The rolling drums in this song (you know the ones I mean) sound like they are in triplets or something. My knowledge of music is limited so I don't really know how to explain what I'm hearing.
Anyone able to shed light on this for me.
__________________ If this grand panorama before me is what you call God....
Coming from someone with some experience behind the kit, feel is much, much more important than counting and time signatures. Anyone who plays the drums will end up playing 4/4 95% of the time. One has to be happy and pleased to do this. I remember when I took my first lesson, I told my drum instructor that one of my goals was to have the ability to play odd time sigs. He told me: "That's great but you have to learn to love 4/4." I took his advice (but it took about three years to sink in). Now I get off from the drum track in "Billie Jean" just as much as "The Grudge."
But to answer your question, you're correct, they are triplets...but what kind? With his feet he's playing sixtennth-note triplets. This means for every sixteenth-note beat he's playing three notes. But listen closely and you'll hear that he's playing eighth-notes on the toms.
Are you familiar with the pattern where you move from quarters to eighths to eighth-note triplets to sixteenths to sixteenth-note triplets? (If you aren't, listen to the Grudge in the beginning after the opening vocal sequence, it's the transition before the haunting lone bass pattern--Danny does it with his feet.) It's a fun exercise and it will help you develop the feel along with the conscious knowledge of what you're playing (also...use a metronome!). At least it has for me.
I was trying to enunciate the fact that the drums don't sound like standard 16th kick drum notes but tend to 'roll' in a way it is difficult to explain. Is it the addition of the toms that make the drums sound different?
Thanks for the helpful info.
__________________ If this grand panorama before me is what you call God....
He's not playing sixteenth notes...he's playing sixteenth-note triplets. Very different, namely in that there are three notes for every one sixteenth-note. I said that in the post. Yes, this might explain the "rolling" effect as you call it.
The addition of the toms, in which he's playing eighth notes, creates a polyrhythm-like feel though technically, I don't believe it's actually a polyrhythm since both the pattern with his feet and the one he's playing with his hands are in 4/4.
Don't know if this helps, but a triplet is played in the duration it would take for 2 of the same measure of note. A 16th triplet takes as long as a 2 normal 16ths. So you get 6 16ths for every quarter note instead of 4 16ths.
__________________ "I was staring at the face of god,
but god wasn't staring back."
Coming from someone with some experience behind the kit, feel is much, much more important than counting and time signatures. Anyone who plays the drums will end up playing 4/4 95% of the time. One has to be happy and pleased to do this. I remember when I took my first lesson, I told my drum instructor that one of my goals was to have the ability to play odd time sigs. He told me: "That's great but you have to learn to love 4/4." I took his advice (but it took about three years to sink in). Now I get off from the drum track in "Billie Jean" just as much as "The Grudge."
But to answer your question, you're correct, they are triplets...but what kind? With his feet he's playing sixtennth-note triplets. This means for every sixteenth-note beat he's playing three notes. But listen closely and you'll hear that he's playing eighth-notes on the toms.
Are you familiar with the pattern where you move from quarters to eighths to eighth-note triplets to sixteenths to sixteenth-note triplets? (If you aren't, listen to the Grudge in the beginning after the opening vocal sequence, it's the transition before the haunting lone bass pattern--Danny does it with his feet.) It's a fun exercise and it will help you develop the feel along with the conscious knowledge of what you're playing (also...use a metronome!). At least it has for me.
Hope that helped.
Mr. Drumming Know-it-all up above here has made this sound much more complicated than it really is. To play the drum part correctly, it's simply 16th note triplets divided between your right hand (floor tom) and your feet, and accenting with your left hand on the toms.
The general pattern is:
Right Hand/Right foot/Left Foot
That's true, you can play it that way. But, the triplets really are not that fast so I'd rather play it with my feet to free up both hands up. I do think that he uses the pattern that you described at the end of Schism, but that's much, much faster than Aenema.
