Now, no one would ever
call me Jared Copperfield, but I'm gonna do my
best to maybe trick you or do something like that. (laughs) Now when I first heard
Thomas Pridgen play, I was just blown away. He has incredible
amounts of speed, and his really isn't
an illusion of speed, he has just incredible
amounts of speed and he also has great groove,
great musical vocabulary, and he's just a super
fun guy to hang out with. Now that said, I really tried
to dissect what he was doing and he talked a little bit
about it in his lesson on Drumeo so I'd encourage you to
go watch that if you can.
But basically what we're doing
is we're splitting the notes between our hands and the feet. Now I've written these
exercises as 16th notes, but they're really just that. They're exercises to get
you started on a concept and to really kind of get
this tool in your toolbox. You might play the 16th on
triplets or eighth on triplets or some completely different way than you're actually
practicing today, but this is gonna
help you develop that next level independence and really help you develop
that illusion of speed between your hands
and your feet.
So the first exercise starts with the hands on the snare drum and it goes right hand,
then it goes bass drum, left hand, bass drum. Now you'll play this for
one bar of 16th notes. Here we go. (rhythmic drumming) The second exercise
might look the same and if you remove the sticking
that I've written above, it would actually be
the exact same thing. But what we're gonna be
doing is basically playing a double stroke
roll with our hands. So our hands are actually
playing on all the eighth notes. So one and two and
three and four and … Inserting the kicks between. (rhythmic drumming) Let me play this for you
both slow and fast speeds. (rhythmic drumming) The final exercise
is very similar except it's just using
a single paradiddle. Now the single
paradiddle is played on all the eighth notes and
it's just one rotation through inserting those kicks
in-between each of those notes.
(rhythmic drumming) Here it is at both
slow and fast speeds. (rhythmic drumming) Now once you can play each of
those exercises individually, you can put them all together
and play this in sequence. So let me show you
how that sounds, again both slow and fast. (rhythmic drumming) So I recommend you practice
each of the individual exercises for five minutes and then
practice the sequence for 15 minutes and
that is your practice with the fastest way to
get faster for the day. There's many many
other things you should be practicing as well, like learning new vocabulary,
practicing your dynamics, practicing different
techniques and stuff like that.
So don't make this 100%
of your practice time, but definitely
incorporate some of it, because I think it's a very
very useful tool to have. Now once you get it
to a certain point where you're comfortable
just playing on the snare, I'd recommend you start
moving it around the drums and actually incorporate
some other rudiments in there as well. So sometimes for my warmup
I'll just play around the kit and experiment with
different sounds.
Playing the hands and
then putting the kick in-between each note, like this. (rhythmic drumming) It's definitely a fun
piece of vocabulary to have and it gives the
illusion of speed when your hands are really
just playing eighth notes and your kicks are just
playing offset eighth notes. Nothing is going that
fast individually, but when you put it all
together, it sounds fast. So, that's it for
today's lesson. Get to your kit and
start practicing. Get off your phone, okay? Stop browsing
Facebook endlessly. Stop browsing Instagram
until the cows come home. Get to your kit and
start practicing. Stop complaining about
not getting any better and then never practicing. Alright, get to your kit
and get some practice. Go! (upbeat music).