4 Ways to Practice Drumming without Drums

It is always exaggerated that you won’t progress until you practice it in a real thing. Although it is mostly true for most instruments, it is a different story for drums. But first, why should you practice without a drum kit, will that even help you improve? The answer is Yes, because you should practice keeping in mind that you do it to improve your muscle memory and your timing which are essential parts for any instrument. So how do you make sure that you practice something that is gonna help you apply it in the real kit. Here are some examples:

1. Pillow Practice for Your Hands

Start with a pillow because that is the most readily available practice pad you can find. Sticks are important in this practice because then you can play the exact finger and hand motions that you would perform when playing a drum set too. Another advantage of this is that since the pillows are soft, it doesn’t offer you much rebound and you end up strengthening your muscles doing the lifting. This will be difficult in the beginning, but that’s why you are practicing, to get better. As you adapt and return to your drum set with considerably more rebound, you’ll notice that you have developed speed in your playing. 

2. Air Drumming for Your Arms

Here is a strange one but one every one of us is familiar with. Everyone had that one air drumming moment that releases you from all the stress. However for a drummer, it can be more than just an imaginative play. You can practice your movement and practice being conscious about your limbs. You can choose to have sticks or can practice even without it. All you have to do is take a groove or a piece of sheet music, visualize your kit in front of you and play it as it is required. You will be surprised to see the awareness it needs to be perfectly executed. You have to make sure that your hands move and play the parts as it should be played, otherwise the whole point of practicing through air drumming is a waste. For example, if in a section you have to hit the cymbals, your arm has to reach approximately at the same point in air as if there was a cymbal.

3. Ground Drumming for Your Legs & Feet

Ground Drumming is for your legs and feet. One of the best ways to practice your feet is to get a foot pedal and arrange it in a way that the beater hits the wall. Since the wall provides no rebound, you will start feeling some pull in your thighs and it will strengthen your muscle. You can play along with a music piece and practice the bass drum part in a way that you build coordination along with some necessary muscle so that you can play it on a drum kit for a long period. You can also do this practice without any pedal and just tap the parts on the ground. Once you shift to a real drum set you will able to recognise the increase in speed and lack of fatigue in your playing.

4. Clap for Your Timing

Keeping rhythm is one the fundamental skill a drummer should have as they are the metronome for any band they are playing for. So, you would not want to let your bandmates down. So this is to improve your timing and one of the best ways is a clapping exercise. Download a metronome and and clap along with it. Make sure that your clap purely and completely synchronises with the beat. Once you can do that, here is one fun exercise. On your metronome there are different time signatures, make it 8/8. Now, let the first four beat be heard but mute the last four beat. Now clap along with it. Your aim is to be on time and that will be determined by your 9th clap which will come after your 8th clap which was muted. If it completely synchronises with the beat, you are on time but if it is ahead or behind, then you have to start over again. You can also vary your clapping exercise by leaving some claps in between beats and start being more adventurous with the metronome.

BlueTimbre is a unique Music Company that provides Music Education and  Recording Studio services. BlueTimbre also works with schools to provide end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. 

The BlueTimbre team comes with decades of cumulative experience in running Structured Businesses, Music Curriculum Development, Music Education and Performance.

Reference : https://www.kickstartyourdrumming.com/practice-drumming-without-drums/

How to Utilize things Around you to make yourself a Practice Pad

Drums and percussive instruments are the heartbeat of any song. It keeps the song alive and on time. Without it, the song might just fall apart. However, learning them come with a few challenges. The most common is that students learning drums don’t have a drum kit because of the money involved in buying the kit and also the space required to fit the whole set. So, in this blog post, we present you with some solutions to still practice your exercises even if you do not have a drum kit.

Before we proceed, as a student of drums, it is a must that you buy at least your drum sticks and a kick-drum pedal. Now, the most common solution is that you buy a practice pad and go through your exercises there, still, there are many instances where a student cannot afford the practice pads as well. We will tackle this by finding solutions to build your own practice pad with things you find around you. Let us discuss some of the ways that you can have your own practice pad.

·       Making a Practice Pads: If you are someone who likes to make their own things, then you can make  a practice pad out of plywood and gum rubber. There are many tutorials on how to build a practice pad out of these two. You can always take help of the internet and build your own practice pad which will cost you very less.

·       Using household Items as Practice Pads: If building a practice pad is not what you are looking for, you can use some of your household items as practice pads. What makes drums so accessible is that one of the fundamental techniques you have to learn as a beginner student is perfecting the art of stick control. So you can do your sticking exercise anywhere, like in a table or in a chair or in a pillow or a mouse pad.

·       Pillow for Stick Control Practice: As a beginning student, these are actually the perfect tools as you concentrate on polishing your technique rather than just making noise on the drum kit without any proper direction. Pillow is a great object to practice your stick control as it doesn’t offer you rebound. Thus you have to pick your stick up which strengthens your wrist movement which is a very important technique to have.

·       Experimentation: Second fundamental element you should improve is to understand different percussive sounds. Drum is not just about hitting your kit, it is about building rhythm with different percussive sounds. So experiment with the practice pads made out the household objects and experiment the different percussive sounds it produces. For eg; a table will make a different sound than the mouse pad or your chair. So experiment the sounds and practice it by starting with one object and once you are familiar with the sounds coming out of different object, practice your rudiments or sticking patterns over the set of different objects.

·       Practice Rhythm: Practice has to be done all the time if you are aspiring to be a professional drummer. Thus the best way to do that is to practice in your thighs which is ever present with you and you don’t have to drop a sweat over what should be your next practice pad.

·       Practice Kicks: The next thing to do is to practice your kicks. As it was mentioned before it is a must that you buy a kick-drum pedal if you are a sincere drum student. To practice your kicks, find a flat surface for the beater of your kick to hit. Make sure you don’t hit the wall directly as it will damage the wall, so use a rubber sheet on the wall.

Now that you know how to utilize things around you to practice your techniques, you should not have any excuses about not having a kit or a practice pad. Even though it doesn’t feel like a real drum kit, these exercises can teach you a lot of things from strengthening your technique and muscles to understanding different sounds and the ability to use them in different ways. Keep practicing and one day you can finally apply all that you have learnt on a drum-kit that is surely to come your way if you are interested about the instrument.

BlueTimbre is a unique Music Company that provides Music Education and  Recording Studio services. BlueTimbre also works with schools to provide end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. 

The BlueTimbre team comes with decades of cumulative experience in running Structured Businesses, Music Curriculum Development, Music Education and Performance.

5 Mistakes drummers make that can cause Injuries

No one should be hurting themselves in the name of practice. Yes, you should practice hard and practice daily but not at the expense of your health. A bad habit can be very bad for your own growth as a musician. So, let us talk about few mistakes that drummers make while practicing their instrument.

1. Incorrect Playing Posture

This is the most basic and the very fundamental thing that you are taught when you start your drum lessons. However, as sessions go by, it can be seen that a lot of students don’t pay attention to their posture. Sitting straight is very important as a bent back puts a lot of pressure on your spine. This can lead to back pain – something you don’t want to experience as an amateur musician. So, get your posture right and be conscious of holding the right posture for some time until it becomes second nature to you.

2. Incorrect Drumkit Setup:

As a drummer, you should know how your drum kit setup should be. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should be able reach all the parts of your drum kit. You should not be stretching or straining to reach any part of your kit. Extending your shoulders constantly can cause muscle strain and injury to the joints. You should feel relaxed when you are practicing on your drums and this will ensure you get the most out of your time and commitment to the practice sessions.

3. Rushing or Skipping your Warm-Up Exercises:

A lot of students rush through (or even skip) doing their warm-up exercises in class and at home during practice. This is really wrong because every exercise is fundamental and important to the core skills you are building as a drummer. The techniques you are taught are very important for your growth as a musician. If you rush through the exercises or even try playing the exercises in a higher tempo without understanding the technique and proper process of executing them, you will end up training the wrong muscles or even stress and injure them. Thus, take every exercise slow and only advance further once you have a comfortable command over the techniques you are trying to learn.

4. Wrong Drum Accessories:

It is very important that you have the essential materials to play drums. Different individual will have different needs according to the style of play. If you are someone who strikes the drum softly, then you should get lighter sticks. Similarly, if you are a hard hitter, then get a thicker set of sticks. The reason is that if you are a hard hitter and you are using a thinner stick, you would have to hit it even harder to get the sound that you could achieve with a thick stick  - instead it will put extra strain on your muscle and could lead to injury.

5. Wrong Techniques:

Yes, don’t stomp your pedal. Learn the right technique to play the pedals on the drums. Unnecessary stomping will only cause injury to your knee which is really avoidable if you use the right technique. Also, to play beats faster, you have to understand that you cannot achieve that speed with the hand, you have to use your wrist because it gives you more flexibility. Using your whole hand to play fast will stiffen and could injure your arm muscles. Using the wrist will ensure that you get the speed without putting too much pressure on your arm.

BlueTimbre is a unique Music Company that provides Music Education and  Recording Studio services. BlueTimbre also works with schools to provide end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. 

The BlueTimbre team comes with decades of cumulative experience in running Structured Businesses, Music Curriculum Development, Music Education and Performance.