Changing your perspective

The other day Youtube served up this video by Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck:

It got me thinking about a couple of ways we can approach thinking about the drum kit as an instrument. 

The drum kit can be thought of as one instrument, or alternatively, a collection of separate instruments (hi-hat, snare, bass, high tom, low tom etc).

As an example, take a beat you know well and play it a few times (or sing it to yourself if you’re not by a kit). Now try playing/singing only the bass drum part. Now just the snare part. And now the hi-hat part.

When you played/sang the whole beat, you were approaching the drum kit as one instrument. When you played the drum parts separately you were treating the drum kit as a collection of separate instruments.

Now play the whole beat again, but this time try switching your attention between the different parts.

These two differing approaches can be quite useful.

If you’re struggling to play something, try breaking it down and playing the parts separately before putting the whole thing back together.

If you’re trying to work out a beat from a song, rather than trying to work out the whole thing in one go, break it down into it’s constituent parts (bass first, snare second etc).

To improve the quality of your overall “sound”, try shifting your attention between the various parts as you play, focusing on how good each part sounds.

Give it a try, if you have any questions, leave a comment below.