Looking back at all of the books and exercises that helped me develop drum set technique and coordination brings fond memories of the teachers who showed me how to play and practice. They showed me how to use the books that would become the staples of my woodshed.
The best books in my library include a couple for hand development, reading and articulations, exploring styles, and developing advanced independence among my hands and feet. You could read about longer lists, but this article is about how I use these books and ways you can start using them, too.
Practicing methods like the ones you’ll learn about in the following books are invaluable because you won’t perform artistically if you’re stumbling over your technique. For professionals who take their development seriously, this is as routine as a race car driver fueling up or checking the tires – doing practice laps to feel how the car is doing.
Why 11? I put all of my books on the table and chose the ones I could not live without. They added up to 11, so here it goes.
1. Stick Control (Stone)
George Lawrence Stone intended this book to be a way to practice consistently in order to develop finger, wrist, and muscle control. Done properly, it trains your brain to respond fluently regardless of the hand-to-hand combinations.
Practice with a metronome. For me, practicing with a metronome is a support system. It takes away the need to concentrate on the consistency of the tempo so you can focus on what you are developing. Stone’s recommendation is to practice the exercises really slow and really fast.
Relaxation is a critical piece to Stone’s exercises. In fact, his recommendation is to stop if you feel muscle tension. He even encourages drummers working toward power and speed to practice lightly. Some of your best control can come from playing lower dynamics with attention to the sound quality and muscle relaxation. You will gain balance in your control and more power, despite using less energy in each stroke.
Consistency is key to developing control. Practice these exercises an hour a day. The impact will be huge and you’ll know you’re doing it consistently enough when you realize that you cannot miss a day.
Apply the exercises to drum set. This is an idea I learned from one of my drum set teachers, and there are no rules for this. The following are just some suggestions.
- Simply assign the right hand sticking to your kick drum and the left hand sticking to your snare (and vice versa).
- Play the articulations as they are in the exercise.
- Your hi hat pedal foot can play on all downbeats or just beats two and four. Advanced players can add splashing the hi hat on upbeats or downbeats.
- The ride pattern, played on hi hat or ride cymbal, can be any of the following or something similar.
2. Master Studies (Morello)
This book picks up with Stick Control’s approach to developing control and includes accents and application on drums set. In fact, Joe Morello, a student of Stone’s, inspired Accents and Rebounds, which was the follow up book to Stick Control.
As Jim Chapin says in the introduction, drummers are fortunate to start their professional career with even one of the three “ingredients” to being a great drummer: “ … even tempo, a firm sense of meter, good coordination between hands and feet, quick reflexes, the self discipline that enables one to practice hard and with concentration.” Chapin continues to point out Joe Morello has all of these, which is why he has been my favorite drummer since I first saw him perform on the Making of Burning for Buddy DVD.
When I was first introduced to this book, my arms and hands were stiff and my timing was too externalized. My snare drum teacher at University of North Texas showed me how to use my arm and wrist to achieve the transition between the accents and taps without creating tension in my muscles.
The accent-to-tap strokes include three different strokes – similar to the Moeller technique.
- The accent stroke is played by raising your forearm with a relaxed wrist and dropping your arm toward the drum. Since your wrist is relaxed, it will complete the stroke preparation and follow through to the drum. In other words, you’ll know you’re doing it correctly when your arm begins to drop and your wrist hangs back with the stick before catching up to your arm.
- The second stroke is a rebound (legato) tap played by the wrist.
- The third stroke is a tap played by the wrist while the forearm is raised in preparation for an accent.
The Morello technique is based on the same concept as the Moeller stroke. Check out this article for more information on the Moeller technique.
Different combinations of these strokes are required to play different combinations of accents and taps. For example, if the grouping of three eighth notes has an accent on the first one, the three strokes follow the order stated above.
If the grouping of eighths is in twos with an accent on the first and a tap on the second, you’ll leave out the second stroke (from the list above).
For a grouping of four eighth notes with an accent on the first note, you would play two of the rebound taps (second stroke on the list) before playing the final tap with your wrist as you raise your forearm (stroke 3 on the list above).
3. Essential Techniques for Drum Set (Soph)
Ed Soph’s drum set method is second to none. He is the best drum set educator I’ve ever learned from. Soph’s way of thinking about the drums set is based on the foundation of the instrument and the music that created it – jazz.
If you’re not a jazz player, and don’t aspire to one, this book is still for you. Soph’s approach to developing phrasing and hand and foot coordination works for all genres of music. If you have a dominant approach to playing grooves, for example, these exercises will take you through the paces to develop new ways of playing snare and kick drum combinations that shift your limits as a player to only your imagination.
Soph’s method is epitomizes the idea that simplicity is sophistication. Check out his videos on YouTube. His clinics are just like the way this book reads. For example, how you move is how you sound. This may seem obvious, but it’s not the first lesson from every great teacher. It’s Soph’s lesson, however.
This book includes the best explanation of different stick grips and how to coordinate your arms and hands to produce strokes. Combinations of stokes, Soph says, form patterns and that it does not matter what style you are playing – the stroke is the “raw material of drumming.”
Unlike Syncopation, Soph is very clear about how to apply the lessons with different ride patterns, hands, and feet. Whenever I’m feeling like my hands and feet are not keeping up my musical ideas, I spend an hour a day for a few days with the exercises in this book. My coordination comes back, and playing drum set is so much more satisfying when the music I want to make isn’t hampered by my lack of response.
4. Syncopation (Reed)
Reading through these lessons on drum set or just your snare drum, opens so many opportunities for developing your musical performance. To me, it’s a book that brings together reading skills, improvisation, and style. The style and improvisation aspects, however, are not so explicit.
In the beginning of the book, Ted Reed lists some expectations drummers should consider while using Syncopation. It’s the usual stuff, like count out loud, practice with a metronome, and play various tempos. But the book also mentions to practice the rhythms around the drum set and that “there is no substitute for a good teacher.”
My drum set teacher in high school started me on “Syncopation Exercise One” on page 38. Since much of the first half of the book is about reading notation, he started me on this exercise to work on reading and voicing on drum set.
Here’s some of the ways I approach the Syncopation exercises.
- Play swing patterns on the ride cymbal, hi hat on beats two and four, and play the top line on snare, bottom line on kick drum (and without kick drum).
- Do the same thing as above, and change the style from swing to samba or songo. This means you’ll have to play the kick drum patterns for those styles.
- Voice the exercise on kick and snare based on the articulations (long vs. short notes). Play the longer notes – quarter note or longer – on kick and the shorter notes on snare.
- Treat each line like ensemble figures with four bars of time in between each line. Try adding cymbal crashes and fills as you hear them.
- Play the first half of each bar on the hi tom (rack tom) and the second half on the low tom (floor tom). Do this while playing the ride pattern and hi hat on two and four.
- Think of the rhythm as accents and fill in the triplets. Try playing this with accents on toms and filling in the triplets on the snare drum. Also, play all of it on the snare drum. You could turn the inner triplets into double or buzz to develop accented rolls.
You could go on and on with different ways to apply these exercises to the drum set. I don’t think I’ve opened this book in the last twenty years without coming up a new way of using it.
5. Essential Styles – Book One (Houghton)
Ensemble playing is the big emphasis in this book. It’s a great book because it includes so many different styles that both drummers and bass players need in their toolbox.
It’s a play along with excellent charts. Steve Houghton is one of the best jazz educators, and he knows what it takes to become a great session player. The charts are neat, descriptive, and each style begins with notes on the style interpretation and any other information players would need to be successful.
The play-alongs are about 2:00 to 2:30 minutes each and cover a wide range of funk, pop, rock, R&B, fusion, Latin, and jazz. These styles are clean and authentic. They don’t fill up the page with extra kick drums, and the Latin rhythms, for example, are not of the pseudo variety.
I recommend using this book with a bass player and learning the bass lines, even though you’re a drummer. The best way to lock with a bass line and, essentially the style, is to know how exactly how it goes. Training your brain to think like a bass line while playing drums is critical to the connection so many of these styles, especially the Latin grooves, require to sound and feel good.
6. Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer (Chapin)
Jim Chapin is truly an educator. He wanted to spread his knowledge of drumming techniques that he learned from legendary drummers like Stanford Moeller. Luckily for all of us, he made several videos that are available on YouTube.
The first time I met Jim, he got right down to business with his pad making sure that I knew how to use the weight of my arms to gain speed and control over accented and unaccented strokes. I had already studied the Stone and Morello book with a teacher at North Texas, but I didn’t tell him. He was so happy to share that I just wanted to listen and drum with him.
I was introduced to pages from this book in junior high but didn’t purchase a copy until after I had met Jim. The range of difficulty is awesome, and the exercise prepare you to perform the complex parts of the solos.
This book is definitely one that you will come back to a few times in your development. I’m actually about to embark on my second round of study with this book. It’s been about ten years since I have spent regular practice hours on Jim’s exercises and solos, so I’m looking forward to rediscovering my playing through the challenges and lessons he’s given us.
7. Future Sounds (Garibaldi)
Future Sounds was the first book of lessons that I practiced in college and really felt like I had taken my playing to the next level. I studied these lessons at the same time that I started using the Morello book, and the techniques in both books were complementary.
Although David Garibaldi is best known for his funk drumming, this book is more about developing linear in layered ideas on syncopated themes. It’s about developing a sense of time across the bar lines as well as motion between the snare and the kick and from hand to hand.
Check out this article with intermediate drum set lessons because it shares how to approach defining the accented and unaccented strokes on the hi hat. This is the same definition of strokes that Garibaldi explains in future sounds.
Likewise, the snare drum strokes are played in a particular way. The accents are rim shots and the unaccented strokes are played with the tip on the snare drum head.
- Practice these exercises slowly, and try things like the heel down kick drum technique.
- Play with a metronome at various tempos.
- Try playing the exercises with your right hand on the hi hat left hand on the snare as well as your left hand on the hi hat and right hand on the snare.
8. Time Functioning Patterns (Chaffee)
Gary Chaffee’s book is almost 40 years old and still holds up as one of the best for all levels of playing. It explores possibilities for all four limbs in rock, jazz, and specifically linear playing. The best part is that it’s not a cover-to-cover book – it’s four sections that can be practiced in any order.
When playing through the exercises, you will work rhythms on hands and feet that probably need attention. Give those weaker limbs a chance to take on the coordination because it will only translate into speaking more clearly and fluently on your instrument.
Like most Syncopation or Essential Techniques for Drum Set, Chaffee’s book starts with an explanation of the ride patterns users should explore with each exercise. He calls them ostinatos because they are repeating patterns, and the explanation encourages drummers to try new things and track their weaknesses to perpetually improve.
9. Masters of Time
Play alongs are one of the resources that I did not access enough as a young player. Ensemble playing is as important as developing good hands, perhaps even more. It’s how musicians from their vocabulary and conversational skills on their instrument. Steve Houghton emphasizes these points in Essential Styles and Studio and Big Band Drumming (see the bonus book below).
Masters of Time was a book I started using in college. It was also the same time I began transcribing songs on a regular basis, so I was primed to analyze the phrasing of the transcriptions in this book.
The CD has each song with and without drums. Without a click, you need to listen to the bass line. It’s clear and easy to follow, like Essential Styles, and it will help you master the most important skill of time-keeping – listening.
10. Afro-Cuban Rhythms for Drum Set
If there’s one Afro-Cuban book for drum set, this is the one. Essential Styles does a great job with Latin styles, but this book goes into depth on traditional rhythms and adaptations to drum set that you could only get from a master.
As a student of this music, I really appreciate the introduction because it takes readers through a history of Afro-Cuban music, including it’s ventures in the United States. This introduction continues into the first section where the lessons are about feel, clave, and hand drumming. If these elements of traditional Afro-Cuban music are not understood, the application to drum set will suffer.
This book does a great job breaking down the clave, cascara, and other traditional rhythms. It provides exercises that gradually work in the layers of syncopation that often become messy for drummers who are new to Afro-Cuban music.
By working through this book, cover to cover, you will build a vocabulary of the traditional rhythms and be able to adapt them for drum set. For example, the guiro parts for cha cha are explained on the guiro and then on the hi hat. The quinto solo phrasing is explained, with transcription, to help you build the folkloric improvisation vocabulary.
Check out this article for more Latin drum set grooves. It includes transcriptions and brief explanations.
11. New Breed (Chester)
Gary Chester’s New Breed was written to share what he learned from his career as a studio drummer. He developed what he calls “systems” and believes that they can be developed for any style of music.
Chester’s approach to the drum set involces “territories.” He believed that the right side of the kit is for the right hand and the left side was for the left hand. If you haven’t tried something like this, you should keep an open mind. It doesn’t have to define your technique, but it will expand it.
Each exercise is approached by using one of 39 or more systems with a reading passage. The reading passages cover a range of difficulty, and the same can be said about the systems. As you progress through the book, the sections become more complicated, finishing with a brief list of “Gary’s Grooves,” which is kind of a treat.
This book is the only one on the list that took me years to play through. Part of the reason being that I played the systems with right hand on the hi hat as well as left hand on the hi hat. Although I had the same approach with Future Sounds, this book was more challenging for me.
Bonus: Studio and Big Band Drumming (Houghton)
If you need to lean how to learn how to read drum charts to play in a band or do recording sessions with limited to no rehearsals, this is your one-stop shop. Steve Houghton includes the basics of reading charts, provides several examples of the common styles of drum set grooves, exercise to develop skills, and play along charts at the end for application.
For some basics about how to read drum charts, check out this article. It includes examples and visuals to get started.
I would have been lost if I didn’t have to buy this book for an all-state jazz audition in 10th grade. I didn’t get a chair in the ensemble, but this book changed my approach to studying music. The next year, I started taking lessons from a North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band alum, and my development was track for professional status.