Natalie: Hello music makers, welcome to the show. This is Gigajam the essential drum skills course part one, episode ten. I'm Natalie Barrass, this is Brian Greene and, we're pleased to say, aren't we, that if you've been following us every step of the way on this ten part course then by now you'll have learnt enough to take and hopefully pass your grade one drums exams. That's a bit good!
Brian: It's amazing really isn't it?
N: I can't believe it. I mean we've, we have actually fitted so much in into these last nine lessons
B: Yes
N: Give us a recap
B: Well absolutely I mean by the time you get to lesson ten where we're going to talk about the graded piece that you can study. Well you don't have to take your exam but you can if you choose to. The point of this lesson is to bring together all of the skills that you've learnt. So there's no point learning skills unless there's an application
N: Exactly
B: That's what we've been trying to do all along, so focusing less on the technique and more on the doing, so that people can, have actually got a skill that they can use. It's not to say that the technique is not important but in these very early stages incredibly important not to put hurdles in the way of beginners
N: Mmmhmm
B: So that they can get on and make music. So we're gonna make some music in this lesson, which is the culmination of the nine previous lessons, which I'll recap quickly just…
N: Yeah…
B: …so that…
N: …definitely
B: …you know the guys and gals out there realise just how much they've studied. Lesson one, building a rock groove, introducing quarter notes, three-way coordination and probably at the heart of it all understanding how to build up the parts that make up grooves
N: Yeah making your own music
B: Absolutely. Lesson two, which was building more rock grooves but introducing eighth notes, changing the bass drum patterns. Lesson three we brought in sixteenth notes…
N: Yeah
B: …so we now know quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes. Developing a single stroke roll so we end up with hand coordination
N: Mmmhmm
B: Which we've used in subsequent lessons and we're gonna use again today. Lesson four, where we took quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes, something you may remember that we, we juggled them up into reading exercises and then turn those into fills
N: Mmmhmm
B: And at this point we were making a big noise about the fact that drumming is made up of grooves and fills, so putting the two together
N: Yeah
B: Which is gonna be crucially important when we get onto our piece today. Lesson five, where then used our quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes again but in a different way, not just on the snare drum but on the hi-hat so that we were developing three-way coordination in our groove playing. Then lesson six, remember, we had that eighteen exercises that we introduced
N: Yeah
B: Because we've got the six different exercises from lessons one and two which were the bass drum and snare drum patterns, then all of that hi-hat stuff from lesson five, bring that together, suddenly you've got eighteen exercises
N: Breathe Brian, breathe
B: I know, there's just so much…
N: (Laughs)
B: …isn't there? So that was lesson six, and then lesson seven we took the single stroke roll idea, introduced our accents
N: Yes
B: And a little bit more technique with the tap strokes and ghost strokes, and we started to put that onto the kit, so developing more fluency and motion. And again we put the fill with grooves so we can link those together. Lesson eight we moved on and created all of those accents and then mixed those up again
N: Mmm
B: In the same kind of way that we did in lesson four with the mixing up of the different sub-divisions, we mixed up the different accents. So we're trying to create more interesting and more sophisticated rhythms and patterns, and being more musical
N: And we did, and we were
B: And we were, and we did. And then lesson nine where we introduced a more dynamic range to the kit by introducing the cymbal as another voice on the kit that we can use to make sound. So by this point you know a lot
N: Yeah definitely
B: You can play a lot and, what is crucially important now is that, you should have some fluency of playing so that when you play you can hold a beat together, you can move to fills, you can back out of those fills into grooves. You should be playing with music at home, putting on your favourite records, practising all those exercises from all those fills from lesson four and lesson seven and lesson eight, and building the pace and getting that stamina together. And now what we're going to do is put that together into a piece of music
N: Mmmhmm
B: Now this is the kind of music that you would get if you were, I don't know, playing in a session, I know it's a bit advanced concept for the beginners but I want to introduce it now because, you know, the beg…the Gigajamer's out there are actually pretty sophisticated players at this point, even the…
N: Absolutely! Sophisticated Gigajamer's that's what…
B: (Laughs)
N: …we like
B: It even at grade one they've got very useful tools that…
N: Yes
B: …they can use. So we've written pieces which is the same piece for the guitar, bass, keyboards and drums, so that we can all play together as a band. And this is a, the piece that we're going to introduce has got some very practical skills in it. So we're gonna look, we're gonna look at a piece of music. We've got the drum chart, and a drum chart is, as I was saying, the piece of music a drummer would be given when they're in a session, be it a live session or a recording session, or when they're rehearsing
N: Have you good an example of a drum chart that we can have a look at?
B: That's what, exactly what we're going to go through now
N: Ah, it's exactly like I read your mind Brian
B: Well, perhaps you read the script! So we've got, performing a song is what we're doing here today which is 'The First Time'
N: Mmmhmm
B: Which is aptly called. This is just a simple session tune, library style music, which would be used, you know, perhaps underneath the news and weather or something like that…
N: (Laughs)
B: …as it gets broadcast. But it's a nice little example, and what we've got to do today is understand the chart, the drum chart, and how it works
N: Mmmhmm
B: And the big, one of the big things is it's the geography, how do you get through it? And as an extra learning point today I want to look at how, how drum charts are written so, and introduce some, some new bits and pieces which, which our viewers haven't yet been introduced to. Okay, so in the lesson here it goes into great detail, all of the steps that you need to follow
N: Yeah
B: But what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk the viewers through by going straight through to the chart
N: Mmmhmm
B: And having a good look at it. So I'll introduce what you've got here. So you've got, over here this is who it's by, it's by Gigajam so we've written this tune
N: Yeah
B: And this is the title of the piece
N: Yes
B: Which, strangely enough, is important because if you do get into a situation where you're playing lots of tunes, say if you're in a brass band or something like that, quite often it they're playing a whole concert you'll have music after music after music
N: Mmmhmm
B: Someone calls a tune, you've got to find it, from the title obviously. So you need to know what the tune is. We've got a bit of information here, cos we're playing along with the Xtractor and quite often in a recording situation you'll have four clicks at the beginning. Now we've introduced this idea into our musical exercises right the way through
N: Right from the start actually…
B: Yeah
N: …yes
B: So our students will be familiar with the idea of working with a click, and that just means that everybody in the band all come in together at the same time. They know when the piece of music is going to be played
N: Mmmhmm
B: So when we start here there's a, there's a real load of information and the more familiar you become with charts the quicker you'll take this all in and just read it as one. But we need to step through it
N: I mean to me this looks very complex. I would sort of look at this and think 'Ah, it's so confusing, there's dots, lines, bit's here there and everywhere'. Do people kind of get that…
B: Mmm
N: …fear with proper…
B: Yeah, oh absolutely
N: …sort of sheet music?
B: Yeah I think they do get a bit scared of it, and the key thing is, is to develop your knowledge…
N: Yeah
B: …of it, and to develop your experience with it, the more, the more experience you have the more you realise actually it's straight forward. And the other thing is that you begin to realise, particularly on the drums, is that you can interpret, I mean we, we broach that subject a little bit where, on talking about cymbals in lesson nine
N: Yeah
B: The drummer does have a degree of interpretation that they can add to it, add to the music, so sometimes you don't always follow the music exactly as it's written. That's a skill that you develop over time, the great session players in this country, Ian Thomas and Ralph Salmins, they can look at a chart and they know exactly what it's saying straight away
N: Yeah?
B: Yeah, absolutely. So just, and the idea now is introducing charts to our students at this very earlier stage, is to enable them to get into that position. Because reading is only a facility, you know, nobody wants to hear the reading, all they want to hear is you play music
N: Mmmhmm
B: So your job as a drummer or as a guitarist is to play music so that when people are listening they're going 'Ah that's great, love it'. They don't care whether it's got this sign here, this sign there…
N: Yeah
B: …they just wanna hear the piece of music. So anything that you can do to make the reading just a way of helping you remember the music…
N: Mmm
B: …is the key
N: Okay, so how would we break this down then?
B: Great, lets do so. So the beginning, we've got our sign for common time here
N: Yeah, four…
B: Our C
N: …four
B: So we've got four beats in a bar. We've got crash cymbal on beat one, and then a straight forward eighth note groove. Now the students should be familiar with that by now
N: Yeah that looks familiar, what doesn't look familiar…
B: Mmm
N: …is that sort of black smudge that you've got there
B: Hey we talked abut this is lesson nine to some extent. Here's the example that we, that I was alluding to. Crash cymbal on the line above the hi-hat
N: Yeah
B: And then we've got a slur, now that's not technically correct, but I've, I've had this written for me in many situations, a good friend of mine musical director Alan Rogers would always right a slur for a crash cymbal because, you know, a crash cymbal doesn't last for half a beat it lasts however long it wants to, you know. It's still going now
N: It's not like on a piano where you can control it with the pedals
B: No, so this was Alan's way of saying to me 'Look, you know, that's a crash cymbal' so in a glance I know it's a crash cymbal
N: Yeah
B: So I'm not really searching for what line it's on, I can see that it's a crash cymbal. And when you've got lots of pieces of music and you're trying to read things by sight, when the copyist or the arranger is thoughtful enough to write for you in such a way that you can just read it straight away…
N: Mmm
B: …it's very helpful
N: Or you could draw it on yourself, couldn't you…
B: You can…
N: …I mean there's all sorts of things that you can do
B: Yeah, always have a, you know, when you're doing these sessions you should always have a pencil on you cos there are quite often changes. So there we go, there's our slur which indicates a crash cymbal here in this example
N: Mmm
B: So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six…
N: What…
B: …and then
N: That's interesting that the bars are numbered, is that…
B: Yes
N: …a particular reason behind that?
B: Well bars are numbered so that people can direct you to a particular bar and say 'Wasn't quite right, can we take it…
N: (Laughs)
B: …from bar five?'
N: Brian, your bar five wasn't so good, can you go back please…
B: It's…
N: …try it again
B: …happened before, regrettably, but you know it does happen, you know, so it helps people be able to communicate in a band situation. But what's incredibly important here is that, you know we've got six and twelve here as the bar numbers and at the beginning you might have noticed one and seven, so what we've really need to look at and although it's in the course notes much earlier…
N: Mmm
B: …than we've introduced it here, this is called a repeat sign. This opens the repeat
N: Ahhh
B: So this means these six bars here, these three and these three bars here are repeated, because at the end here we've got the close of the repeat section
N: Ahhh
B: So when you play this tune, you're going to play these three bars
N: Yeah
B: Then you're going to play these three bars, and when you get to here you'll kind of bounce back like a pin ball
N: (Laughs)
B: To here again, and you do it all again
N: Yeah
B: That means that you play that first verse twice. It means the arranger doesn't have to write out twelve bars he only has to write out six
N: Ah okay so first bar is it also seventh bar?
B: Correct
N: What are we gonna be doing after the break?
B: Well after the break we're going to be looking at the, some of the intensity that's in the music and how to practise it and then put the whole piece together
N: Okay so we'll be putting it all together after the break, join us then for part two
N: Hello, welcome back to part two. Now Brian before the break in part one…
B: Yeah
N: …we were going through 'The First Time'…
B: Yes
N: …for the first time
B: Absolutely
N: This drum chart that you've got here
B: Yes
N: We haven't got very far though, have we? We've only done the first two lines
B: Well we haven't in terms of getting through the chart and we're gonna rattle on through that in the second half now. But the point that we did in, that we have to go through in terms of what we achieved in part one is introduce the whole concept of charts, and that yes they can look a bit scary, even to people who have been studying through the course. When you're first presented with a chart it is a little bit scary but, you know, we've already started to look and breaking it down so it's gonna become a lot easier as we progress through this lesson, I mean very quickly. So we've already looked at the repeats at the beginning…
N: Okay, so…
B: …of the section
N: …I suppose effectively that's four lines there isn't it? As opposed to two
B: Yes, you could look at it that way, that's right. So we've got up to the end of verse one because we've played it twice through the repeat
N: Yeah
B: There are no other tricky cymbals really so we'll just rattle through. So we've got to bar six and then bar twelve, which goes straight on through the chorus. Cymbal crash here, you play for three bars of groove, and then you've got a fill. Now the students at home can read that fill, that's straight out of lesson four, you know, quarter note, quarter note, two eighths, two eighths, round the kit, straight forward fill
N: Yeah
B: Into your cymbal crashes which you'll be perfectly fluent at now that you've studied lesson nine
N: Absolutely
B: So we're, we're gonna work, we're using all of the skills that we've learnt through bars seventeen and eighteen, and then as we go down to the next line bar nineteen, then we've got the same fill again. Now I can tell you that in the music that fill has absolute relevance cos it fits with the phrase that's in the music. So the drummer will be punctuating what the other musicians are playing
N: Ahhh
B: So it's written very clearly so that is telling you play this. Okay, so we get to verse two and you will notice we've got a repeat sign again, so we don't need to go into great details here, we're just repeating the verse twice. In other words each of the verses is twelve bars long, a section of six bars repeated twice
N: Mmmhmm
B: So there's the opening repeat, where's the closing repeat
N: Go through it, look for that one
B: Yeah, it's actually at the top of the second page, here
N: Ah now hang on, if you printed this out…
B: Well it would…
N: …onto two pages
B: Yes
N: What happens when you've got three pages?
B: Oh well, you've got three pages you have to stick them together, and what we have on our music stand here cos I'm going to be reading this, is we're, I've got the pages printed out. So they're in a position which they're clear for me to read and you would stick them together so they don't fall off
N: Yeah
B: And if you had three pages you'd spread it onto your music stand
N: What if you'd got six pages or eight pages?
B: Yeah well sometimes you have to do page turns, sometimes if you're doing shows you need two music stands. Often I've used two music stands so my piece of music starts here and finishes here, but I haven't got any, there isn't a logical place where I can bring my left hand up and turn a page over. So, you know, you have to organise the position of your music according to the piece, according to the circumstances. Again, as I say I've got my piece of music here. I would use the music stand in front of the drum kit on rare occasions
N: Mmmhmm
B: It's ordinarily where I would be playing with a conductor, so the conductor would be over there, and I want to look up from my music at the conductor. In most gigging situations, recording situations, I'll have my music here
N: Yeah
B: And for camera angles and all sorts of reasons we've decided to go for there. But you know there are occasions where I've had to have my music stand here, because we're on a stage where the musical director is over there. So, you know, you have to find the most comfortable position for you according to the circumstances
N: Yeah, work with it, whatever the situation presents, adapt yourself to it
B: Correct, absolutely spot on. So, the end of the second verse is denoted by this repeat sign. So we've played here from bar twenty-one I think it is, yes it is, through to the end of bar thirty-two
N: Mmm
B: Brings us into our second chorus. Now our second chorus is identical in length to chorus one, but instead of those quite simple fills every fourth bar, we've got more complicated phrasing
N: Sixteenths
B: Sixteenth notes and its phrasing. You'll see here, we're dropping these notes down to the floor tom. Now this is a very important point to make here, if you get a chart and there's something a little tricky in it, practise it. Don't wait until you've played one and a half pages and then make a complete mess…
N: (Laughs)
B: …because you haven't thought about it. Now what I would do in these circumstances, I would look at that bar and say that's a little bit tricky. And for the students at home this is a brand new phrase. Now for them it's just a phrase of a number of ones that I've, I would've played before
N: Mmmhmm
B: So I would just look at that now, I'll play it, I'll just play it on the kit. I'll…
N: Yeah
B: …look at my music here. So I…
N: Tell us what it should sound like
B: Well I'm gonna play bar thirty-five and thirty-six, just see if I can get it right. So bars groove and then the phrase, I'll play it quite slowly. Three and, four and, one and, two and, three and, four and, one e and a, two e and a, three e and a, four e and a. So that's a phrase almost right out of lesson eight…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …so we're building on those skills there. But again those punctuations, those accents there are for a reason…
N: Yeah
B: …and you'll hear that when we play the music. Now if I was a student at home, I mean in a session now I'd be quite comfortable I know what I'm doing. If you're a student at home you might want to learn that phrase so when you come to play the whole piece you don't fall over at that bit
N: Mmm
B: That's the incredibly important thing to do. So what I often suggest to my students is let's just take those two bars, lets cycle it on the Xtractor round and round. In fact, let's just do it now
N: We can isolate a particular part and then just practise that with the Xtractor, yeah?
B: Yes precisely
N: Ahhh
B: So...
N: Magical
B: Magical…
N: (Laughs)
B: …here's the Xtractor here. So what I'm going to do, bar, end of bar thirty-seven I'd already set the loop up in the break, end of bar thirty-seven there, and then the beginning of the, of the section, I can move this cursor to beginning of bar thirty-five, so we've got a two bar loop. So I'll just get that in the right place
N: Yeah
B: Set the loop in the right place, and we'll hear it (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Right (Xtractor stops playing)
B: That's quite pacey
N: That is very fast
B: So when you're practising a section such as that, drop it down to a comfortable pace, and build it up. Let's play it at about ninety
N: Is it quite a pacey piece?
B: It's quite a…
N: Pacey piece?
B: It is a quite a pacey piece, so you're gonna have to develop your ability to play quickly and fluently at those tempos. But let's just play it… (Xtractor starts playing)
B: …at ninety. One, two, three and, four e….three, four, one, two, thee, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four (Xtractor stops playing)
B: So that's pretty comfortable…
N: Mmm
B: …no problem there. Let's rattle on through the chart if we may Natalie?
N: We may Brian
B: Thank you very much. So we're quite comfortable, we understand what we're doing, we've done the repeated verses, we've done the chorus, or played the chorus rather. We've got this phrase at bar thirty-five and thirty-six
N: Mmmhmm
B: Which we've just practised. We would practise the same thing at bar thirty-nine and forty cos there's another phrase
N: Ah okay
B: Okay, for the time constraints that we've got we'll move on, but the students will have to practise that in exactly the same way until they're comfortable
N: Mmmhmm
B: Then as you move through the lesson you see here this, let me just talk about this final section. At the end of our second chorus here
N: That's the end of bar forty
B: End of bar forty there's two lines, so there's no repeat
N: Hang on the repeat is the two dots, is it?
B: Correct, so you've got the two dots facing inwards or, or facing outwards in that direction or that direction…
N: Yeah
B: …according to whether it's the end repeat sign or the beginning repeat sign. And what we've got here is two, two lines, it's called a double bar line. Professional musicians refer to it as like tram lines which is effectively saying, look it's an end of a section…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …but carry straight on, okay? So we carry straight on through the chorus, into verse three, crash cymbal as usual straight out of the lesson nine. Through for our final six bars here, bar forty-one through to forty-six, then we finish the piece with a crash cymbal on beat one…
N: Mmmhmm
B: …and a bass drum on beat one, and that finishes the whole piece
N: Yeah
B: Okay? Then you breathe a huge sigh of relief
N: (Laughs)
B: Now it's written in such a way here as to say right you hit it and just let it sustain
N: Mmmhmm
B: Okay, so what I really should do is play the whole thing from top to bottom I guess
N: Mmmhmm, I want to hear this
B: Yes, me also
N: I want you to play this
B: Thank you very much
N: I want you to play it perfectly
B: Well I'll try my best
N: Good
B: So I'll put it up to, I'll put it up to fighting tempo
N: A hundred and twenty bpm
B: This is quite swift, and see if I can turn round in time and play the piece, I'll be reading from my music over here. So here we go, wish me luck
N: I wish you luck Brian
B: Thank you very much indeed, I'll just take out the backing drums there so not too loud (Xtractor starts playing)
B: Two, three, four. Three, four, fifth bar, sixth bar repeating to the beginning. Second bar, third bar, fourth, fifth B&
N: Sixth
B: Which is the twelfth. Chorus, fifteen, now the fill. One, two, three and, four and. Crash cymbal on my right hand side
N: Mmmhmm. Cos that was the closet one to you
B: Correct. Second verse, twenty-three, four, twenty-five, twenty-six and repeat back to twenty-one. Two, three, four, five, six, into the chorus. Thirty-four, thirty-five, here we go. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty now. Homeward straight
N: (Laughs)
B: Forty-three, keep…
N: You're doing well Brian
B: Keep your concentration up. Forty-five, forty-six, two, three, four (Xtractor stops playing)
B: And we're out
N: I wish I had canned applause and cheers and everything, and streamers going off, but I don't
B: There we go, that's what you'll be able to do when you finish your ten lessons, part one
N: Fantastic, so I've watched the lesson, I can take my grade
B: You can
N: Really?
B: Absolutely
N: What about practise?
B: Loads of it, you're always gonna have to practise, but don't make your practise a burden. Just enjoy yourself, have fun and progress at your rate
N: Okay, Brian thank you very much. It's been a very insightful ten lessons
B: Thank you very much for having me
N: No it's not a problem I've enjoyed it very much. If you've enjoyed it very much you need to practise, you need to take your grade and you need to keep listening to hear how you can get hold of your Gigajam course notes