“How do you get a drummer of your porch? Pay him $10 for the Pizza”.
“What do you call a drummer who loses his girlfriend? Homeless”

Drummer jokes. There everywhere. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of other musician jokes
around; it’s just that we drummers seem to take the brunt of these jokes and many of them
have to do with us playing to fast or to slow. As the time keeper it is very important that our
time keeping is spot on. In my experience there are two really important methods that drummers
can use to improve their time keeping.

# 1. Get yourself a metronome. Practicing everything you, whether it is rudiments, rock or jazz
rhythms, drum fills or reading, do it with a metronome. When you first start this you will see
yourself speeding up or slowing down compared to the ticking. You will learn very quickly just
how you compare with the dead on clicking, When I started using this technique, I found my
playing was pretty even but my drum fills, that felt very normal to me, were actually speeding
up, especially when I was doing single stroke rolls. I really worked on that one and it changed
the way I play.

#2 Try practicing your rudiments or any other drumming techniques while playing along with a
tune of your choice. This is a great method, and I use it all the time while going over my
Para-diddles, Double Para-diddles, Triplets and a variety of other rudiments. The real value to me
is that most songs are 3 to 3.5 minutes long and that forces me to stay with the effort until the
song is finished. It’s also a lot less boring and a lot more fun playing along with the song and
seeing how the rudiment blends in.

Use this method in your practicing and you won’t have to listen to the one that goes: “how do
you know when a drummer is knocking at your door? The knocking speeds up and slows down”.

Cheers, Barry

Contact me at 250-721-2113  or Text or email me at bcasson@speakfilm.com or you can
reach me by calling Tempo-Trend Music at 250-384-2111. Mention you have been to my
website and I will give your your first lesson FREE