Month: July 2019

Categories
Drumming

New Groove Idea

A drummer’s must-have textbook, Future Sounds: A Book of Contemporary Drumset Concepts , mentions ‘Balancing the Two Sound Levels’ which emphasizes the importance of dynamic, and how accent and non-accent make a groove so different.

Shifting notes and accents of a groove is called permutation, which is a mathematical concept and is used to develop exercises in the book. When I read the book, I found it was a good way to create a new groove idea. So I started to use ‘permutation’ to compose groove for fun and tried to come up with some innovative licks.

Another method I used very often to be innovative is to pick up a new pair of drumsticks that you’ve never tried before, and make improvisation for fun.

Vic Firth SJM

I have a lot of pairs of drumsticks. And all of them have totally different length and diameter. (Most of them are Vic Firth 🙂

I love to try different sticks to improvise sometimes. I find my body is able to sense the change of what I’m holding and give me something in return. My body leads me to somewhere and I simply get new ideas unconsciously.

Remember to videotape yourself when you improvise, so that you can check your performance and make transcription later.

You’ll impress yourself! 🙂

Categories
Drumming

Why rudiment?

Is rudiment necessary !?

There’re tones of videos, books talking about how to practice rudiments or how to speed up your rudiments, like paradiddle.

Do you ever think about why we have to practice rudiments?

PAS Rudiments
PAS Rudiments

Especially, the rudiments we probably not use in our life or the speed we don’t have to play in our music style.

Rudiments are sound Patterns!

In my point of view, rudiments are developed by collecting all rhythms, tempos and beats together, like a big data nowadays. Then analyzing the data to pick up the most popular parts which people must know and spend time, such flam, drag, paradiddle, five-stroke roll …etc.

Rudiments are the collection of minimum element of sounds. Even a one-bar fill, it could be composed of several elements (rudiments). If we want to make the fill feel good, we gotta make every little part perfect, probably a flam-tap, flamacue …etc.

So, if you find your play always doesn’t feel the way as you expected, it’s probably the time to take a break and go back to practice rudiments again. We can control the little things! Rudiment is the little thing of playing drum.

How about downloading the PDF first. That’s the little thing you can do right now !😅😅https://www.pas.org/resources/rudiments

Categories
Coding

Programming Language

How many is enough?

I read an article about the ranking of the popular programming languages. It occurs to me that the ranking made me panic when I was a student. I was thinking if I gotta learn the more kinds of programming language, the better job I can get. But , how many is enough?

It’s about HOW, not WHAT!

As the way we use language in our life to communicate with people. Programming Language plays a role of communication between computer and engineer, software and hardware, device and device.

Precise expression matters!

If we want to make a restaurant reservation on the phone, speaking local language is much easier to make it. But if we got lost in a foreign country and try to ask for help, body language will be much useful!

programming languages
programming languages

There’s no ‘the MOST’ powerful programming language. It’s all about the product you or your company is going to develop. If the product is a web application provides with web service, Python, JavaScript and PHP could be ‘the Most’ powerful languages to you. If your company is an IC-Design house, Verilog should be the one.

Logic matters!

How many is enough? In my point of view, ONE is enough. If you are very good at ONE language, you’re definitely good at the logic of thinking and ‘speaking’ in the language. The logic is a fundamental to manipulate a language to do everything you want. Once you can ‘speak’ naturally in the language, you will be comfortable to learn another one.

In conclusion, If you want to speak like a native speaker, you gotta think like a native speaker first. Because the logic matters.

Categories
Coding Drumming Living

4 Stages to Greatness

I watched a Drumeo lesson features Dom Famularo. He mentioned 4 stages to be a great drummer.

The 4 stages are as below:

  1. Unconscious incompetent
  2. Conscious incompetent
  3. Conscious competent
  4. Unconscious competent

After watching the video, I was wondering which stage I am. Stage 1?, Stage3?. The interesting thing is that we may be on 4 stages at the same time, but on 4 different areas. I am a software engineer, programming is what I’m good at. So I could be on stage 3 or 4. As an electric bass player, I’m still a beginner , so I could be on stage 1 or 2.

It doesn’t matter which stage you are. The point is how to be CONSCIOUS, to be aware of things, to sense things when you learn.

Be a teacher and teach yourself!

Purchase an iPhone stand and start videotaping yourself. Check the video for thousand times as a Grammy judge, and criticize you in your play, including your gestures, body motion, balance, timing, dynamic, energy …etc. That will develop your sensibility.

You can also show the video to your friends, your teacher or band member, and ask for the TRUTH! The truth is always cruel, but it’s the only way to pull you out of the stage 1 (Unconscious incompetent). That will provide you with different point of views so that you can be a better teacher to teach yourself next time.

Try to be a great teacher, and teach you to be great!

Categories
Drumming

The REST

To hit or not to hit, that’s the REST!

Ed Soph, a great drummer and teacher, says that “Even time-keeping is produced by strokes and silence in time.”.

Sabain cymbal, Sonor drums, Evans drum head, shire sm57
To hit or not to hit, that’s the REST

Playing drum to keep time is drummer’s job. Not to play drums to keep time is drummer’s job as well.

When we practice rudiments, grooves and cool fills, we practice not only what to hit, where to hit and when to hit, but also be aware of what NOT to hit, where NOT to hit and when NOT to hit.

Practice ‘Not to hit’

Practicing ‘Not to hit’ means you have to build up the internal time, so that we are able to count 1, 2, 3, 4 … evenly and consistently.

There’s a way I use often and it’s easy to practice everywhere:

To count loudly along with metronome for a while, and then turning down the volume of your metronome slowly until you hear nothing, and turning the volume back in serval beats. Check if you’re still on the track and match the beat of the metronome. You can also use a song or play-along track instead. Remember NOT to chase the beep sound of the metronome. Try to imagine the beep sound is produced from you.

The REST is a part of music.

Beginners hates REST. Waiting and doing nothing is so boring! REST is a part of music, and we play music, so we MUST ‘play’ REST.

No matter what kind of instrument you play. You are a musician, you play music, you gotta love REST!😊