Inside the mind of a drummer | Think Like A Musician
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सबटाइटल्स (113 segments)
DownloadMy first teacher sat me down, and the very first beat I ever played was:
boom bap, boom bap.
I’m Matt Johnson— groove number two for TED.
And he’s like, that’s the simplest beat, basically in the world.
But you will never master it.
And he was right.
Hey, you! Yes, you. Is there music inside of you?
We’ve recruited working musicians from throughout the industry
to help you hear it, hold it, and share it with this wild and wonderful world.
I got started playing music at a very young age because of my parents.
We had a family band,
so at age 13 I started to play drums with the family band.
I remember hearing KC and The Sunshine Band when I was five.
It's one of my earliest memories, actually, and I was like, what is that?
And knew kind of instantly that I wanted to pursue drumming.
I really liked watching footage of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard as a kid,
whenever they came on TV, I was always very excited by the flamboyance
and the showmanship and what have you.
And I kind of just wanted to be a piano player playing loud music.
I was a very mediocre piano player, but it was definitely a great entry
into other instruments subsequently then.
I got my first drum lesson when I was about 10 years old,
and I remember going home with my dad in the car and saying,
well he told me to practice, I think, for 20 minutes a day,
and I was like, well I’m going to practice for 40 minutes a day!
You know, I'm going to double the time and get, you know, twice as good.
I remember feeling very inspired at the end of the lesson.
The role of the drummer in the band is basically the heartbeat of the band.
Spinal cord of the entire body and keeping everybody together.
It’s basically teaming up with the bass players to form,
almost the sort of bedrock of a song and create a foundation
upon which the other stuff is added— the melodic stuff, the guitars, keys,
singing, et cetera, et cetera.
If you have somebody that's a little wishy washy on the drums,
the band does not sound good at all.
And everybody’s kind of tentative.
It’s hard to dig in when you don’t have a consistent timekeeper.
If you're a drummer, that's the thing that keeps you up at night.
And that’s the thing that, if you screw it up, everyone can hear.
And you have to make sure that you are perfectly on time
and you’re keeping that time
and your emotions are not forcing you to speed up or slow down.
Because everybody in the band will be performing to you.
I’ve always had a tendency to pick up the pace a little bit,
or play a bit more frenetically during an exciting moment in the song.
I think I would be disingenuous as a performer
if I didn’t allow what was happening to affect me in some way.
The reason that there are all these great rock bands back then
is really attributed a lot to the drummer’s style.
Like John Bonham with Led Zeppelin has his style,
and that’s why Zeppelin sounds like Zeppelin.
And then you have Keith Moon and The Who— he’s crazy and wild.
It's not just about hitting the drum and playing a pattern.
It’s connecting with it as if it was a part of your soul.
Rudiments are sort of like the periodic chart of drumming.
There’s a, I mean, a gazillion rudiments.
They’re sticking patterns, essentially.
So, a five stroke roll is a left, left, right, right, left, right, right,
left, left, right.
It’s almost like kung fu: right, left, right, right, left, left.
Usually the next thing you learn is foundational grooves.
Groove is basically like a rhythmic signature of a piece of music.
That’s it— right? So that’s the groove.
Just a four bar groove is— you could just loop it, loop it, loop it,
and it will make people dance.
Unbelievably primal groove—
that’s a rock groove that will sound different
with every single drummer that plays it.
You really just need the hi-hat, snare, and the kick for most grooves.
Then you can add tom-toms— those are for fills and for accents.
And you can do a million things with drums.
The drumming world is an endless world of possibilities
because there’s just so many types of drums.
You have the traditional drum set,
and then you have the classical percussion world,
the Latin percussion world: timbales, the congas, the bongo.
So many different things.
But it’s all based on one principle: rhythm.
I think it's important to learn the basic stuff,
but it’s just as important to practice and to play with people.
Don’t play just in your bedroom— you need to play with people.
That's the most important thing.
The sooner you can get out, play with people.
Because that really informs your playing better than anything else.
I believe a good drum instructor will strongly advise any new musician
or new drummer to actually practice with a metronome.
You’re just like, oh my god, this is not inspirational.
But, the more you practice with it,
is the more you’re going to internalize how to keep time.
I just make sure every day that I go in and play for at least a half an hour,
just to keep the signals between my brain and my limbs open.
At the end of the day,
yes, it can be mathematical because one bar has eight beats.
You know, you could keep subdividing it: 8, 16, 32.
Just subdividing it more.
But you have to be able to feel it, it’s about the feel.
It’s about this cadence that sometimes is not a 100% squared.
It just takes you.
What seems like something that might be good on paper
doesn’t necessarily translate once you’re actually trying to do it in the room.
So you’re continually listening and just trying to trust your own judgment
and actually how it just makes you feel.
Somehow my algorithm figured out I'm a drummer
and I get a lot of clips of people who are amazing,
the best drummer you’ve ever seen, but then there’s another one is even better.
And it's easy to get discouraged.
For your own peace of mind, you have to try and filter out that stuff
and just focus on whatever it is you’re doing
and try to figure out what your strengths are
and further develop whatever voice it is you have.
It's about doing it over and over and over again.
So it doesn’t matter who you play with, as long as you play.
You’re never too cool for anything. Just play, play, play, play.
Key Vocabulary (50)
toward
"Go to school."
belonging
"Cup of tea."
also
"You and me."
inside
"In the house."
specific
"That book."
A third-person singular pronoun used to refer to an object, animal, or situation that has already been mentioned or is clear from context. It is also frequently used as a dummy subject to talk about time, weather, or distance.
Used to show who is intended to have or use something, or to explain the purpose or reason for an action. It is also frequently used to indicate a specific duration of time.
A function word used to express negation or denial. It is primarily used to make a sentence or phrase negative, often following an auxiliary verb or the verb 'to be'.
A preposition used to indicate that something is in a position above and supported by a surface. It is also used to indicate a specific day or date, or to show that a device is functioning.
A preposition used to indicate that people or things are together, in the same place, or performing an action together. It can also describe the instrument used to perform an action or a characteristic that someone or something has.
A conjunction used to compare two things that are equal in some way. It is most commonly used in the pattern 'as + adjective/adverb + as' to show similarity.
Used to refer to the person or people that the speaker is addressing. It is the second-person pronoun used for both singular and plural subjects and objects.
A preposition used to indicate a specific point, location, or position in space. It is also used to specify a particular point in time or a certain state or activity.
A coordinating conjunction used to connect two statements that contrast with each other. It is used to introduce an added statement that is different from what has already been mentioned.
A modal verb used to talk about future actions, predictions, or promises. It is placed before the base form of a verb to show that something is going to happen later.
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Description
Drummers Tony Succar, Matt Flynn, Matt Tong, and Matt Johnson share what it takes to improve your skills and find your rhythm. -- "Think Like A Musician" connects you with working musicians...
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