Hi
everyone! This has been a big week in my journey of learning to play the drums.
As you already know I am learning to play the song, “You Shook Me All Night
Long” by AC-DC, however this week, I finished learning to play sheet one of
three. This means I am getting closer to being able to play, what is now appearing
to be an intermediate song. This week I learned the first fill in the song,
which lasts about four measures, and I learned the chorus. Both of these
required a lot of time to memorize and learn because I am not used to them.
The fill was very
tricky to get down because it was my first real introduction to playing the
cymbals. Up to this point I haven’t really done much with them but this song,
and basically every other song, requires the cymbals to be played. This allowed
me to learn the proper way to hit the cymbals, and how to transition my right
hand from hitting the High-Hat, which is the little cymbal you could see me
using in my last video, to the cymbal. This is a difficult transition to make
and took some time and patience to get down.
Besides the cymbals and the new arm movement this fill required, I could
memorize and keep the tempo pretty well.
The chorus was actually a little bit easier than the fill.
It was very repetitive, like most choruses are which made it easy to memorize.
Once I had it memorized I just had to get down the bass drum pattern (the bass
drum is controlled by the foot pedal) and make sure I could use the cymbal
properly. All in all, learning this fill and chorus really helped my knowledge
of different parts of the drum, and how to incorporate them into my playing.
Besides learning this part of the song, I also
did a lot of research. I used the Science of Rock and Vic Firth History of
Drumming, to give me a little insight on how drumming came to be.
I discovered that the drums were actually man’s
first instrument, and they haven’t always had as many pieces and sounds as they
do today. When the drums first started, there was only one drum that would be
played. This one drum was made of a shell and a membrane (skin) that could be
hit using your hands or a stick. These early drums were used by the indigenous
people for religious ceremonies. From there the sounds only got better and more
diverse. Eventually the bass drum and the snare drum were introduced. These
were all separate instruments but could be played by multiple people to create
an amazing sound.
However, this separated drum set was very expensive and
hard to lug around, that is why people began to try to combine the set. The
first attempt at this was a snare and bass drum that were played in conjunction
with one another. This was a very popular form of drumming at its beginnings.
This became very hard to play, and limited to only the two drums. Then, Ludwig
and Co. invented the foot pedal and freed up the hands to play various drums,
the snare, the high hat, the high tom, the floor tom, and the cymbals, while
keeping a beat with your foot. When these drums were all put together they
would be called a kit, and the snare, bass, and high-hat would keep the basic beat. This was the beginning of most modern drumming.
This kit did not make drumming what it is today, but it
sure helped. After the creation of the kit, different instruments from
different cultures started to be added to the kit to make different sounds. For
example, there was a cymbal that was adopted from Chinese culture. This cymbal
was put on many drums at the time and used to create a unique sound that people
hadn’t heard before. Also, now that drummers had a full kit they would start
developing different styles and types of drumming. Drumming was all started by
marching band drumming, but could now evolve into jazz and rock and many more.
These styles of drumming would shape the drumming world and create the drumming
we know today.
The history of the drums really amazed me, and taught me a
little about the instrument I am learning. I fund in fascinating that the drums
were man’s first instrument, and who knew how much they were shaped by history.
I hope that you found this history as interesting as I did, and that you can
have a greater appreciation for the drums now.
I would also like to let all of you know, I will be posting
a video sometime this week in a short blog post. I want you to be able to hear
the chorus and fill that I told you so much about! Stay tuned!
