Recording Yourself

Have you ever listened to a recording of your playing? What was it like? Think about it.

I know personally, I thought I sounded terrible.

I recorded a practice session of myself just to see what would happen. Turns out, from a whole hour and a half of practicing, a total of only 1 mintue and 24 seconds were deemed good. My hour-and-a-half recording contained 1 minute and 24 seconds of efficient, worth-while practice time.

Here's a few seconds of that 1:24.

I've realized that recording yourself has many perks.

You'll be able to see and to hear what you are practicing. If something sounds good on a recording, imagine what it could sound like if you were right there.

Granting the ability to see what you are doing gives you access to study your technique, your set up, how you move around the kit.

As you can see from my video, my right hand likes to flip outward (something I would have to fix if I want to have more control of the stick and my right hand in general). From this angle, it also looks like I was sitting too high or my drums are too low. Either way, it would effect how I play the drums as I place more energy trying to hit too low of a drum than actually playing. If I was in fact sitting too high, my foot technique could be skewed or strained. Maybe I was tired that night, but the intesity was about as high as the ground. I look like I'm falling asleep.

You may notice little things like this when you record yourself, especially amoung the first few recordings (this was my first). Pick them out, make your playing solid, make it better. But also recognize the good habits that you have and continue to use them.

With recording also comes the auditory perk. You can hear just about everything that you play, even the ghost notes that fill in your beat or groove. Two important aspects to look out for are your timing and your spacing. Although playing with a metronome is something we should all do, playing without a metronome is just as important. One learns a sense of time from a metronome but developes it without a metronome. You can record yourself playing along to the metronome to show that you can play in time and have all the correct spacing for each of your notes. However, when you record yourself without the metronome as an anchor, you can see how much of a strength or weakness playing in time is for you.

Tip: If you record yourself playing for about 5 minutes, listen to the first few seconds and then the last few second. See how far off you strayed from your orignial tempo, if you did at all.

Do you have a private teacher of your own? Ask him/her about recording your playing to see what they think. They are your teachers to analyze your playing, it's their job. But what about when they're not there or when they aren't your teacher anymore? Teach yourself they way they would teach you. Watch your video and break it down, take notes, make it better.

Self-taught? Perfect way to do it. Be your own critic and pick out the stupid little things. Make yourself do unnatural things such as splitting your mind into four parts to do four different patterns with your four different limbs. Record it. Analyze it. Critique it. Do it again, learning from the last time. It may be a process, but what is playing the drums without going a little crazy with weird beats and grooves from time to time. It will only help to grow you into that seasoned musician we drummers aim to be.

If you have any questions about this topic, send me an email to dexter.verrill@gmail.com, or through the contact form on the website, STIX Drumming Instructing.

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