hello welcome to PMT College my name's Russ Tarly and I'm from
drumheadz.co.uk in this first video we're going to be looking at an
introduction to the drum kit plus I'm also going to be giving you some top
tips that every beginner needs okay so first off let's take a look at the kit
starting with the bass drum which is this one down here the big one at the
bottom now we play the bass drum using the bass drum pedal using the foot and
it looks and sounds something like this
next is the snare drum that's this one in the middle it's called the snare drum
because it has some snare wires underneath the drum and that's what
gives it its distinctive sound
to the side of the snare drum we've got our throw off if we take that down it
takes the snares off the drum and gives it a completely different sound sounds
like this so if we put the snares back on we can hear the difference between
the two next we've got our tom toms so this is the first tom or hi tom
the second tom or mid tom and the floor tom or low tom they're tuned from high
to low left to right so those are our drums next are our various symbols first
of all we have our hi-hat over on the left hand side here our foot sits on the
pedal and we strike the top of the hi-hat with the drum stick next is our
ride cymbal over on the right hand side of the kit which sounds like this
and lastly we have our two crashes so there we have it that's our standard 5
piece drum set drum sets come in lots of different sizes and configurations
depending on what style of music that you may want to be playing sometimes
people might have more Tom's at the top and a different selection of cymbals but
for the purpose of these videos we're going to be using our standard 5 piece
kit okay so there's our introduction to the drum kit now I'm going to give you
some essential tips you need before you start playing tip number one is how to
think about sitting at a set of drums what we don't want to do is bring the
seat too far forward so we then shift our body weight to the
back of the seat what we want to do is move the seat further back and bring our
body to the front of the seat so our feet are on the pedals and our body is
balanced by our feet with the snare drum right in the middle in between our knees
tip number two how to hold a pair of drumsticks
now when anyone picks up a pair of drumsticks for the first time they're
going to do one of two things they're either going to do this
or they're going to do this neither are going to help us build and develop a
good technique to play our instrument so what we want to do is develop what's
known as the match grip now this is what the match grip looks like the thumb is
flat on the drumstick pointing down the middle of the stick the first finger
sits opposite the thumb resting in the first crease of the finger we then have
these three fingers that fall in behind one two three and the back of the
drumstick resting on this part of the hand that is our standard textbook
match grip now here's a quick hack to help us get our hands into this shape if
we first of all hold the drumstick using the back of the hand we can gently
bounce the drumstick between the thumb and the first finger we can then rest
the thumb and first finger on the drumstick now if we do that with both
hands and then put them together and get the first fingers to face each other
then take them away we'll end up in the match grip okay tip number three how to
play a drum what we don't want to do is dig the stick into the drum because
we're not going to get the sounds that we want what we want to do is let the
stick come away from the drum allowing the drum to resonate so we can get a
nice sound out of our instrument and you can do that on the Tom's as well so you
can experiment and learn how to get a nice sound out of our Tom's don't forget
to do it with both hands as well so you get an equal balance between the two we
can do the same on the cymbals as well to make sure we're getting a nice sound
out of our hi-hat crash cymbal and ride cymbal here's the hi-hat as you've
noticed for the hi-hat I'm using the shoulder of the drumstick and not the
tip on the top like this we can do that but for the most part we use the
shoulder on the edge to get a nice thick sound and we can do the same with the
crash cymbal
but over on the ride I want to be using the tip around about three inches in
from the edge which is generally called the sweet spot to get a nice sound out
of our ride cymbal okay tip number four is to look at how we play the pedals
we've got our left foot on the hi-hat pedal and we've got a right foot on the
bass drum pedal what some beginners tend to do is put the heel down and lift the
toe up really high and try and get a sound out of the drum like this that's
not really a technique we use so we need to look at a different way we can play
the bass drum three basic ways we can play the bass drum is the heel down
technique the leg stroke and the heel up technique the heel down technique would
look like this that's good if we want to play the bass drum quietly there's the
leg stroke which is a little bit louder and gives us more resonance or there's
the heel up technique where the Bata lives and stays on the head of the drum
the heel up technique is probably the most commonly used method that we use on
the bass drum so that's the one that we're going to focus on for the purpose
of these lessons so we've had an introduction to the drum kit we've
looked at the individual parts the drums the cymbals and we've looked at some
tips on how to hold the drumstick how to play a drum how to look at the feet
technique and our fifth and final tip is to protect our ears if we're playing an
acoustic drum set these things are quite loud so it's really important that we
look after our ears you can get cheap earplugs you can get expensive molded
ones and you can even buy purpose-built headphones but make sure that you find
something is going to look after your ears so now we're all ready to play in
the next lesson we're going to be looking at our first drum beat thank you
for watching really hope you found this useful don't forget for a huge selection
of drums and cymbals you can visit PMT online co uk if you have any questions
whatsoever about this lesson please feel free to contact me via the drumheads
website and if your local report Smith in South Sea you're more than welcome to
book in a lesson with me at the drumhead studio thank you again for watching see
you again on the next lesson