Learning Drum Songs

Timans

Anywhere where I can find videos of people playing songs on drums to help me perfect some songs?

Tabs are quite hard to read so wondering could I watch videos instead, apart from youtube of course.

Alternatively, could you put me in the right direction to find some drum tabs? Mxtabs won't show them anymore.

I can listen to the song and hear it by ear, but I want to perfect some songs. How do other drummers on here do it? Solely by ear?

Thanks, I've been playing the drums for quite a while but only recently joined a band so I've got to "step it up" a bit so to speak.

Poppy Cock

eh, by ear. Every time you hear a snare, hit your snare....etc.

highlydebased

Listen intently to the song. Thats what I do. I dont take it exactly, I put my own..."touch" to the song usually.

Look for drum covers of the song on youtube....

Mars Bar

This post looks familiar, on drumming ireland?

Timans

mars bar wrote: »

This post looks familiar, on drumming ireland?

you knows ittt

DublinWriter

Timans wrote: »

I can listen to the song and hear it by ear, but I want to perfect some songs. How do other drummers on here do it? Solely by ear?

Mostly by ear, but if it's something complex like '50 Ways to Leave your Lover' then I need a little help from charts.

Google 'Hudson Music'. They have tons of DVDs for drummers.

mp3guy

I wouldn't try learn a song on drums hit per hit, since most drummers don't just repeat the same pattern over and over, there's almost always a small change. Learn the basic beats, then you'll find you can play most simple songs without even trying to learn them bar by bar. Personally I've only learned about 6 or 7 songs, and half of them I learned by ear without looking at a tab or instructions (Dream Theater's "The Glass Prison" to name one). Learn the beats, and you'll find you can piece them together to play different songs.

galwaydrummer

I've developed my own shorthand way to right down my own beats whenever I wanna get a song perfect. I still prefer sheet music but that takes too much time and effort to write when doing songs quickly I think.

When I've done this I usually wouldn't even need to be on a kit to get most of the song learnt, just playing difficult fills on the practise pad or even tapping the hands on feet.

I think this is the best approach because it trains your ear to listen intently to the drums, gets your timing better, forces you to count more and you can build up a big folder of songs!

Mars Bar

I believe in the power of the ear also...I find it too time consuming to be looking at sheets and tabs and it's a waste of ink.

Rockshandy

i find that by ear is the best way, another option is if you have any software that will read midi to download the midi track and use that to practis ewith, i find it quite helpful for tricky fills, of course you'll have to make sure you've gotten a hold of a good quaility midi track but its usually not that hard to find.