Bang The Drums Quickly

Made this one use the Jackson 5 song Never Can Say Goodbye. Chopped it up into a bunch of little pieces and rearranged them to come up with You Never Can Stay, Goodbye. Through hours of painstaking sampling I’ve discovered a new way of chopping up songs into samples.

You Never Can Stay, Goodbye by DKB

Before I would shy away from songs with drums or percussion on it completely. Which still is a good idea. But after listening to Camron’s Oh Boy and hearing how he used those samples I soon realized that by chopping a song on the snare hits, bass drum hits and any other hit you may find, for that matter. You don’t have to shy away from songs with drums on it. You can used the samples with the snare hits in it on 2 and 4 and as far as the rest of the samples. Use them at your leisure.

By changing the pitch of the sample you’re going to change the speed of the sample as well. This is a good way to find the BPM you want your track to be at. Lowering the pitch will slow things down and vise versa.

Now go out there and start choppin’ up some vinyl.

Made this song the other night.

House on Mango Street by BamBam2000

Here’s a recording of Max Roach (arguably one of the greatest things that has happened to drums) playing his infamous solo "For Big Sid." Pay attention to the opening riff and see how he morphs it through out the piece. 

Roach’s big thing was making drums very melodic and sound very musical. Something that every one can take into consideration no matter what type of music or genre you play.

Hope you enjoy! 

More lessons coming soon! I had to take some time off because Berklee would not allow non-registered students over the summer to use the facilities. (e.g. The drum rooms).

But I am happy to report school is now back in session and I able to use the facilities when ever I want! So look forward to more lessons and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. 

In this lesson we go over odd time swing. 3/4 and 5/4 are two common time signatures that you often hear in jazz other than 4/4. With 3/4 there are a couple different hi-hat patterns that can be played, as well as the ride cymbal pattern. 

We’ll take a look at 3/4 first because you’ll need to know how to play drums in 3/4 before you can learn how to play in 5/4. In 3/4 you can play the hi-hat on beats 2 and 3 with the bass drum on beat 1. Giving it that "boom chuck chuck" feel. The other way we’ll learn how to play 3/4 is playing the hi-hat on beats "and" of 1 and 3, with the bass drum on beat 1 as well. This way of playing is a great one. It gives the illusion of 2 over 3 because each hi-hat beat is equal distance from each other. 

3/4 is also known as a waltz. This is a really important thing to keep in mind when learning how to play in odd meters or even if you have had much experience play in odd meters. The reason for this is when you’re playing you want to maintain the feel of the odd meter. In this case 3/4 or waltz, you don’t necessarily have to play the hi-hat on beats 2 and 3. A lot of drummers including my self will be constantly switching up the way the hi-hat is played but staying consistent with the feel of the odd meter. 

Things To Keep In Mind

When start out playing in odd time signatures (odd meters) you want to stick with playing the hi-hat on the proper beats until you become more comfortable switching it up. There’s that old saying "you gotta learn to crawl before you can walk."

Now, once you can play 3/4 you can play 5/4. it’s just adding on two more beats to each measure. The hi-hat will be played on beats 2, 3 and 5. With the bass drum on beats 1 and 4. Keep playing this until you become very familiar with how this feels. Be careful because it’s very easy to slip back into 3/4 with out even knowing it. I like to think of it as 3 + 2. So when learning this odd meter count out loud "1 2 3 1 2…" until you become more comfortable with it. Then you can start counting out loud "1 2 3 4 5…"