I was talking to a friend of mine, who is a drummer, today and he was asking how I was doing with it.  We talked about beats and stuff and the topic eventually shifted to 'full songs'.  Well the only song I've comfortable playing start to finish is AC/DC's Back in Black.  I know parts of others, but they are all over my head right now, so I struggle with them quite a bit.  I told him I'd knock out a quick recording of me playing it start to finish. 

It's a little rough, but here it is warts and all.  I've done it better in the past, but this is what I got when I recorded and it's about par for the course.  I'm getting better.  Last week, I couldn't play it all the way through, and shortly after I made this recording I figured out a couple of sections that sound bad in this recording.

I know the recording quality is pretty bad.  I'm trying to find a better system than Windows Sound Recorder to use for recordings like this.

Years ago when the Dummies and Idiot's line of books were becoming popular I vowed never to buy one.  Why?  My opinion is that you should never buy a book that insults you, the reader, in the title.  Even though the titles are self-deprecating and tongue-in-cheek, something just isn't right when just buying the book says you feel you are stupid or inept.

In my quest to learn to play drums I'm having to teach myself using whatever resources I can find.  I'm searching for a qualified instructor for personal lessons, but I live in a rural area and with gas prices so high it's nearly prohibitively expensive once you add the cost of gas in with the cost of the lessons.  I haven't given up, but I'm moving on with self instruction in the mean time.

There are a ton of resources on the net that show you all the rudiments, basic beats, even advanced topics for free, and a myriad of books can be ordered with a few simple clicks.  The problem with all this is that all of it, most books included, is just a metric buttload of information with no structure behind it.  You can easily get overwhelmed with information with no way of knowing HOW you should proceed to learn all of it. 

Now, I'm the kind of person that can figure a lot out on my own, but I need at least a pointer to get started.  I need someone to say 'do this then this then this' to get me started.  Once I have a plan in place I can run with the best of them, but when information is just thrown at me I get overloaded and frustrated, and frustration leads to me quitting.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

So I found myself in the bookstore yesterday getting ready to insult myself by buying The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing Drums.  I'm not proud of it, but there it is.  I love playing, but had no idea how to get better.  I now at least have a starting map, a progression of exercises to work on.  It may not be as good as a live instructor, but at least it's something to point me in the right direction.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to don my dunce cap and play the drums.

Not 100% drumming related, but it is 100% funny.

I meant to record and post this yesterday, since it marked the day I actually started working on the kit.  Now I'm thinking that Fridays are going to work better since I have Fridays off and practice/recording time is easier to come by.

This is a paradiddle, it's played 'R  L  R  R  L  R  L  L  R  L  R  R  L  R  L  L'.  I've been struggling with this for a while now, just didn't fell like I had a handle on it.  I was fine at very slow speeds, but once I tried to speed it up I often got lost and missed the correct strokes.  It didn't help that I haven't been very dedicated in my practice routines.  I played almost everyday, but I wasn't targeted in what I would practice so it often was just me smashing around the kit some, playing a rudiment or two for a few minutes, and/or trying to learn a bit of a song.

I'm going to start putting dedicated time into it going forward, so real improvements should be seen soon.

The quality isn't as good on this recording as the first one, because I turned the volume up on the kit and forgot to turn it down before recording, so I kind of overloaded what the little sound recorder in Windows can handle.


This is part of a sequence of recordings so I can track my progress.  Follow entries in the Benchmarks category with similar titles in chronological order to see how I'm improving.

I decided I needed to work on my legs, and now they are aching.  My right leg in particular.  I don't use a double pedal yet, since I'm just getting started, (an Iron Cobra double pedal will be on my wish list by Christmas, probably) so my right is my primary kick leg since the Hi-Hat requires a release rather than an actual kick in most instances.

My technique isn't the best right now, sometimes I leave the beater against the bass pad and sometimes I let it come off a bit.  On my e-kit this doesn't change the sound, but when I get onto an acoustic set it will, so I want to be consistent.  I also don't have a lot of stamina yet, and long sessions with a lot of double kicks tire me out so that I miss kicks I should hit.

To help fix all of this I've started doing drills of kicking the 8ths at 100 BPM for 2 minutes.  Non-drummers may think this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's 400 kicks at just under 1/3 of a second each non-stop.  For someone who's only been playing about 2 weeks, it's enough to cause a bit of pain by the time it's over.

I've been working at this for about 2 weeks now, and today it finally clicked how I was supposed to do it.  I nearly doubled my speed from one moment to the next.  I still need to polish my technique and build my speed up a bit, but that will come with practice.  For now I'm content that I have it down as well as I do.  I was actually faster and more consistent earlier today, but my arms were getting tired when I made the recording.


This is part of a sequence of recordings so I can track my progress. Follow entries in the Benchmarks category with similar titles in chronological order to see how I'm improving.

I've never heard of anything called a Hang Drum before, but I'm hooked after seeing this video.  Apparently they are very expensive, so I don't see me ever getting one but it's nice to see different types of instruments and people that can play them well.

All my life I've wanted to play a musical instrument.  I've always been a fair singer.   I can keep time and follow along with the sheet music, but I can't actually read music.  I'd love to be able to read music someday and actually play an instrument other than my voice.  'Fair singers' can be found on any street corner.  Musicians are harder to find.

I always thought that the guitar would my instrument.  I've loved it since I was kid.  I took lessons when I was young, but getting to lessons was difficult so after a couple of months I was left to fend on my own.  This was before the internet and widely available help for those who were trying to teach themselves.  Years later, unemployed and recently divorced, I picked up a cheap starter guitar pack and decided I would use some of my free time to learn to play finally.  I got farther than I did as a child, even learning parts of some songs.  I had no problems playing individual notes, but when it came to chords, I was stymied.  After months of practice I still couldn't change even simple chords fast enough to play any song that required them.  At 37 years old, frustration led me to put the guitar up for the last time.  It didn't seem that an instrument was in my future.

In 2007, Harmonix released a video game called Rock Band as a follow up to their Guitar Hero series that another development team had taken over.  After playing a demo at Best Buy I turned to my girlfriend and jokingly said "Our band has a drummer."  I really enjoyed the play of the drums, but figured we would switch around the parts with her kids.  I still enjoyed playing Guitar Hero and figured others may want to try something different when I played the guitar parts in Rock Band.

Six months after the release of Rock Band I was still playing my toy drums and pretty much ignoring the other parts of the game.  Time to move on to something bigger, real drums, so I purchased a used DTXplorer.  I live where I can't play an acoustic set, so I got an electronic set to start learning on.  If I take to it, and I have no reason to believe I won't at this point, I'll pick up an acoustic set to supplement the electronic and play when no ones around.

I've decided to try and chronicle my journey.  I don't expect it to be easy.  The closest teacher I've found is about 60 miles away and with gas currently approaching $4 a gallon in my area it pushes lessons to just out of my range of affordability to have to drive that far.  So it looks like I'm mostly on my own for this journey.  That's okay, though.  My best friend plays drums and the internet is a wealth of information to help me out.  It can't replace a real instructor, and I know that, but it's the best I can do for now.

They say that sometimes you find your bliss in unexpected places.  Maybe, just maybe, I found mine in a Best Buy in Greenville, NC.