What is going on? What's up guys? Kize here. On this channel, I try to learn a new skill as quickly as possible, and for this month I'll be doing the drums. I have exactly zero experience playing the drums, but the goal for this month will be to try to play Bruno Mars's "Runaway baby" by day 30. This song. Run, run, run away, before I put my spell on you You better… I don't know the first thing about drums. I think this is going to be pretty interesting. This is definitely the most ambitious project I've taken on so far. So I'm going to have to be super strategic in the way that I go about this learning process. That's really it for the intro. Let's get into the challenge LEGGO. Before I even started playing the drums, I had to first set up my kit.
So these are all the things that I have to put together. I didn't realize the first part of the video is going to be an IKEA tutorial. All right. When I will do it in the real life? As you can see, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with the drums. But thankfully, I found a drum learning platform online called Drumeo. Drumeo offers some very good courses for beginner drummers where they go through the very basic building blocks of drumming they have to know right off the bat. This includes how to hold drumsticks, technique, basic theory and getting acquainted to the different parts of the drums. This first day was just me struggling to get acquainted with different parts of the drums. It's time for… "I hope my neighbors don't hate me today." Whenever, I'm learning a new skill, I like to immerse myself in the general total landscape of a skill at the very beginning.
So for this challenge, I designed and created an intense drumming bootcamp for myself to take on for the first few days. I worked through the Drumeo method, took detailed notes of what I was learning. Lastly, I drilled through different rudiments in the Drumeo method. To define a rudiment simply, It's the basic rhythmic pattern that is found in a lot of music. My process of drilling through rudiments was very simple. For example, I would see this rudiment be intimidated for a hot second… What is going on? And then I would slow it down and try to copy the movements. When I was comfortable playing it at a certain speed, I would bring the speed up. By repeating this process, I'd be able to play it four times in a row at 80 beats per minute, in which I would move on to the next set of movements. Here we go! Some rudiments, take a longer time to get a hang of, while others I can get pretty easily.
But as long as I started slow and went to a faster tempo, I was able to get it. By the end of the mini bootcamp, I was able to play my first song, maybe because I played the piano before and I feel like I have a pretty good sense of rhythm and coordination. I felt like I was improving pretty quickly and it was a ton of fun going through the basics, but I wasn't really sure if I was doing anything wrong. So I sent a video over to one of Drumeo's instructors for some feedback. For one week? Are you kidding me? Clearly! Great time, great feel, played all the fills. Everything is happening. You're doing all the right stuff. The one thing I want to talk about is your bass drum. We do see you're picking up that. The best thing you can try and do there is keep your foot on that pedal.
This is really going to be a big difference when you start playing faster stuff. Looks like I'm on relatively the right path. Now that I'm done with this high level bootcamp, it's time to buckle down and focus in on the song that I'm learning this month. … this is what I say Run, run, run away, run away, baby No! Well, I have my work cut out for me for this month. To get a clear understanding of what I was up against, I reached out to an expert. Good. How are you? Good! Carlos has been playing the drums for over 20 years, and teaching online for over 10. I first asked him what would be the hardest part of the challenge. You're going to want to work on that right hand speed. The overall coordination is going to be tricky, thinking about right hand, right foot, and left hands, and all these things hitting at the same time or hitting one after the other.
It's clear by now that the hardest part of the song is going to be the speed, which is one hundred sixty four beats per minute. This is unexpectedly pretty freaking fast, and I'm very worried that I'm not going to be able to hit this by the end of the 30 days. But Carlos is giving me some good technique tips that will help me bring up that speed. It's all about whip. It's almost like a cheat method essentially. You hit 'one', and as you are bringing the hand up, and twisting that wrist it also helps making this hitting movement. With all this info to remember it's time to go into the song.
At least I got the first note. So one thing that I try to do while learning a skill, I like to close my eyes when I'm going through the motions. By doing this, I'm training myself early on to really ingrain the movements into my body and not be relying so much on visual cues. Since I only have 30 days to do this, I really need to drill this into my body ASAP. For the next few days, I split up the song into different sections and just drill them over and over again, trying to get the movements into my brain. Like the rudiments in the boot camp, practice was pretty straightforward from this point onward. Every day I would slowly push myself over to speed I was comfortable at.
Every day I would slowly push myself over to speed I was comfortable at. By day twelve I'm able to play the speed at about one hundred twenty five beats per minute, which is about seventy five percent of full tempo. Also at this point I was noticing distinct weaknesses in my playing. There's two limiting factors that are preventing me from speeding up.
Number one is the in-between notes, between the different phrases. So those are the fills in the flams. I think I just need to practice it and over and over. The big problem here is my bass note. This little guy. The bass note is my enemy for this challenge. I'm not able to keep up the pace of my foot with the pace of my hand motions. I'll keep drilling my foot to strengthen it. In the meantime, I have another lesson with Carlos in which he gave me a lot of exercises to work on. Flam, bass, flam bass. But watch how my arms never stop moving. For some reason, I imagine like the mechanism on the wheels of a locomotive When you're doing it around the drums, there has to be the fluidity where there isn't stopping and starting…
It's got this constant flow. Now it is much more fluid, and the flam started sounding a lot cleaner. You can tell how well you're doing, if you're having a lot of fun playing, because that probably means that it's so memorized that you're just loose. You are jamming. It's halfway through the project, and I'm definitely not at that point yet. I start getting calluses. Love it. My bass note was still kind of giving me problems, but I was drilling my fills and my flams over and over and over again for the next few days. Probably to the detriment of my own ears and my neighbor's sanity, but I was definitely seeing an improvement in my fills and my flams. Hold on. Let me try to explain this. My bass note was having trouble keeping up.
One note that I cannot get on time. I was always late to it, but now I'm realizing that it's not that note that is the issue. It's the note before it. Whatever I hit, I was hitting it for too long and too hard. I was holding it and because I was holding it, I wasn't able to hit the next notes. To combat that, every time I hit that note instead of doing that and holding it, which makes it a lot harder to prepare for the next note. I am just going to play notes. Literally, my entire leg is engaged. If I just do that, I can hit the next note. I tested it out and sure enough, I could keep up a lot easier.
I was so focused on that problem note, but the real culprit is a note before it.
I was so focused on that problem note, but the real culprit is a note before it. For the final few days of the bootcamp, drumming was the only thing on my mind And the last few days was the final sprint of trying to put everything together and up to speed.
Day 30. Ah, yes Check it out Well, looky here, looky here, ah, what do we have? Another pretty thing ready for me to grab. But little does she know that I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing 'Cause at the end of the night, it is her I'll be holding I love you so (Hey) That's what you'll say You'll tell me baby, baby, please don't go away. Don't go away. But when I play, I never stay To every girl that I meet here, this is what I'll say Run, run, run away, run away, baby Before I put my spell on you You better get, get, get away, get away, darling 'Cause everything you heard is true Your poor little heart will end up alone 'Cause Lord knows I'm a rolling stone So you better run, run, run away, run away, baby Well, let me think, let me think, ah, what should I do? So many eager young bunnies that I'd like to pursue Now even though they're eating out the palm of my hand There's only one carrot and they all gotta share it I love you so (Hey) That's what you'll say You'll tell me baby, baby, please don't go away.
Don't go away. But when I play, I never stay To every girl that I meet here, this is what I'll say Run, run, run away, run away, baby Before I put my spell on you You better get, get, get away, get away, darling 'Cause everything you heard is true Your poor little heart will end up alone 'Cause Lord knows I'm a rolling stone So you better run, run, run away, run away, baby Uh, check it out See, I ain't tryna hurt you, baby No, no, no, I just want to work you baby See, I ain't tryna hurt you baby No, no, no, I just want to work you baby If you're scared, you better run, you better run…
Run, run, run away, run away, baby Before I put my spell on you You better get, get, get away, get away, darling 'Cause everything you heard is true Your poor little heart will end up alone 'Cause Lord knows I'm a rolling stone So you better run, run, run away, run away, baby Thanks for watching, I hope you'll enjoy that challenge as much as I had fun going through it. There's definitely something therapeutic of hitting something over and over again during practice. I also wanted to give a thank you to both Drumeo and Carlos for all the help during this challenge. If you want to check out any of Drumeo's online courses, you can go to the description box below. And also, Carlos started this really cool program called Drummers for All. It's a program that collects donations to pay for equipment and also lessons for those that can't afford it.
If you're interested in any lessons with Carlos or the Drummers for All program, you can find all the info in the description box below as well. If you want to see any of my past learning challenges, you can check out the video here. I plan on all of these videos and edit them myself, and I have some really cool new skills that I want to learn going forward. So if you want to keep up to date to those learning challenges, then go ahead and subscribe and hit that notification button below.
Thank you so much for watching. Bye!.