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6/6/2020 9 Drumming Tips from the Pros | Sweetwater
Play with Other Musicians as Often as You

Can

Jordan West (Kailee Morgue, independent)
“While practicing techniques and patterns on your own is important,
learning to listen and lock in with other musicians is essential. Play
with other people whenever you can. That includes playing along
with records. Find some that inspire or challenge you and go for it.
When I first started drums, I took every James Brown record I could
find and just played through them all. I learned so much about
groove and focus just by playing along with Clyde Stubblefield
(Brown’s drummer) and trying to match his feel. Playing with others
or records is also a great thing to do if you’re stuck in a rut — it helps
open up your ears and give you new ideas to try.”

Should you ever find yourself burned-out or stalled in your growth, Jordan recommends a change of
scenery. Sit in on a pickup gig, start a cover band, or learn a new album from top to bottom. Getting out
of your comfort zone by learning new styles and techniques and playing with new musicians can stretch
those musical muscles and help you discover a new love behind the kit.

Build Your Drumming Vocabulary

Mike Johnston (MikesLessons.com)
“I’m thinking of these [patterns] as little letters that I’m building up my vocabulary with. So maybe letter
A would be six notes long and something like, ‘kick, kick, right, LEFT, right, left.’ And letter B might be
something like ‘kick, right, LEFT, kick, right, LEFT,’ where I’m popping the left and ghosting the right.
Once you master those two letters, A and B, you can start putting them together. If it takes four letters
to make a one-measure fill, I’ll probably go, ‘AABA.'”
Rudiments form the building blocks of common musical phrases and provide a frame of reference for
communicating ideas with other drummers. But what about patterns that fall outside of the scope of
rudiments? For these, Mike recommends “glossarizing” your own
licks and fills and using them to build more and more complex
musical sentences. Begin to take inventory of your most used
musical patterns, and before long, you’ll be conjugating at a
graduate level.

Learn to Read Music

Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty, Eric
Clapton)
“There’s some people that feel
they don’t have to learn to read
music. And then there’s other people that think that reading music is
everything. And that’s not it either. There’s a happy medium. There’s
playing from the heart, which is good — it’s what you do if you don’t
read music. And then there’s playing from the head. Neither of
which on their own are good. It’s good to expand your musical ideas
in other directions.”
Sweetwater is fortunate to regularly host some of the industry’s top
talent under our roof. At GearFest 2018, Steve Ferrone led a drum workshop and kindly answered some
questions from drummers out in the crowd. One of his more surprising answers was about the
importance of reading music, a skill that Ferrone, king of the groove and top-40 golden ticket, picked up
at the age of 21 when he returned to school. Learning to read music will not only make you more
valuable as a drummer but will also open up a whole new world of inspiration and music appreciation.

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