Biggest Mistakes That Young Drummers Make

[brandondrury]

DO NOT get a double bass pedal before you have developed your primary foot's skills

Great advice!

Hearing protection is essential.

Great advice for a couple of reasons. One, it protects your hearing. Two, you practice longer when you aren't in pain. Loud stuff makes you tired.

Steadiness/consistency is more important than speed.

"Fast music" represents about .5% of all music sold. I know I'd work on being the world's best regular tempo drummer so maybe I could actually find work.

Brandon

[thejusticelair]

to what brandon said earlier about electronic drums not being hip or whatever, when im doing sound at a show i love electronic drums cause it easier for monitoring and makes the mix easy...
but as a drummer i absolutely loathe them.. you are so limited with what you can do! you have 2 zones on each pad so you get either a rimshot or a regular strike... forget ghost notes and forget crashing on your ride cause you cant really do it anymore. plus the whole setup sucks cause everything is so damn close together. theres no rims to play and the surface is nothing like playing real drumheads. the cymbals sound like shit compared to my a and k customs i have yet to meet a drummer who likes electric drums better than acoustic. for sound reasons it makes sense to use them, but as a drummer i cant play the same way with them and my performance suffers. so for rock/metal shows you really just need a bigger room and an engineer who knows what hes doing... there is no replacement for real drums

[room temp]

Not in any particular order:#1-NOT learning how to play to a click. B-Using headphones while playing to your fave tunes( It's fun for a while but a crutch nontheless. #3/infinity, Refusing to listen to music outside of your "style". There's a huge world of tasty big band,reggae, polka etc. that has some wackass time sig's to explore.Look what happened when Stewie Copeland took us on that crazy ride ,what with the 1 on the 4 and 2 of the and uh. Magic. Ever heard any of that faster music from India? Trippin. And as so many have said before and can't be stressed enough, wearing ear protection. Ramble over. room temp.

[Innovine]

Originally Posted by comwiz

If you can't play properly with one foot, what makes you think you can do it with two?

You learned to play with one stick, before you learned to play with two?

[matainais]

I mostly work live and get to work with tons of "new" bands, and i totally agree with Brandon about the drummers who can keep theyr cymbals under control.
Also - many young drummers think that blastbeats are going to make them cool (mostly metal here). Heck - even the most crazy metalheads have been complaining about those guys getting boring with theyr monotone blasting...

By the way - while we are on the drum topic, has anyone heard of any means to make the cymbals quieter? Like some material you could stick to them, that would lover the volume while not destroying the sound? I am asking this cause i work with one band who has been asking me for a solution for a while now. Theyr rehearsal room is very nice, even has some acoustic treatment and bass traps and they do try to keep the practice volume reasonably low. Yet - the cymbals are too loud for them there, no matter how hard the drummer tries to be careful with them. The place is just too small

[maschneid]

+1 Hearing Protection (If it's too loud your too old motto doesn't apply anymore, or I'm too old one of the two)

+1 Double Pedal, ( I was a victim of this, but ditched it after about a year until I could play solid!, then reinstalled it.)

+1 Click Track (also a victim here, at first I felt restricted now I feel free with a click! it opens everything up, cause you always know whats coming around the bend!)

+1 on Control of Cymbals, Technique and Finesse period! (I used to just try and destroy everything, now I play for the situation in front of me, and less $$$ tied up in replacing sticks, heads, cymbals, and so on.)

+1 on broadening your musical horizons ( I used just like hard rock, and metal, but once I actually learned my craft, and pursued it the creativity level just jumps through the roof!)

Granted I do mostly play that rock and metal now, but every now and then I really like playing with a jazz or funk group. Everything discussed in this forum I fell into it seems like and wished that something like this had been around.

For the beginners out there that think it isn't cool to listen to other styles cause your bandmates or friends don't. or you think that you need to destroy everything all the time. Take it from all of us, you are only slowing your progression and limiting your self. Would you rather be the king of double bass and blasting, or would you rather be sick overall every aspect drummer!

[garageband]

Not playing in a consistent, predictable way that the bassist and rhythm guitar can tie into. Nothing makes a bass player more ready to fight than randomly placed and carelessly timed kick drum pushes. They make him sound like an unmusical spaz because he can never guess where they're going to be so he can't hit them. In rock, the kick drum is half his instrument's sound.

[newkid]

smashing their sm57s
putting the mikes where they can be smashed
miking every drum on both sides

[Bournio]

Oooo. Newkid/Whomper. you don't need to bring this up in every thread.

Next comments will be fake SM57's and pricing changes.

I don't like drummers who can't respond to changes. Or use brushes... But then when I'm playing electric guitar the song's aren't exactly planned!