Lick of the Month – January 2025
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This one of my favourite phrases to play and it’s a great introduction into playing those loose/flowing triplet phrases that you’ll hear Dave Weckl, Gary Novak and the like play between ride/snare/kick.
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Hi Louie, I love the way you tune your snare drum whether it is your new Yamaha or the old Pearl Maple Gum they both sound great! I am getting a new Pearl Maple Gum snare drum in a few weeks and knowing how familiar you are with Pearl I was wondering how you tuned the Batter Head? Do you crank it as tight as possible? I have always preferred it cranked up but does that choke the drum? Any help would be appreciated.. Thanks Louie! James
Hi James. Thanks! Definitely not just a case of cranking the top head. The bottom head is usually pretty tight…almost table-top tight but if you press your finger into the head there should still be a bit of give…it’s a much thinner head and needs to be tight but not too much that it’s choked. Then the top head is used for reaching whatever your desired pitch is – low/medium/high. Bottom head stays the same unless I’m tuning super low for a specific recording purpose. A lot of the sound comes from the player, too. Making sure you get a good, clean and fat rimshot sound is a big part of why a drum sounds good to the listener. Tuning is just practice. A lot of drummers only change their heads once a year, if that, so that’s how often they practice. Experiment and see how you get on. There is a video on the site here where I discuss tuning a snare in detail – you can find it in the A-Z index!
Thanks!
Louie
Great fill Louie! Think the hardest thing for me will be undoing the habit of falling into 6 stroke roll sticking when playing 1/16th note triplets at higher tempos… looking forward to getting stuck into this as it’ll help with vocabulary and sticking patterns. My group of 9 sticking ‘habit’ is usually RllrrLRll so be good to get this one under my belt! Cheers, Matt.
Great! Yes, that’s a good sticking too.
Learning the lick is one thing . Adding the 1/4 note high hat . That’s the challenge. This one’s gonna take me a while . But I love the lick !