Today we focus on building fast singles! In part 1, we covered playing zones and basic movement. In part 2, we covered basic around patterns. Now, we build upon this foundation and start pushing our speed and versatility.
A full transcript of the video is included below.
The video refers to some exercises on RudimentalDrumming.com. Unfortunately, upon the date of this posting, part the site is under renovation, so I cannot link to the exercises. However, the page is archived, and it can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170422131918/http://www.rudimentaldrumming.com:80/sheetmusic/exercises/tenor/viewarticle/6399/intermediate-exercises-for-tenors (All of these are good basic tenor exercises, but pages 3 and 4 specifically have the singles exercises mentioned in the video.)
This video contains 14 different exercises for building fast singles, along with some tips for building your speed. Beginning players will learn some new patterns, and experienced players will have some good material for testing their chops.
–James
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, everybody. This is James Christian again. We are here for video #3 on how to play tenor drums.
A Quick History Lesson…
When multi-tenor drums first started hitting marching fields back in the late ’60s, most groups had two toms. Before that, there were single tenors. And then pretty quickly, tri-toms got added. And then four, and then five, and then six, and a few even had seven and things like that.
But the thing that the tenor drums were most known for was fast singles. The snare drums would play all the flams and rolls–for the most part. And the tenors would pop out some fast singles.
On the good side, as things progressed, tenor drummers started using more of the other rudiments in their playing. But sadly, in more recent times, tenor drummers have lost a lot of their singles speed. If you listen to old recordings from the late ’60s/early ’70s with the double toms, and then in the late ’70s with the tri-toms, and then late ’70s/early ’80s with the quad-toms, you’ll hear a lot of tenor solos that had just a lot of fast singles. And so if you listen to a lot of more recent recordings of tenor lines playing fast singles, you’ll see usually they’re not as fast and you can tell they’re straining even to get to those slower speeds.
So I feel like it’s a staple of tenor drumming–that you should be able to play some fast singles. So that’s what this video is intended to accomplish.
And it’s still important, because in a lot of–even junior high pep rally music and then at high school, a lot of stand tunes and things like that are still written with more of an older style. And tenor drummers are just expected to be able to bust out some fast singles whenever necessary. So it’s an important skill to have. And the faster your singles are, of course, once you start adding doubles and flams, it will just help you be more versatile all around, because singles are the foundation of everything.
And Now, the Exercises…
I’m going to do this video just a little bit differently than I’ve done the other two so far. So far, I’ve played the exercises slowly and then played them a little bit faster. On this exercise series–on this video–the whole point is to build your speed. So I’m going to start each exercise slowly, and you can get it. And then I’m going to speed it up faster. I don’t expect you, especially if you’re a beginning player, to be able to keep up with the fastest speed. But I would recommend just kind of getting the idea of each exercise, pausing it, and then pushing yourself as far as you can go.
On all of these, some people may say, “Don’t ever play it faster than you can play with a good sound.” I generally agree, especially in a performance. But when you’re practicing and building muscle, what you want to do is take something you can play, focus on a really good technique, and then push it just to the edge of where you can hang on, and then relax. Try to hold it at that edge as long as you can and then stop. And if you keep doing that each day and come back a little bit more, you’ll get a little bit faster and a little bit faster day by day.
So I would definitely hang on to this video and keep coming back to this regularly–at least once a week or so until you get your speed up to a level you’re pretty happy with.
Exercise #1
All right, with this video, we’re going to focus on triplets. We’re going to only do singles, and we’re going to do triplets with and without accents.
The first set will be no accents, and the final few exercises will focus more on accent building. So the first few we’re going to take slowly, and we’re going to break it into small pieces, and then we’re going to start combining and building our speed and versatility.
So the first one, we’re going to take a single triplet on drum #1, and we’re going to release it on drum #2, like this:
[demonstration]Just like that. So, as I said, with all these exercises, we’re going to start it at a slower tempo and start speeding it up. If you need to pause the video to practice it on your own, then by all means, do that. Here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #2
All right, now we’re going to take the same thing and do it off the left hand, starting the triplet on drum #2 and releasing on drum #1.
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #3
All right, now we’re going to do the same idea, except we’re going to go down the drums: 1234.
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #4
Now we’ll do the same thing going up the drums, starting on the left hand:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #5
All right, now we’re going to start combining these ideas. So with the first one, we did drum #1 releasing on drum #2 and then drum #2 releasing on drum #1. Now we’re just going to go straight back and forth between the two without any break. Like this:
[demonstration with accelerando]You could also do it off the left hand, but it would be the exact same pattern, just starting on the second triplet.
Exercise #6
All right, now we’re going to do the same thing combining the drums going down and then up. So no break in between those. It will be six notes all together: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6–like that. And here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #7
All right, now we’re going to add on to what we just did. So we did drums #1 and #2 back and forth and then the up and down pattern. Now we’re going to keep straight singles on individual drums, but we’re going to add in the third drum now. So we’re going to go drum #1, #2, #3, and then back up. You’re just going to go back and forth between those three drums. So here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #8
All right, now we’re going to add one more drum. We’re going to go: #1, #2, #3, #4. So here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Now through all these, like I said, I would really recommend pressing pause on each of these and see how fast you can go–see where your tempo is. If you practice this with a metronome, practice it and see how many measures you can play–or what speed you can play 10 measures at in a row. And do that. Start keeping a chart of it, and just build it up over time. And if you are consistent with it, you’ll see a lot of progress.
Exercise #9
All right, now we’re going to add in the spock drum. We’re going to start on the left hand and go down and then back up. So here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #10
All right, I want to do one more exercise that’s similar to this. This was my favorite exercise I practiced. I think I learned it–It was probably about 8th grade, maybe 9th grade, somewhere around there. But it’s similar to the down patterns, but then you come back up, and it does a little turn around between drums #1 and #2. So it’s just kind of fun. When you hear that “4 and 1 and,” it helps you kind of push the tempo a little bit. You’ll see what I mean
as you start playing it.
So that’s just kind of a fun one. All those patterns–just playing as many of them as you can is good. I’ll put a link down in the comments below, but you can find more of these types of patterns on RudimentalDrumming.com. Rick Beckham has made a really nice collection of some basic beginning level tenor exercises that kind of take you up to about an intermediate level. So I’ll put the link to that specific page down in the comments.
Exercise #11
All right, this next part is accented triplets. These are generally a little more difficult than just the non-accented moving around patterns, because you have to control more of your up-and-down motion and keep your inner beats softer when you’re not accenting them. So the first part is just to simply work on your accented triplets.
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #12
Now those are well and good, but one, it gets a little boring playing that pattern over and over again. And then also, this next exercise will help you push your speed just a little bit more, and it will also help you as you’re moving from drum to drum.
So this exercise is also one that my teacher Rick Beckham taught me back in–I may have even been 7th grade when I first learned it, but 7th or 8th grade, somewhere around there. And it’s basically the accent pattern of a well-known drum piece called “Three Camps”–except you’re taking out all the rolls; you’re just playing the skeleton of the pattern. So this is what it sounds like:
[demonstration]Now, with tenor drums, it’s good to be able to play that on a single drum, then–You’re going to play it once on one drum, and then another time you’re going to move the accents to the drums on each side. You can keep drum #1 as your hub or drum #2 as your hub–it really doesn’t matter. It’s going to work essentially the same skills. You should be able to do it both ways. I’m just going to use drum #2 here–but play around with it. And here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #13
All right, the final pattern that we’re going to learn is using the spock drum. As I said before in a previous video, you can use tenors kind of like a drum set. The spock drum is right in the center, just like a snare drum on a drum set. And the other toms can be like the cymbals and the toms that you’re reaching out to. So this one is just going to be straight up triplets. And we’re going to do the accents first on the spock drum, and then we’re going to go down the drums on the accents.
And again, with the previous exercise and this one, it’s really important to focus on keeping the accents even when you’re moving around. Don’t get sloppy and drop the accents as you’re moving to different drums. You want to keep your accent and tap height the same, whether you’re playing on one drum or on other drums. So here you go:
[demonstration with accelerando]Exercise #14
Now we’ll do the same thing starting on the left hand going up:
[demonstration with accelerando]As I said, with those accent patterns–those are a lot harder to play as fast as the non-accented patterns, but just work at it. And the faster you can get those accented patterns, you’ll see your speed speed up a lot more on the non-accented patterns.
Concluding Thoughts on Building Fast Singles
So keep those singles working. Like I said, pause the video regularly–practice those. And I would keep coming back to this video at least once a week for like the next year. Just keep building your speed, and you’ll find that your overall playing and endurance and speed and control will improve dramatically.
That one “Three Camps” exercise–any student I’ve ever had has had to play that a lot. And they will tell you that it’s not the most fun to play over and over again–because it hurts, like physically; like you just get fatigued playing it–but it will definitely–you’ll see results with it. So keep working at it. Keep those strong accents. Keep the softer inner beats. And just keep working at it, and you’ll get better.
All right, thanks for watching. If you know someone who can benefit by this, please share the video. And if you liked it, please “like” it. If you have any comments or questions, please add those down below.
And once again, there are more exercises like this–I’ll put a link to Rick Beckham’s RudimentalDrumming.com page that will have some of these triplet-based exercises. And just practice as many patterns as you can, and you’ll get better.
So thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time!
P.S. In the next video, we will be entering the fun world of crossovers!