Natalie: Hiya, welcome to the essential drum skills course, not the 'I might need drum skills course' or the 'possibly require drum skills course' but the essential drum skills course. It is episode nine, my name is Natalie Barrass, and this is our Gigajam guru Mr Greene. Brian, how are you today?
Brian: I'm very well thank you. And you Natalie?
N: I, I'm very well, yes
B: Excellent
N: Tell me, what are our learning objectives for today?
B: Great lesson nine today, and we've come a very, very long way
N: We have
B: And we've been spending a lot of time on the drums, snare drum, bass drum
N: I was gonna say, this being the drumming module, yes
B: Yes, ah, yes okay. So we've been…
N: (Laughs)
B: …doing all the hitty things on the drums so …
N: Mmmhmm
B: …on bass drum, snare drum, on all the toms. And we have played the hi-hat cymbals as part of our groove playing, but now what we're going to do is introduce the crash symbol
N: Ah okay I see what you mean, yes
B: Okay? So we're going to introduce the cymbals for the first time in the course and, as we said in our introductory lesson, I've got two crash cymbals here, one on either side of the kit. And sort of the way we move and develop our fluency on either side of the kit will be explained through the lesson
N: Mmmhmm
B: So specifically first learning outcome is we're going to introduce the crash cymbal. Then we're going to look at introducing the crash cymbal in our groove playing
N: Right
B: And also introduce the crash cymbal when used as part of a fill. Okay? So lets get straight on to it and, I think we've, you know we'll take the opportunity of looking at a just a couple of technical areas. You know I don't like to get too engrossed in the technical side of it, but I want to have a look at how you hit the crash cymbal. I'm gonna use this one on my left-hand side here
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now most of the time for a right-handed drummer you're going to be playing crash cymbals with the hand that you're playing your ride patterns on. And just to, just to repeat the ride patterns are the, are the quarter note, eighth notes and sixteenth note ostenatos
N: Mmmhmm
B: Is a new word for you
N: Ostenato
B: Yeah repetitive patterns, so those, those repetitive patterns
N: Mmmhmm. Are those repetitive patterns always on the hi-hat?
B: Can be on the ride cymbal as well
N: Right
B: But we get onto that a little bit later, I mean this is completely transferable from the hi-hat to the ride cymbal but, so the patterns that you ordinarily play here we use that hand to come out of the groove and to play the ri…and to play the crash cymbal
N: Mmmhmm
B: So we're gonna focus on the ride hand playing the crash cymbal for the moment, or the lead hand in my particular case
N: Yeah
B: So what I wan…just wanna talk about is, is how you hit a crash cymbal and there are so many ways. But perhaps we could just explore the sounds and discuss briefly, you know, some of the techniques and the results that you get
N: Okay
B: So I'm just gonna play this cymbal in a number of different ways and talk about how I'm striking it. Generally, it's generally accepted that you would crash a cymbal by playing on top here
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now, as we've discussed earlier, we've got the bead of the stick at the very, very tip, and then we've got the shoulder of the stick. Now, if you play with the bead for instance you get quite a gentle but quite a piercing definite sound. Okay, so lots of attack in that 'te'…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …in that sound. But not all that crashy
N: No
B: So if you want to get a real crash sound you generally would use the shoulder of the stick and probably, you can see that this, you know with the combination of the stick and the natural bend of the cymbal, that there's a kind of optimum place to catch the cymbal here. So around there gets a very broad sound
N: Right so that's crashing down, I mean the stick is sort of flat as it can be to the cymbal which has got the slight curve in it
B: Yeah pretty flat, pretty flat there so….and you get more of the cymbal sound in that way. Now sometimes, you know, drummers will use different actions to try and create a different kind of friction and deflection off the cymbal which gives, is broadly the same sound but in terms of the movement and the, and the sort of dynamic of the piece, it may add something to it. So a kind of swishy motion sometimes or a cross
N: Mmmhmm
B: And that just has slightly less impact because it's more of a deflection than it is a down onto the cymbal
N: Mmmhmm
B: It's generally accepted that what you don't do is hit the cymbal straight on like so
N: What would happen then?
B: Well what happens here is, if we get a little bit technical, is that the cymbal is actually attached to your, your standard cymbal stand if I can just remove this temporarily here, by this middle section
N: Mmmhmm
B: So it's actually, it fits on. Now if you hit it here what's going to happen is that the ring in the middle which allows us, the cymbal to be placed on the cymbal stand is going to be quite forcibly pushed against there
N: Yeah
B: Now that's going to create splitting and cracking
N: Mmmhmm
B: So basically it's just not terribly good for your cymbal. Cymbals, normally these days are made extremely well and you should get very few cracks, but if you are, if you are going to, it's almost an abuse of the cymbal let's say in that sense
N: Mmmhmm
B: If you're going to hit it like that you're going to very…you're going to increase the chances that, that you'll get some damage on the cymbal there. And you may even split the cymbal here with excessive use
N: Really?
B: By hitting flat onto this edge here, yes
N: How often do you have to replace cymbals?
B: Well when I was doing a show in the West End I replaced a splash cymbal, which is a small cymbal, about six times in six months
N: (Laughs)
B: But that's just because we did a lot of shows and there was a lot of playing and it was quite loud. That's, you know, unusual, that was a lot of use
N: Right
B: But in general terms, I mean I've had these from Zildjian for a good couple of years and there's nothing wrong with these
N: Okay so what makes the difference you know, between the two cymbals that you've got there on the kit?
B: Well, thickness will have an effect on the sound of the cymbal and make it heavier and…
N: Right
B: …a deeper sound. What I've got here is two relatively thin cymbals because of the circumstances in a TV studio bouncing around the sound. So I've got a fifteen inch cym…crash cymbal here and a fourteen inch that, you'll just hear the slight difference in tone. Going up in pitch there
N: Yeah
B: If you were gonna be playing big stadiums with Metalicca or somebody like that you'd use weightier cymbals, heavier cymbals. If you were playing Jazz you'd use perhaps a mixture of different colours, so have darker sounding cymbals, you know mixtures of thicker and bigger cymbals and then some small ones for some higher pitched sounds for dynamic range
N: Mmm I like it, very variable then
B: Yeah very variable. Standard crash cymbal somewhere between fourteen and sixteen inches, I've got at the smaller end here again, as I said, because of the sound that we're trying to generate
N: Mmmhmm
B: What I'd, what I'd like to go on now that we've just discussed how to hit and how not to hit cymbals, and perhaps the colours that you can get from them, let's talk about how we now integrate crash cymbals into our playing. Difficult to know when to bring this in because there's a little bit of coordination and there's a little bit of understanding of when you hit a crash cymbal. It has a lovely effect of punctuating and accenting through its sound, and cymbals are used a lot in playing so they're incredibly important
N: Mmmhmm
B: And when I was putting the course together I was really struggling at first as to where this comes into the overall course structure, and I think we've roughly got it in the right place. So what I want to talk about now is where we see the cymbal denoted on the music and how we bring it into groove playing from our hi-hat, cos you know I was talking earlier about we normally play the cymbals coming from our right hand ostenatos played with the right hand
N: Yes
B: I just wanna have a quick look at, at the computer here because I've got an example here in exercise one of how a crash cymbal is quite often denoted. When we get into lesson ten there's another way it's written as well to show the contrast and people do write in different ways. So it's good to have an idea of you know what are the, what are the differences that people use sometimes
N: Alright so there's not a standard notation?
B: No not really, I mean there are pe…you know when, when you get into the professional world you'll see that people use slightly different things where they'll sort of take the protocol of how to write, and then they'll sort of try and make it clearer. Cos quite often when you're reading music in a show you need something that's absolutely going to hit you that you know exactly what it is. Here we have how it would be written in standard notation. Now…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …it's quite difficult to see, you've got your hi-hat here where you can see the cross quite clearly
N: Yeah
B: On top of the bar…
N: Yes
B: …on top of the stave
N: Literally just sitting on the top of the, the top line
B: That's right, so it's sitting on the top line, now we're familiar with that. Now if we look at the first note though you can see now that it's actually just a little bit higher
N: Mmmhmm
B: And there's a cross through it, turning it into what looks more like a star than just a cross
N: Mmmhmm
B: And that's because it's on the next line up
N: Mmm
B: It's on the next line up and that's where cymbals are normally written
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now quite often what would happen if it was a ride cymbal the copyist would write RC, ride cymbal or top cymbal, there's lots of variations of that
N: Okay
B: But crash cymbal normally just on the line above. Okay, so what we're, what I'd like to do is just have a look at this first exercise and then demonstrate how it's played, some of the movement, and then how we should get it into our playing. Okay, so what we're going to do here is you can see we're playing the, the crash on the first beat of the bar
N: Yes
B: Then we're going down to our hi-hat
N: On eighth notes
B: On eighth notes, so it's, it's part of an eight note ride line. So it's going to go something like this, you're gonna hit the crash cymbal on one, and the down to and, two and, three and, four and
N: Mmmhmm
B: So it's one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and. Now quite a simple, quite a simple short movement. What I'd like to do now is move that along into how that gets into the groove by adding the bass drum and snare drum
N: Mmmhmm
B: And the bass drum and snare drum literally just come into place. So you'll have the bass drum underneath it and then the snare drum adding in
N: Mmmhmm
B: What I'm going to do is the absolute typical way that I've been approaching building patterns. I'll start with that exercise one effectively, and then building my bass drum pattern, then building my snare drum pattern, so by the end of the first part of this lesson we'll be able to play the hi-hat in a groove
N: I like it
B: Yes B&
N: (Laughs)
B: Here we go (Xtractor starts playing)
B: One and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two. Bass drum in, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three…four and. Then the snare drum on two and four, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and…and, two and, three and, four and. And we have our groove
N: Lovely (Xtractor stops playing)
N: We have the groove, join us back for part two for more groove
N: Hello, welcome back to part two of episode nine. Brian, we're getting our groove on here, aren't we?
B: We are. Before the, the end of the first half we looked at putting a crash cymbal into a groove, we talked about cymbals in general. But what I'd like to do now is sort of move, move a pace with some of the…
N: Move the….
B: …exercises
N: …groove?
B: Absolutely move on with the lesson, so we've got the crash cymbal coming in with the groove, which was exercise two in the lesson. I'd now like to move on if I may, into thinking about the cymbal and how it's played when you're playing a fill, and the skills you need to have to do that
N: Mmmhmm
B: So what I'm going to do is build this up as usual, but I'm gong to start playing on the from the snare drum to the crash cymbal for exercise three
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now what I'm also going to tie in here is the skills that we learnt in lessons four and seven and eight, where we're, we were developing the control of the snare drum and the single strokes. And particularly we talked about this in lesson seven, how we generated accents, not just by hitting the drum harder, preferably, not really always hitting the drum harder, but by using height to create our accent
N: Yes
B: And how we kept those other notes nice and quiet
N: The ghost notes
B: The ghost notes, very good. So we didn't have to get extraordinarily loud and can control the dynamics. And we're gonna use that same skill now for playing the crash cymbal. So if, I'll just swivel round here, so I'm gonna use this cymbal here and we're going to play from the snare drum to the crash cymbal. So what I'm going to do now is play a single stroke roll but incorporating the crash cymbal on beat one. Now remember, when I did the grooves we were using the crash cymbal on beat one again
N: Mmmhmm
B: And that will all become clear by the time we get to the end of the lesson
N: Good
B: Good. So, what we need to navigate here is the ability to play up here, which is, you know, quite a distance there, from here yet not get into a bit of a sprawling mess
N: Mmm
B: And this is where control and accuracy, and again just referring back to lesson seven I did talk about trying to hit the centre of the drums, so we're going to be trying to hit the same position on the crash cymbal each time with just a gentle movement up there. So we've got low notes here, and then one of our notes is going to come up, crash the cymbal and then come back down again
N: Mmmhmm
B: So I'm going to play these very, very slowly. So I'm gonna start with my hand in the air here, and I'm going to crash the cymbal on one and then we're going to carry the roll on. Now one extra piece of information, I don't want to overburden you, but basically if we're playing a single stroke roll the crash cymbal becomes part of that single stroke roll. So effectively it becomes one e and a. If we think about the sticking of course, I'll do that again this time counting out the sticking, it becomes right, left, right, left. So the students quite often think it's an extra note
N: It's not
B: It's not its part of the roll and that's incredibly important in the…
N: It's the first…
B: …same way
N: …yeah
B: It's the first note very good
N: And if you're left handed, obviously, left first
B: You're starting on the left hand, yeah. Okay so let's, I'll run through the exercise on my own then I'll run it with the computer to try and help me play in time
N: (Laughs)
B: Okay so nice and slowly, I'll try not to play this too loudly so you can hear my counting. So here we go, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. So you've got to keep the notes quite low here, so you're gonna have to practice your tap strokes. And I've found over, over years of practising here, that you literally have to watch what you're doing. If you're listening for it you get distracted sometimes and you don't listen hard enough and before you know it you're playing up here. And, you know, it's best to avoid that
N: Okay, so keep it low, low to the ground
B: Low to the ground of the, of the…
N: Skin
B: …snare drum, yeah
N: (Laughs)
B: So lets get exercise three up and play along with that and show, and show how the repetition should be. Also show how it becomes a little bit more interesting when you're, again when you're playing along with your band track
N: Mmmhmm
B: And then what we'll do is we'll migrate into the next exercise which is a very logical progression using the bass drum as well. Okay, but just for the moment let's have a look at this exercise. It's come up at eighty beats per minute so lets just slow that down, so again I don't embarrass myself unduly
N: No, no keep it simple to start with and then we can always work up
B: That's a better way of putting it
N: (Laughs)
B: Here we go. I'm going to take the backing track, the drums out here so…
N: Why are you doing that?
B: Just get a bit loud, so you can hear what I'm doing here (Xtractor starts playing)
B: E and…three e and a, four e and a….and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a….one e and a, two e and a, three e, so keeping the sticks nice and low. Just making the movement that you need to, to get up to that cymbal. Very small wrist motions
N: Concentrating on keeping it low, those ghost notes
B: Yes, especially the note straight after the cymbal crash, that's the hardest one. And on the 'and' of one, that's that hardest to keep quiet. Okay
N: That's an interesting (Xtractor stops playing)
N: That's an interesting point cos obviously you're having to hit the cymbal harder than you're hitting the snare drum, but you don't want to continue that, you know, hard with the right hand, not hard with the left hand
B: Yes, hard with the left hand, soft with the le… B&
N: Hard with the right
B: Hand, soft with the left, and then after you've hit a hard stroke to then make this one play softly is quite a lot of control…
N: Yeah
B: …it's gonna take some, you know, real concentration and some practise on that. So once you've got that together you can of course speed it up, play round and round and round, get good at it, really listen, use your eyes as well, so you're using all of the senses. The sensation of the feel that you're using very small tap strokes, and what the, what this movement feels like moving up to the cymbal. Then also you're looking at what you're doing so you're looking at your motions making sure they're not jerky, you're not going crash e and a, de, de, de, sharp motions. You need some nice and relaxed movement there
N: Yeah
B: And then so you're watching your motions and then also hearing the sound, listen, listening is, is very different from just hearing. Listening is really concentrating for the sound that you've got. So you, you're listening for all the slight imperfections that are in there
N: Mmmhmm
B: And then just try, try to lo…to, to be aware of them so that you can focus on adjusting and getting more control, getting your relaxation in. Okay so enough about that, same exercise but with a subtle difference is exercise four
N: Right
B: Cos what we're going to do now is we're going to put the bass drum on the first beat
N: Mmmhmm
B: Underneath the crash cymbal, as it is, in the groove. Okay? So what it does it gives it a padding effect. The cymbal becomes less harsh and it, and you, you have this sort of mixture of sounds
N: Mmmhmm
B: Very commonly used in contemporary drumming
N: Can I ask you a question?
B: Please do
N: The notation, if you have a look on the screen there
B: Yeah
N: As we spoke about in part one
B: Yes
N: There's our crash cymbal
B: Yes
N: What's the difference between that crash cymbal, which you're playing on the left?
B: Yeah
N: And the crash cymbal that we've got on the right?
B: No difference at all. As a drummer you make your choice as to which crash cymbal is, is most convenient to play depending where you are on the kit. And that's going to become really important when we go over to our fifth and final exercise, when we move round the kit, because I will probably predominantly play this crash cymbal because it's closer to me when I finish my fill
N: Okay, so they don't look any different
B: No different
N: In the musical notation
B: With the drummer's job with musical notation, you have to do a lot of interpreting. So you're taking raw data and saying 'right when I play that I'm gonna be here, so I'm gonna hit this cymbal'. So it's up to the drummer, it's not a pitch of note so you can use any crash cymbal, the one that you thinks most comfortable to play
N: Even though they do have slightly different sounds
B: Absolutely, won't have any effect. Great, let's play this exercise now. Again I'm just gonna drop it down to sixty. I'll just run it a couple of times, I'll probably bring the bass in after a couple of run throughs
N: Yeah, as we do, build it up (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Absolutely, so one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a, one e and. Okay, I'm gonna bring the bass drum in now
N: Mmmhmm
B: Two, three, four, one, two, three, really try'na make sure that you play the cymbal and bass drum at exactly the same time. Two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And you'll notice that the exercise I've written there (Xtractor stops playing)
B: Is an accent, so it's the 'daahh' so I'm accenting, so it's got a very musical reason for being there, the crash cymbals got a very musical reason
N: No I could really, when you said about the bass drum softening the sound there
B: Great
N: It really does take away that edge that you've got from the crash
B: So it makes it less harsh and integrates it into the whole pattern. So what I want to finish off with now is playing a fill, incorporating it with a groove, and playing a crash symbol
N: Cor, you're getting very good…
B: It's a big…
N: …today
B: …job. So what we've got is our exercise five, we've got here the crash cymbal as part of our groove
N: Yes
B: Then we're gonna play a fill. Now this is where it's really interesting, the crash is at the end of the fill, in essence it's at the beginning of the groove. That's why it was so important to have a look at crash cymbals from grooves at the very, very beginning of the lesson
N: Okay I understand
B: So it's a bar of groove with a crash cymbal at the front, and then a sixteenth note fill around the kit. As I talked about earlier I'm going to probably hit this crash cymbal cos it's more convenient and it means I won't have to turn my body round
N: Mmmhmm
B: To crash the cymbal on my left hand side. You'll watch this, let me run through it quickly
N: Okay, so the crash cymbal is giving the effect of finishing off the fill
B: Yeah… (Xtractor starts playing)
B: …so the beginning of the groove at the end of the fill. Here we go, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two , three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One more?
N: Yeah
B: One, two, three, four
N: Okay, so the… (Xtractor stops playing)
N: …yes, crash cymbal finishing off the fill there. Unfortunately we have to finish off the episode now. Join us again for our last one which is episode ten. See you next time