Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites – Drumming – 3. Who's going to play that tricky snare drum part I guess its me! Part 1

DAVID LOCKERIDGE: The following tutorial lesson is actually going to be split over two videos. I just couldn't quite fit it all into one video. So here is the first video. I hope you enjoy.

Hey, everyone. I'm so excited to be back with another Art Bites video for The Arts Unit. You should really jump on and check all the resources out on this website. There's things on drama, things on dance, things on art, and of course, things on music.

Hey, I just want to give a quick shout out to all those amazing teachers that have sent feedback to me about my first two videos which have gone out over the last fortnight. You know, it's really encouraging to see the videos being used not only in the city but also in the country. Places like Young, Griffith, Grenfell, Warialda, and that little place called Mosman.

Anyway, so we've got a lot to cover today. So let's get on with it. You know, one of the most common things I hear when new music is handed out to a percussion section, both in schools and professionally, is the old saying, who's going to play that snare drum part? Now, usually in a section when new music is handed out, what happens is players usually move towards their strengths.

So some players go towards the mallet section, that was me when I was a kid, still what I'm like today. Some players go to the Percussion 2 section, things like triangles, tambourines, and cymbals, congas if you're lucky. And then there's that group of players that always beeline straight to the batterie section. So when I mean batterie, I mean things like bass drums, floor toms, and one of the most important instruments, the concert snare drum.

Today's video is a bit like a scenario. Picture this, you're in a percussion section, and you get handed a new piece of music, and you land the concert snare drum part. This video is going to help you in preparing it so you get all aspects of it correctly. We're going to look at things like a little bit history of the snare drum; how to set it up correctly; we're also going to look at things like sticking and how to nail it; how to scan the pot and find things that stick out that you might know so well; and also, how to practise things slowly.

So obviously, today's video is called 'Who's Going To Play That Snare Drum Part,' and it's going to be you, accurately. Just a few things you're going to need for this video. You're going to need some type of snare drum or a practise pad. I'm going to use both today. You're going to also need a set of sticks, really important. And the most important thing, one of these, the metronome. Could be one of these, or it could be on your phone. Doesn't really matter which one.

If you didn't manage to catch my video 'Warming Up Those Sticks,' you can go back there and check it out, because I talk a lot about the history of the concept of rudimentary drumming, which was based around the snare drum. But very quickly, the snare drum comes from an instrument called a tabor, which comes from the mediaeval period. Most of the times, these tabors had a single snare wire that went underneath it.

And they weren't too large. They didn't get large until about the 16th century. Over the next couple of years, the tabor developed out, got larger, until we got to the 20th century, and we ended up getting the earliest version of this kind of snare drum, the concert snare drum, or a snare drum used on a drum kit. There are some big differences between the original tabor from the mediaeval period and the snare drum as we know it today.

Let's check out all the parts of the drum. So here is the snare drum. We're just going to look very quickly at some of the parts. Obviously, it's got a head on the top and a head on the bottom. The bottom head we call the resonating head, because obviously vibrations, once they hit at the top, go through and they resonate against this.

Now, this thing here is called the snares. And this is that thing I told you about that the tabor had one of. You can see it's changed quite dramatically. And there's not really one. There's, you know, a good 30. Never counted them all.

They're attached to a strainer which looks like this. And that didn't really come around until the start of the 20th century. If you pull the strainer down, the snares come down, which means you're actually going to get a tom sound compared to a snare sound.

Another part of the drum is this metal tension rod. We call them lugs for short. Basically, if you turn them, it pulls the head down making it tighter, making it higher, and making a sharper sound.

Here are a few pointers in making sure your snare drum is set up correctly. The first thing is making sure you have the right stand, that it's not too low. If you just use a normal drum kit snare drum stand, it's going to be too low. You need to get one of these ones, which are a bit taller, you can see. You can also take the top of the snare drum stand out and put it in the base of a cymbal stand. That really helps as well.

The most important thing is that it's level, it's flat. Because if it's on an angle, it's quite hard. It forces you back like that. Or if it's too far forward, it forces you to do that, which you're not going to get too much accuracy.

Now that we have a flat snare drum surface, it's really important we talk about height. I think the best height is just below, or the rim is just below your belly button. In that case, your hands aren't too high, and your hands aren't too low.

One thing we tend to forget a little bit about in the percussion world is posture. And it's really important that we play the snare drum with good posture. So just a few things to focus on. Make sure you have evenly spaced feet. Line up a foot with each side of the drum, and that will give you a good gap.

Always play with a straight back. Never lean. Never do this, none of that. Straight spine, feet evenly spaced apart. Play the drum like that, and it's going to be a lot easier.

OK. Let's have a look at the excerpt. Back where the link was to open this video, there should be a PDF of the part. So download it so you've got it ready. And it should look like this. [snaps]

So I've got my part good to go. I'm just going to take you through basically what is the first thing that happens in my mind when I get handed a new piece of music, or a new snare part, especially. So the very first thing I always think about is I instantly gauge to see what is the most dominant type of note. So is it a quaver, is it a crotchet, is it semiquavers? That's the first thing I always look for. In this case, I can say there's lots of different uses of semiquavers and quavers.

The next thing I look at is things that stick out a little bit that I might not necessarily know or am not really familiar with. So in this case, I can see some flams. When scanning through a new piece of music and I see something like that, like a flam, something rudimentary, I always tend to go, well, I need to focus on that as a rudiment. Like I've explained in my previous two videos, it's really important to practise it as a rudiment.

So let's do that. Let's have a look at the single flam. OK. So let's think about it as two notes, the main note, the big note and that little tiny note. We're going to call that little tiny note two things. The first thing we're going to call it is a grace note.

So let's have a look at what a flam looks like in notation form. So let me play for you some flams. The most important thing we're going to do, again, when we do this is we're going to turn our metronome on. In this case, like in my previous videos, start at 60. I'm just going to play them. And watch. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1 2, 3, 4.

The most important thing you need to know about the flam and the character of the flam is actually to do with the choreography of the sticks. The flam, I think, is one of the hardest rudiments to get consistent, because you need to get that gap between the grace notes and the main notes really accurate. And it needs to be the same all the time.

I want you to try this for me. We're going to now change that name 'grace note,' and we're going to call it 'the tap.' So the first note is going to be the tap note. It's going to be our left hand. So have that stick slightly above the practise pad. Not up here, down here.

And what we're going to try to do is we're going to put our other stick all the way up here at the end of the backstroke. And what we're going to do is we're going to tap that stick, and it's going to snap back up like that. OK?

Let's try it now with the next note coming through, 2, 3, 4. Like that. Quite tricky. Let's try it with the other hand. 1, 2, 3, 4. So you can see it's quite tricky, trying to get that height and keeping the stick that's just come down from the backstroke to stay down there.

Now, that brings me to a special rule. When it gets to sticking a flam, whatever hand has just played will then play the tap or the grace note. So for example, if I started with the tap in my left hand, and my left hand came all the way back up to the backstroke, the right hand would do the next tap, because it's played down and it's the lower stick.

So if I alternate using my metronome, have a watch at how whatever hand comes down with the big note stays down for the tap. 4.

As we move a little bit faster, you can really start to see that choreography. So I'm going to go to 100. You should definitely go 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. Don't rush straight to it. Just watch how the choreography really influences. And 1, 2, 3, 4.

Hear the consistency of it? So now that we've reacquainted ourselves with the flam, let's get back to the excerpt and have a bit of a look at what type of note duration we're dealing with with the flam.

So here you can see its in quavers. So let's just play bars of quaver flams, 60 bpm, because that's really important, and subdividing is really important. So the quaver subdivision, 1, and 2, and 3, and flams. 1, and. Now, make sure that height of the tap, the grace note, is really low. Straight back with the backstroke.

And stop. Now, another thing I like to do when I have something like a rudimentary thing like the flam and I have to play in an excerpt, I kind of scan through to see if it changes at all. So if we have a bit of a look at here, we can see that we have to play the same flams at a really quiet dynamic. So we have to look at playing it at piano.

So let's try the same thing again, 60 BPM, just crotchets, and we're going to try to play it as a piano dynamic. So what you're trying to focus on is that height which is coming back with the backstroke is not coming back as far. 3, 4. It's tricky.

Let's try the same thing, piano, but in the quaver exercise. 3 and 4 and. Minimal backstroke. Hard, isn't it? But it's good. It's a great exercise. It's really going to support this excerpt.

The next thing I do when I get a new piece of music is I start working out some of the sticking. This is really important, because it's going to be one of the first things we start practicing slowly to get it really rhythmically accurate. When it comes to sticking we have two different approaches.

The first approach is called the lead hand approach. And basically, what that means is we lead rhythms, ultimately with our strong hand. So a little exercise to demonstrate the lead hand approach is if we have a look at this excerpt, basically every time we have a rest, instead of going to the other hand, so instead of going right, left, right, left, right, left, alternating, we always go back to our lead hand.

So, it would actually look like this. Right, left, right, right, left, right. 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 1 and 2, 3 and 4. Now there's lots of pros for this, because it means we get a great rhythmical stability. The lead hand is controlling the push and the drive, and it's always constant.

Now, the negative of that is that our left hand can get weak. You can work that by doing these exercises and leading with your left hand, which is your not dominant hand. OK, so natural or alternating sticking means pretty much what it sounds like. It doesn't change. It's always right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left.

So, if we do the same exercise, 1 and 2, 3 and 4, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left. The issues that come from this type of sticking is that it is really hard, especially for younger players, to get rhythmical stability. But in this case, we need to scan through this and look at what type of sticking we're going to do.

One of the most common rhythms that is played on a snare drum is this one. And you can see this is everywhere in this excerpt. So this is a rhythm where we can choose are we going to do the lead hand method of sticking, or are we going to do the alternating natural method? And after scanning through it, I've decided we're going to go with the leading hand for that stability.

So, I've now marked that sticking on my part. And it looks like this. So you can see that first rhythm, that da da-da da, 1 and-a 2, that rhythm has got a double right, which is our strong hand.

Let's try this as an exercise. So let's just do that form of sticking, that one rhythm, through a whole bar. 1-ee-and-a 2-ee-and-a 3-ee-and-a 4-ee-and-a, right, right, left, right, right, left, right, right, left, right, right, left, right, right, left, right, 3, 4, 1.

Now, the one thing I want to draw your attention to is, a little bit later in the excerpts we end up having some triplets. Now, what triplets do is they actually make you alternate. So if you have a look at this bar, you can see that the triplet then makes the rhythm we just worked on, the quaver semiquavers, start on the left hand.

So instead of it being left, left, right, left, we're now having to go alternate, left, right, left, right. Now, it's really important that you take this music, well, this excerpt, and go through and mark all those stickings. As you can see, I've done mine.

OK. Now that we've got all our sticking down, the next thing I always go to in my process is I think about what type of subdivisions am I going to use. What's the dominant note? And in this case, it kind of tosses and turns between semiquavers and quavers.

Now, the other thing I look at is obviously the tempo that we're trying to hit. In this case, the tempo of the piece should be 120 BPM. So, that's what we're aiming for. So, the first full exercise I do when I, after I've gone through the initial stages of sight reading it, is take it home, and I put on my metronome at half that speed. So 120, that's 60. And then I practise bars of the subdivision.

So, the first bar is going to be quavers, second bar is going to be semiquavers. 1, and 2, and 3, and semiquavers, 1-ee-and-a 2, 3, 4. Yeah, it's sitting quite comfortably. So then, what I do, I instantly jump to 120, and I want to see how it sits there. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, semiquavers.

So, I also look for little breaks in those subdivisions. So, an example of that is, kind of every second bar, instead of it being 4-ee-and-a, we end up just with the two semiquavers, quavers. 4-ee-and. Now, what you could do is you could do a bar of the semiquavers then a bar of the two semiquavers, quavers. 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Now, we also have triplets in there. So it's good to reacquaint ourselves with that. So let's go to 60. Our subdivision of the triplet is 1-and-a, 2-and-a, 3-and-a, 4-and-a, 1-and-a, 2-and-a.

Excellent. So you could do that, similar to the other exercises, in multiple stages. Tempo, push it 60, 70, 80. Because when we get to 120, that alternation starts to get quite tricky. Now we've got our subdivision down, let's start breaking it up as an excerpt.

So, the first thing I do is I split it into the two sections. It's quite easy to see where those sections are. So it's kind of got two dynamic reference points. The first part is forte, and the second part just after the repeat, which is important, is piano.

So, you need to make sure you also circle that repeat. That is really important. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on the sticking. I'm going to remove all the ornamentation. So what that means is I'm not going to play any of the flams. I'm just going to play the rhythms, and I'm going to focus on the subdivision I worked out and the sticking.

So, we're going to do the first four bars slow, 60 BPM, you guessed it right. A-1, 2, 3, 4, and-a-1, and-a-2, and 3, and 4-ee-and-a 1, and-a-2, and 3, and 4-ee-and, 1, and-a-2, and 3, and 4-ee-and-a 1, and-a-2, and 3, 4, and 1, and 2, and 3, and 4-ee-and-a 1, and-a-2, and 3, and 4-ee-and, 1, and-a-2 and 3, and 4-ee-and-a 1, and-a-2, and 3, 4 and-a.

Also make sure that you're following the dynamic reference. So forte, sticks are going to be up. We're trying to get that dynamic. OK. So now that we've actually got the sense of rhythm down, the sense of subdivision down, we need to add that ornamentation at the same tempo.

Now, one of the reasons I'm practicing this on a pad on top of my snare drum is so you can really focus on the height and the technical aspect of it. If you're going to play this on a normal snare drum without a practise pad, please turn the snares off. By turning it off, you're not getting a masked sound.

So, you know, when you listen to an electric guitar, [guitar riff] and when it's on clean or a clean sound, it's got that, [guitar riff] sound, and you can hear every note. But when they put distortion on, it's like, [guitar riff] yeah? So you can't really hear the clarity.

It's the same with the snares. Now it's time to add that ornamentation. So we can see the flams, remembering our rules, low grace note, low tap. So, let's have a look at the sticking first.

The flam is going to be, well, the grace note, the tap, the first one's going to be with the right. And the full note is going to come from the top from the left. So, let's try, very quick, alternating between those two stickings. Let's just try that first bar at 60 BPM.

And also, the other thing I should point out, even though there's accents written on the flams, those accents are going to happen because the technique pretty much pushes the accent. So you don't have to overplay it. It's already going to be quite punchy.

Now, one thing I like to do here when I'm starting to put the bars together is use the main type of subdivision. So, in this case, I want to be able to hear the semiquavers. Don't worry about the lead-in. 3, 4.

Now, one thing would be good to point out here is find commonality, find a connection. In this case, the only difference between that first bar and the second bar is that fourth beat. So instead of the full semiquavers, we now have 4-ee-and, so just to the quaver.

Let's do the same exercise 60 BPM, and we're going to join those two bars together. 1, 2, 3, 4. Let's try the same one again, except we're going to take it at 70. And let's see what happens now. Still got semiquavers in the click.

1, 2, 3, 4. Let's focus on the next two bars. Pretty much the same thing. The only difference is that beat three in the fourth bar is a crotchet. But even though it's a crotchet, we should still be thinking 3-ee-and-a.

So what we're going to do now is we're going to join all those four bars at 70 BPM. 1, 2, 3, 4. 3-ee-and-a 4. 3-ee-and-a 4 and-a.

Now, this is, again, the first thing you should be doing when you get home from that, well, maybe the next day, your first rehearsal, private practise back onto this excerpt. This is how you should be breaking it up. Because it's definitely going to help spot the areas that need work, but it's also going to start creating a sense of unity in the phrase.

Thanks so much, everyone. This is the end of part one of 'Who's Going To Play That Snare Drum Part.' Stay tuned for part two.