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.