Bath Drum Studio

Jam Session Videos

bathdrummer — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:25:41 +0000

Reading drum notation – primer

bathdrummer — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:01:48 +0000

I was going to write this myself, but found a brilliant article had already been created by ‘The Drum Ninja’

Follow this link

Coordination Killer

bathdrummer — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:47:40 +0000

This is a lifetime’s work…

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Odd Groupings

bathdrummer — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:49:21 +0000

Odd groups played across 16th notes.

Count the beats and measures out loud. Really count, don’t just mumble under your breath!

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Accent warmup

bathdrummer — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:11:15 +0000

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‘Page 33′

bathdrummer — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:27:31 +0000

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Black Dog notation

bathdrummer — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:19:34 +0000

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8-bar phrase

bathdrummer — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:43:20 +0000

The phrase we use all the time…

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Shuffle Techniques

bathdrummer — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:03:13 +0000

Here is a step-by-step process for improving your shuffles and half-time shuffles. remember to concentrate on the accents and ghosts, and also to start slowly

Seek out some classic half time shuffles, in particular:

Fool In The Rain – Led Zeppelin (John Bonham)
Babylon Sisters – Steely Dan (Bernard Purdie)
Rosanna – Toto (Jeff Porcaro)
Slave To The Rhythm – Grace Jones (Andy Richards)

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Thanks to James Hester for the page.

Tuning – very briefly!

bathdrummer — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:36:04 +0000

Tuning your drum kit

The key to tuning your kit is really to be confident, and to know the effect of each adjustment you make. It really does become very easy with practice. The general procedure when starting with new heads is as follows:

Check the bearing edges – clean any gunk from the hoops and the drum (tobacco, dust, Monster Munch), and lightly sand any imperfections.
Lay the bottom head over the rim, and finger-tighten the tension rods.
Press firmly in the middle of the head and tighten the rods until the wrinkles disappear.
Tune the head, tapping lightly with a mallet or stick slightly off-centre until you have a nice even tone. There will be several tuning points at which the shell resonates nicely, with no nasty overtones.
Repeat the process with the top (batter) head, and you will then have a roundly tuned drum. If you place the drum on your lap, or a cushion, you will damp one end thus making it easier to tune each head in isolation.
To adjust the sound to what you want, remember that the batter head gives most of your attack, whilst the bottom head will produce most of your tone. They key to everything though is a nice even tension across each head.

For your snare and bass drum, the same basic principles apply with a few provisos. For example, you are likely to want the snare-side head a lot tighter than the batter due to it’s thinness. Also you’ll want a lot more attack, generally, from the bass so the batter side may be quite slack.

Above all DON’T BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT!! As long as you understand the key principles, you can’t go far wrong.