MESHUGGAH's - Bleed

The Double Bass rudiment from  MESHUGGAH's Bleed is something I've been looking into overtime, and it is something I definitely want to conquer as a drummer. The Rudiment is both physically and mentally difficult, like ridiculously difficult. Physically just due to the speed and consistency that you have to keep the beat going for, roughly 6 minutes being the the length of the song (there is a about a minute break in the sound at around 5 minutes through then the song carries on as normal).

Mentally, its playing the triplet fill "The Herta" on the feet - The Herta being a type of rudiment fill, where the the pattern adds a fast note after the first hit and then the rest carries on as if in a triplet style (see picture below)

Tiberius and Rollin'

So we had to play a piece of music via sight reading, just playing as you go, for a couple of different genres. the ones I sight read were Tiberius and Rollin'. Tiberius was a grade 4 metal beat and Rollin' a grade 4 blues beat.
Rollin' was the first beat i did, its fairly straight forward, there's a couple of parts where you have a swung cymbal pattern, and there is also an improvised drum solo for 8 bars i believe. Anyway here is my video on my first attempt at Rollin'

So above is my first run through of Rollin', the grade 4 blues piece. It was okay, I have loads to practise however, as i t was very messy, and the drum solo section was very under thought, and the swung pattern was wrong so yeah loads to learn, and practise and generally work on.

Next was Tiberius, the heavy metal grade 4 piece. also fairly simple, i'd say easier than Rollin', couple of parts work a little weird, but I like this beat and genre just due to the amount you can improvise around the beat with rather fills or double bass techniques and stuff.

Tiberius, also needs a lot of work and was quite messy.

(Due to the videos not uploading correctly, here are the links to the videos Tiberius and Rollin' -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QoMv-U5u5s&feature=youtu.be&list=PLiOd5HtT3teDSIHTmHshNBnKSu0GDiTbO - Tiberius -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa7WObMmb70&list=PLiOd5HtT3teDSIHTmHshNBnKSu0GDiTbO&index=21 - Rollin' -

Gospel Fills- R 'n' B drumming

Today we looked into R'n'B fills or "Gospel fills" as they're more commonly known as. basically they're a rendition of hands and feet displacements, combos of the bass drum and any other part of the drum kit (so rack toms, snare, cymbals, hats etc.) anything such as the sample below...

Below is a short clip of me trying out a gospel fill, it's not the best, but I guess we all have to start somewhere and it's definitely something I need to practise.

There are a mass variety of different variations of this type of fill, different ways of playing it, for example; how you can play the bass part, as there will be from singles up to quadruple hits from the bass drum you can rather use a double bass pedal to complete this or you can use whatever foot technique so like swivel technique, or heel and toe technique or the sliding technique.  

You can play various number of notes with rather hands or feet, so you could have a mix of 2's and 4's- 4 hits with hands and 2 hits with fee, or 4 hits with both, or you can play a mix of 3's and 2's - (this type of feel sounds like its going out of time but falls back in time near the end).

Re-evaluation of my own personal goals (mid way through)

Overall I feel that I've not only generally improved but that  I have gained more confidence over time,  I don't freeze when I go wrong, or speed up like I used to- I'm a bit more relaxed, my posture stays strong, I'm more in time, the tempo doesn't waver and if I go out of time I'm better at improvising myself back into time and getting the song back on track.

However, I do also feel though that some of the personal goals I set myself at the start have rather become later on projects to work on after I have figured out other bits of drumming, for example Latin drumming may be a little to far deep in unchartered waters for me to go travelling to yet, I still have quite a journey before I f can reach that properly and so on.

Other personal goals I feel I have made some progress on but maybe not enough as I should of over the time period it has been since the beginning so like other variety of genres and time signatures I have only really scratched the surface of what can be done and how they can be used effectively and I just overly feel I have more to learn and I could of learnt more in the allotted time.

I still feel my personal goals to be able to play a variety of genres comfortably and play odd time signatures with feels that fit and use them effectively. I still need to be more confident, and i still need a lot of work on my timing, transitions counting with a metronome and so on as my drumming is not as sharp as it could be and some of the fills i displace tend to be very weird at times- to the point that they fit in my head because I know the timing of them but others don't so it confuses them whilst playing and so on.

Other personal goals such as different rudiments, polyrhythms etc. I will focus on at a later date as since writing the previous entry i now feel that they are not as important at the moment as i believed them to once be.

Tiberius-Metal Grade 5

Tiberius the metal groove we learned last week, in which i need to practise starts on the tom and moves onto a quarter note groove, usually played quite slowish and heavy like.

Blues rock-Rollin'

Blues Rock-Rollin' is the grade five piece we were looking into today- I found it hard to pick up right off the spot, so its something i'll definitely have to go home and practise. This piece I especially will need to practise as its for an exam later on this year.

The first two pages (above) of just groove- no time signature changes at any point, however, loads of off-beats and open and closed hi-hat changes making remembering the beat difficult. Something that when you pick up and can remember is very easy. the occasional fill and not necessarily swing patterns but the hi-hat patterns do differ. The first page (top left)- There is a bracket around the second note of the first bar- indicating to only play it once the first time around. Further on down the same page there is a notation saying "To Coda" with a little symbol next to it- that indication marks to go to the coda location on the forth page after you've played the first page the second time around- basically just a short cut that saves writing lengthier amount of tablature. so that indicator, indicates to go to the indication. The pattern right at the bottom play as "R,L,L,R" on the hi-hats.

The next two pages (below) the third page is like the solo page, where for the first good few bars is a developed 16th note snare to tom pattern, then it changes to one par following bass and guitar then into another bar filled with whatever fill you want (so long as it fits).
The fourth page is back to groove, however, there are indicators to go back to the very first page- "D.C.al- Coda" the "C" stands for "cap" meaning to the top, so basically you just go back to the beginning of the song- skipping out any notes in brackets as they've already been played once etc.

Below is a development variation of the 16th note snare fill on page 3 something that also needs practise and developed in anyway.

Odd time Signatures

Lesson we looked into today was on the peculiar odd time signatures - Where we looked at 3/4, 5/4, 5/8, 6/4, 7/4, 7/8, 11/4 and 11/8. Obviously the top number being the amount of the bottom number and the bottom being the fraction so 5-11 over 4 is 5 quarter notes or 7 quarter noters and onto 11 quarter notes- the same applies to 8th notes- just 6 8th notes or 9 8th notes. So technically quarter note bars end up being longer over 8th note bars- this works in that 7/8 ends on count 4 (so just take off an "and") and then 7/4 would just be a bar of 4/4 and a bar of 3/4 put together or 2/4 and 5/4- 11/4 could be a mix of 6/4 and 5/4 or 4/4 and 7/4 or 4/4, 4/4 and 3/4 etc.

Below is the 5/8 Odd time signature-

Next up are the 7/4 and 7/8 odd time signatures plus fills.

11/4 and 11/8 with 3/4, 6/4 and 5/4 added in with fills.

Linear Drumming

Today we were looking at basic linear drumming, basically where none of the hits are played together (however there are some circumstances where this rule is broken).

This is one of the linear grooves we looked into- This is a linear hip hop beat. I feel linear drumming to be a little difficult and something I definitely need to practise at home as well as in college. Some beats were easier than others but others took a little longer to pick up and play confidently.
Due to Linear beats being the way they are, drum fills become quite peculiar if played after a linear beat- However, due to the linear beat usually being structured in 16th notes, its very easy to turn the beat into a fill just by moving the hits from your right hand (or left if left handed) to rather the toms or the snare drum.  (as an example, The Linear fill below).

Afterwards we looked at a more complicated Linear pattern, one from the Latin style of drumming, a beat called the Songo. However its not the full Songo, it was broken down a little to be made easier to learn.

The final Linear beat we looked at was called Louisiana Funk- more rudiment based, and the beat was also swung (kind of like horse galloping- two hits at a time, but the first hit is single- so du dada dada etc). Bass and snare hits were in their typical 1 and 3 for bass hits and 2 and 4 for snare, the pattern went L, LR, LR, LR, RL and so on the left hand played on the hi-hat and the right hand played on the ride cymbal- the bass fell on 1 and 3 with the left hand and right hand would hit the snare on 2 and 4 instead of the ride cymbal.

Looking into more technical Linear beats- we look at a Linear groove in half time- were instead of the snare/ Back beat falling on 2 and 4 it falls on 3 instead. There are also more ghost noted snare hits.