Best books: Beyer Elementary Method for the Piano

I'm always seeking out methods for introducing people to non-drumming activities— playing the piano, in this case. Last year I bought an 80s-vintage Clavinova, and got some beginner piano books so I could learn how normal people do it— I'm able to hack out the notes for transcribing and composing, but have very little technical ability on the instrument.

One book I liked was Elementary Method for the Piano by Ferdinand Beyer. It was released in 1860, and is still in print in multiple editions, but it does not seem to have many advocates today as a primary method book— not that I can find on the internet. Apparently it remains very popular in Asia. I have the Alfred Masterworks edition, with modernized notation.

Though it was first published over 150 years ago— virtually prehistoric by drum literature standards— it's a very modern method. I mean the conception, design, and apparent philosophy of the materials— I don't know where it stands relative to current views on piano technique and instruction. It will feel familiar to anyone who has seen a lot of drum method books, and is extremely friendly to beginners.

It begins with several pages of technical exercises— fingering exercises for each hand, then both hands together. There are more technical exercises other places in the book. The rest of it consists of solo pieces and teacher duets— sweet little romantic 19th century tunes. It has the most perfect, gentle, linear, learning curve I've seen in any book, which is not easy to do. See Drumeo-published beginner materials for an example of catastrophic failure at that. The literature of drumming is full of other less egregious examples.

Every page of Beyer teaches basically one thing, which can be learned instantly, or in a few easy practice sessions. There's very little resistance, and the entire book can be learned in a few weeks. By comparison, Karl Czerny's beginner piano method from 1840, still very popular and clearly the more “serious” book, is very dense, demanding a focused, hard-working student right from the beginning.

Traditional instructional technique.

There seem to be two working philosophies here: the modern how do we teach this so anyone can do it, vs. the traditional sink or swim / devil take the hindmost... that latter possibly reflecting an old world classist way of thinking that less-talented people lacking sufficient Calvinist work ethic should not be doing it.

Beyer's book anticipates the modernist philosophy of making the arts and creativity accessible to everyone, reducing things to their essential elements, developing natural instructional techniques, and rewarding students' early efforts. I'm for that.

Those Drumeo materials represent that gone wrong— rather, they're a purely commercial, educationally degenerate descendant of it. As such they're boring and ineffective, relying on endless novelty to keep “consumers” interested. The more institutional, equally loathsome descendant of the modernist approach is the graded system, which is popular with the British. It has a bureaucratic, run this by Wilkinson in accounts kind of vibe that makes me want to do something else. Any mention of graded materials and I'm Ian Holm in Brazil. I want out.

Conclusion, a method that engages and delivers results to casually committed students is a kind of holy grail of writing. As someone who writes a lot of practice materials it has been fascinating playing through Beyer.


Coda: Speaking of familiar seeming-piano books: Just received Schmitt's Preparatory Exercises for Piano, also published in the mid-19th century, and it is remarkably similar in concept to Stick Control, right down to the “play each exercise twenty times” instruction. They could have called it Finger Control if it hadn't been written 100 years before Stone.

Page o' coordination: Idris Mozambique

A page of exercises for learning basic performance vocabulary using Idris Muhammad's Mozambique-like cymbal rhythm from this recent groove o' the day.

Play each of the hand patterns many times— if you need to, start with the LH on the snare only, then add the moves to the toms. Then add the various bass drum rhythms. Add the hihat on beats 2 and 4, or put it wherever you want it, or don't. See this page for more Latin bass drum rhythms, or this page to take it a more funk like direction, using pattern 11.

Get the pdf

Cymbal sounds: Art Taylor - Sonny's Crib

This is a post I wrote about Art Taylor's cymbals, for the Cymbalistic site blog, plus a few added comments for this site:

Here is Art Taylor playing a very interesting ride cymbal that reminds me very much of some Cymbal & Gong cymbals I've played— in fact it's quite similar to the first C&G cymbal I bought. The tune (and album) is Sonny's Crib, by Sonny Clark.

It is a apparently a 20" K. Zildjian ride, with rivets, medium weight— I'm guessing around 1925-2000 grams. A traditional medium, not a modern medium. Overall pitch is high, with pronounced high and low harmonics. A moderately dark sound, and not particularly warm— while the horns are playing it seems that it could well be an A. Zildjian; the “raspy” sounding highs are, to my ear, as much a feature of the old As as “darkness” is of old Ks. I hear that quality on a lot of records, and a lot of C&G cymbals have it. The cymbal's low end has a slight exotic edge— you can hear that most clearly during the piano solo. Strangely, it almost sounds like a different cymbal with the piano than with the horns. I had to check a few times to confirm that it wasn't. Listening during the piano solo, it seems clear that it is a K.

The other cymbals present seem to be an 18" A, and 14" or 15" hihats. They're pleasing-sounding, and fairly straightforward— the 18 is clean, full, and fairly low pitched; it still is a high, energetic sound when crashed next to the 20". Taylor rides the 18 with a brush during the bass solo. The hihats seem to be light medium, with a nice foot sound that is not too chunky, not too soft. He crashes them two or three times during the track, but I couldn't get a particular handle on describing the sound there.




A few other observations: The vibe is relaxed and Taylor isn't working too hard. The time is somewhat flexible— it drifts quite a bit, in fact. The track ends much slower than it started. What is interesting about it is the overall quality of the groove; it's very different from our current metronome-fixated thing. The comping is different, too— today we like overtly hip, interactive comping, which is not what's happening here. What Taylor plays is straightforward, rhythmically similar to what a pianist might play, and focused on moving the groove along, and moving from phrase to phrase. Very little bass drum jumps out at me.

Todd's methods: Gospel 6

Get me.

Here's a practice method for people who have bought my new print book Syncopation in 3/4. It's closely related to my standard Reed 2/2 funk method, except here we'll be doing a slow gospel 6 feel, a la Natural Woman. On the drums this kind of vocabulary is normally learned in 12/8 or 6/8, which makes the reading rather difficult when you have to play this feel on an arrangement written in 3/4... like Natural Woman. In that case the drum groove is two measures long, and the backbeat is on 1 of the second measure. I found it to be more of a challenge than reading in 6/8 or 12/8, anyway.

Starting with this example, line 3 from page 6 (all references are to the print edition, not the e-book). In all cases we are reinterpreting the top line, stems-up part, and ignoring the stems-down part.

It's very simple: play the book rhythm on the bass drum, except the 1 of the second measure, which you play on the snare. Add quarter notes on any cymbal:

Using line 2 from page 18:

You would play this:

If you're copping the Natural Woman-type feel, the 8th notes will swing. There are many other instances of this type of feel where the 8ths should not swing.

On some exercises there is a rest or the end of a tied note on 1, like on line 3 of page 26:

You can either add the snare drum on 1:

Or displace the snare drum to match the book rhythm:

With all of the exercises, you can also play all of the second measure on the snare drum:

And then make a longer phrase out of it by playing all of measure 4 only on the snare drum:

Later you can change up the cymbal rhythm— here using line 1 from page 26 as the example groove:

This becomes a comprehensive way of working through triplet-feel grooves universally, while learning a challenging (though fairly rare) reading situation. I think there are other benefits to using this format, which are beyond the scope of this post. You should be aware of how these same grooves would be written in 6/8, 12/8, or as triplets in 4/4— the more usual ways this type of thing is written.

Syncopated melodic solo - 01

Here I've composed a syncopated, non-technical, four-tone melodic solo for drum set. It is through-composed, 36 bars long, in eight bar phrases with a four bar tag.

Play this with the snares off, and pencil in your own stickings as necessary. This will sound best if the drums are tuned for a nice tonal sound. Play it at a moderate volume and let the accents guide you in shaping the phrases, keeping in mind that though the piece is written without section dynamic markings, that doesn't mean all the notes should be exactly the same volume. Try not playing any two notes in a row at the same volume... subtly. Play the crescendos as self-contained within their measure— get a little softer at the beginning, build, and then subito return to the original volume after. I wasn't swinging the 8th notes when I wrote it, but you can swing them if you want.

Get the pdf

Groove o' the day: Idris Muhammad Mozambique

Here is Idris Muhammad playing a Mozambique-like Latin groove with Melvin Sparks, on Speak Low, from the album Sparkling. Muhammad isn't on many of the records I listen to all the time, but he is one of my favorite players just for his general vibe; he's got the New Orleans thing happening, a deep R&B pocket, and he always gets a full sound. And he's not a real finicky subdivision guy— I'm always hearing the broader phrase with him.

Muhammad feathers the bass drum on beats 1 and 3 throughout— the written bass drum notes are accents. One thing I have noticed in doing a million billion transcriptions for this site is how sparingly many drummers use their left foot— it may be moving while they're playing, but there's often not much sound actually making it onto the recording.

I call this a Mozambique-like groove only for the bell rhythm— it has the familiar 8th notes/rest on 4 and 1 going into the second measure. Otherwise the bell rhythm is quarter notes— it's sort of a New Orleans Mozambique, in fact, with a strong R&B flavor.

Get the pdf

Stick Control flams in 5/8 - 01

This is pretty straightforward, almost something you can do without writing it out— I've simply transcribed the basic flam exercises from p. 16 of Stick Control into 5/8. I get bored practicing things in a straight march rhythm, and this gives them a little more interest.

I don't follow the instruction in the book about doing each exercise 20 times— if I was going to count repetitions I would do them for 4, 8, 12, 16, or 32 measures. But I just play them for 30 seconds to one minute.

Practice your flams. For some reason drumming-on-the-internet likes to ignore them, but they're important. Please do them. See my page of hand motions for Stone flam studies, or email me for a Skype lesson if you need help.

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The leap to playing

I feel like this

A big problem for many students is how to get from practicing exercises in a book to real playing.
It's actually an issue for everyone, but in this post we're just concerned with intermediate players who can do a few things, but can't quite make the connection between practicing things from a book, and actual playing— maybe they're not sure what actual playing is yet.

Here are some things to think about as you figure it out, and help others figure it out:


Play with people
This is the most important thing— read this paragraph and then throw away your computer. Break your monitor. Everything happens through playing with people; being in an uncontrolled environment where you don't know what you're doing, but you have to do something. You figure it out what to do because you have to, and you can't stop.


Listen to music
To play a thing musically, you first have to hear it. To do that, you need to put musical ideas in your ears, which comes from listening to a lot of music. Everything good you will play comes from your educated ear.

OK, now you can break your computer, or keep reading...


Have a context
Participating in some kind of scene will help you know what you want to do, and get you thinking about how you will fit in with the people you will play with. If you're in school, you should take band classes, have musician friends, and start a band. If you're studying on your own, you should go hear other people play, and see how music is done in your town, so you can be getting ideas about gigs you would like to have, bands you would like to join.


Practice like you play
How to do this productively is much of what we deal with on this site. It means framing all of your practicing in realistic musical terms. You try to play everything like it's a part of a song, tune, piece, performance.

when I want to be doing this

Practice realistic vocabulary
A lot of current practice materials and philosophies, especially on the internet, are based on learning technique in the abstract— imagine playing the first thirteen exercises from Stick Control at an even volume on a rubber pad, infinitely. Or “8 to a hand.”

Whatever the benefits of that way of practicing, you can get the same thing by practicing actual musical content... with the added benefit that you're learning actual musical content.


Realistic volume and touch
Practice as loud as you're going to play, on a real acoustic instrument. See how other drummers around you are playing— that will give you a direct impression of how dynamics work, and you will begin adding them to your playing instinctively. And you will learn how loud other musicians will expect you to play. 


No stopping
In music, the time never stops for somebody to go back and fix something they think they did wrong. That doesn't happen. There's never a gig where a group plays one pattern for a few measures, takes a breather for a minute, then does another thing for a few measures, takes another breather, and so on. As much as possible, don't stop for mistakes, and don't stop between exercises. If you do need to stop, try to make it an actual rest by counting through it; or you can keep the time going with one limb while you figure out the next thing.


No speeding up
However slow the nursery school tempo at which you are practicing an idea, treat it like it's a real performance tempo, and maintain it. Pretend you're in the Melvins and hold it steady like a professional.


Make a phrase
Play in four or eight measure phrases. Or two measure phrases. If you're playing one- or two-beat patterns, play them in 4/4.

All you have to do to make a phrase is count a phrase— be aware of the passage of 2/4/8 measures. There are also familiar formats, like playing 3/7 measures of a groove, then playing some kind of fill (or putting in a stop) in the 4th/8th measure. You can also trade 2s/4s/8s— play 2/4/8 measures of a time feel, alternating with 2/4/8 measures of soloing. Another easy format is to play alternating measures of a groove, and an improvised variation on it. If you practice out of Syncopation, you will automatically play 4-measure or longer phrases, because that is the way the book is written.


Playalongs
Playalong tracks are useful, within certain limitations— they are not a substitute for playing with people. I like my own sampled practice loops for working on technical exercises on the drumset; it creates a context so you can hear the exercises as music, rather than as a lot of Rs and Ls. A really good loop can help you play a thing much longer than you otherwise would have.


So: this is a larger process than just “how can I do my hot lick when I'm playing”, but most of these things can be done simultaneously with each other, and you'll want/need to do them for other reasons anyway. It's a ongoing process you will deal with, in different ways, for your entire career.

Groove o' the day: Soul Makossa

This is the groove from a track regarded as the first Disco song— Soul Makossa, by Cameroonian performer Manu Dibango. The drummer is Joby Jobs, and he has a bad right hand— he is apparently playing these running 16ths at quarter note = 114.

The tenuto marks indicate half-open hihat. It sounds like there is a second hihat on the recording, playing quarter notes, so it's possible the 16th notes are overdubbed, but let's credit him with being a badass.

He does this little variation around the breakdown at 3:15:

This is the one fill I hear, which happens in an odd spot in the middle of the track, after 2:00. The hihat part is interactive with the fill, which suggests that Jobs is playing the 16th notes live with the drums, and not overdubbing:

After around 2:30 there is another little variation, where he plays the snare drum on all four beats intermittently. Time to go practice our running 16ths...