Workout: Practice Pad vs Drumset
Practicing on a pad has been a staple among drummers ever since pads were first developed. And I'm sure before the first pad was marketed, drummers were making their own practice pads. The reason? Mostly noise complaints stemming from family and/or neighbors, I'm sure!
Over the years I have met a number of monster players who had excellent chops consisting of power, speed, endurance, and control... on the practice pad. But, when they sat behind a drumkit, they were much less impressive. Why? Because they spent far too much time practicing on a pad as opposed to applying their technique to the drumset. Drums not only feel different to the touch but the average drumset normally consists of more than one surface. Unlike the average practice pad!
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that you totally abandon your practice pad. But I would suggest that you spend no more than about one quarter of your total workout time on a pad and the reminder on the drumset. If noise is a problem, there are many solutions available from buying Pintech Practice Lids that easily snap on (and off) your existing acoustic drums to the all electronic drumset with mesh heads. Mesh heads are the closest you can get to the feel of real drumheads and they are quiet enough to satisfy even the most noise sensitive neighbor. (Pintech Practice Lids, by the way, also have mesh heads.)
Getting Away from a Single Surface...
I'm sure you have heard of the WFD (World's Fastest Drummer) organization by now. If not, click the link in
the right sidebar and check it out.
Having won the competition myself, officially registering over 1,000 beats per minute with my hands and feet, I am extremely familiar with the WFD and their use of the Drumometer, a tool developed by Boo McAfee and Craig Alan to accurately measure drumming speed. While I feel that the Drumometer is a great tool for developing chops, it is currently limited to measuring only one playing surface. This works for the WFD because the hand competition measures strokes played on a pad with a built-in trigger while the foot competition measures strokes played on a specially dampened bass drum through an attached trigger. What I would love to see is the Drumometer adapted to measure the total of all strokes played on an entire drumset!
I suggested to WFD founders/Drumometer inventors, Boo and Craig, that they wire an electronic drumset so that each of the three drum pads (snare, rack tom, and floor tom) could be measured on a single Drumometer. Knowing Craig (an engineer), I'm sure he could have devised an interface to allow this.
Although they never went with the idea, I still feel that measuring a contestant's speed while playing various patterns around an entire drumset would add a new, exciting, and more practical dimension to WFD competitions. Not to mention the fact that it would give us drumset practitioners a great new tool to measure our drumset workouts. Oh well, maybe someday. But, for now, what can we do to increase our practice time on the kit?
Tips for Practicing Around The Drumset
#1: Use the practice pad only when you are first developing a specific technique, like the Moeller Arm Whip or
a troublesome sticking pattern for example. Once you become comfortable with it, move it to the snare drum.
Practicing on the single surface of a snare drum is a great improvement over practicing on a pad.
#2: After you can easily play the pattern on a snare drum, take it to the rest of the kit. Use your imagination and experiment with breaking the pattern up in various ways making use of crossovers around the drums and try to incorporate the pattern into an actual groove.
#3: If you have a electronic drumset to practice on, plug in some headphones and set your sound module to various tempos from slow to fast for your workout around the kit. If you're using an acoustic drumset, plug some headphones into your metronome and use that to work your pattern through the entire range from slow to fast.
If you're looking for ideas on what to practice on the drumset, check out my Free Video Lessons at the www.DrumMagazine.com site. And, if you don't already have them, get the following two books by Joe Cusatis: Rhythmic Patterns and Rudimental Patterns. They are the best books ever written for patterns around the drumset, including crossovers.
A More Practical Workout
Although it may be tempting to spend lots of time practicing on your favorite practice pad, unless you plan to
use it on the gig, your practice time will be much better spent on a drumset.
Try it for a while and I guarantee that your playing and your ideas will improve tremendously.
Give it a couple of months and then drop me an email and let know what you think!
Until next time: Stay loose.