~Harry
Well thank God for that. Because I still suck at drumming. I feel pretty embarrassed by my pace in this whole thing, even though Harry says I'm doing just fine. Yesterday's lesson was particularly humiliating because it involved learning how to read music ( a little bit) and this entailed going over fractions. Anyone who knows me knows that math is my Achile's Heal. It is simply one of those concepts I don't grasp, like politics or why anyone likes twizzlers.
So he taught me (via a dry erase board, oh how I love the smell of dry erase markers) how to distinguish the difference in notes when reading music for the drums.
These are the ones I have to concern myself with the most:
Especially the 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16 notes. That measure with the 1/8 notes on the hi-hat, and the 1/4 notes on the bass and snare-that's that basic drum groove I've been working on forever. that's technically how it looks.
Then there's things that looks like this:
that note is called a "triplet." It represents fitting three 1/8 notes into the timing of two. Harry says these are really common in drumming, so it's pretty crucial I learn to recognize and play them.
It doesn't end at triplets, but apparently things like quintuplets and septuplets are rare in most things. Which is awesome, because I'm not sure I could play that fast.
So now I'm equipped to be able to look a piece of sheet music for a particular song and somewhat know how to pick it apart, which is cool.
So my homework for this week (self assigned) is to try to pick apart something simple from this book that I bought with all kinds of different drum grooves in it, and also to work on my timing of fitting beats where they are supposed to go. As Harry says, "It's a perfect science" so I'll let you know how that works out.
Until then........
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