I’m a beginner drummer. I find it really hard to listen to the metronome and read drum notation at the same time. I get distracted trying to figure out what rhythm to play on each beat. My teacher says a good drummer isn’t about playing fast, but playing in time, and that you should basically “become the metronome” yourself.
Actually, I had the same problem when I was learning piano, always struggling to keep up with the beat. Does anyone else have this issue? Is this some kind of attention deficit thing? If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them.
I tried building a tool, something that shows an indicator moving over the drum score and tells me how far off the beat I am on each hit. Step one is converting printed or handwritten drum notation into an editable format. I tried using Audiveris, which works great for sheet music, but performs poorly with drum notation. Does anyone know any open-source software that can recognize drum notation well? Or maybe there’s already a tool like this out there?
I think it’s normal to get distracted. It’s a matter of practice. But I’ve been playing guitar for several years and never been able to speak while I play. If a open my mouth I just stop playing. Maybe that is some kind of deficit
From my limited attempts to do multiple complex things at the same time - you’d likely want to simplify the exercise in a way that would allow you to focus more (mostly) on keeping up with metronome. Either with rhythm that you already know well, and don’t need to read it first, or by slowing down tempo. And/or separately practicing playing from drum notation, so you’d be able to read it quicker, without occupying as much attention.
Start with simpler exercises and a slower tempo. Like maybe a mixture of some quarters and eighth note exercises to start at a slow tempo. Then you can start to gradually increasing the tempo. After a while you will start to get used to the metronome and start to internalize the beat better. Then you can move onto more complex exercises with the metronome at a faster tempo when you are ready
I only learned to play the drums briefly when I was in elementary school, but I remember struggling with the same thing. My drum teacher used to tell me to read(?) the rhythm first and try to imagine it before looking at the notes. It was about 15 years ago, so I don’t remember other tips, but I can relate. I’d love to see a video of you playing the drums someday.
I totally get it! I’m a okay drummer, but keeping time has always been a struggle for me. I picked up drumming by ear, just following the bass or piano. I’m not playing drums right now, and the last time I tried out for my church worship team, it didn’t go well at all. The issue is that I need to have the metronome in my ear, and it’s super distracting. I’m really curious about how your tool is coming along.
I’d love to get back into drumming and hopefully sync up a metronome.
Practice with the metronome, and keep practicing. Keeping time is all feels, there’s no way around it. And being the drummer, keeping time is pretty important for a band!
In the very beginning, I spent over a week obsessed with how to build that tool and barely practiced drumming at all. Later, I realized the focus should be back on practice, instead of hoping some tool would give me a shortcut.
Yes, my current priority is getting familiar with basic rhythms (building up vocabulary), and, on top of that, practicing variations of those basic rhythms through a simple song. I’ve been repeatedly playing the same two rhythms over 16 bars. Next time I go to class, I’ll check if they flow smoothly with a metronome.
I’m also going to continue making a more convenient metronome that can at least read notations and allow editing (I’ll try musescore).
I don’t think this necessarily points to an attention deficit. A lot of beginners struggle because you’re trying to do several new things at once: read the notation, count the beat, and coordinate your hands and feet.
What helped me was slowing the metronome down much more than I thought I needed to. I would practice one short measure until it felt automatic before moving on. After a while, I stopped thinking about every note individually and started recognizing the rhythm as a pattern.
As for the software idea, it sounds like an interesting project. From what I’ve seen, drum notation is still much harder for optical music recognition than standard sheet music. You might also want to look at MusicXML export from notation editors like MuseScore if your goal is to build and test the rest of the application before solving the recognition part.
Keep working at it. The fact that you’re thinking about both practice and building a tool tells me you’ll probably learn something useful from both.
Thank you for your encouragement and for sharing your own learning process. Yes, I’m also trying to set the metronome slower.
When I built the first version of the tool a few months ago, I learned about MusicXML. Building other parts first is a good idea. Look forward to sharing this with the community later:)
I can relate to the challenge of keeping up with the beat when playing an instrument, Miya.
What has kind of worked for me so far is first practicing the notes without the metronome, to get a feel of the sequence. Once I have that in my mind and it feels natural to play it, I start with a very slow tempo and try to repeat the sound in my mind as I play it to approximate the duration of the notes. I start very slowly, just to make sure that I’m familiar with the notes. And then, I speed it up gradually.
I also think it’s important to always remember the emotions that the piece should convey. Trying to follow the beat too closely can sometimes make us play in a “robotic” way, without conveying the emotions as deeply as we should. Trying to find a balance is important, in my opinion.
Thank you for your advice, @estefaniacassn. I also think it’s helpful to start slowly at first, and because I’m not familiar with the various rhythmic combinations, I need to take it slow.
Lately, I’ve been practicing a Cantonese song by one of my favorite singers. I didn’t deliberately think about emotion before, but maybe because it’s a song I love, the emotion comes through naturally, haha.
