From time to time I answer drumming and music related questions on the q&a website Quora. This is one of those answers...

Question:

I've been playing with a metronome and I have it skip beats when I practice. I just feel that there is more I could be doing to get my internal clock as tight and solid as possible. Do any expert drummers out there have any secret ways or unique to practice keeping better time?

My answer:

Practicing to a metronome that skips beats is a great idea. Have you tried this with bars? Four bars on, four bars off for example.

A couple of other suggestions...

• Set your click to half time — Playing at 120pm? Set the click to 60bpm.

• Click on different subdivisions — Instead of assuming the click is on the 1, 2, 3, 4 try playing with it on the offbeat (1 e AND a, 2 e AND a etc) or if you're up for a real challenge the 'e' or 'a'. I strongly recommend doing this slowly with something you’re comfortable playing first. Benny Greb's book The Language Of Drumming has some great exercises to practice in this way.

Inspired by Derek Sivers, I've added a “now” page to my website. Check it out here.

Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”. 

Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.

So a page on a person’s website, that tells you what this person is focused on at this stage in their life, is called a “now page”.

Learn more about the ”now page” movement at nownownow.com/about.

ps. On a related note, highly recommend you read Derek Sivers' book Anything You Want.

Hey folks,

I'm running a Rock School from 4-8 April in Ipswich. There are a few places remaining so if you are interested it's not too late to book a place.

The Rock Schools run over five days during school holidays and are open to all 11-17 year olds regardless of previous experience. Under the guidance of professional musicians students write, rehearse and record original music at a popular Ipswich based recording studio, and on the final day perform a concert to friends and family. 

You don't even need an instrument; we provide everything you need to make music.

Learn more at the Kick! Music Schools website. If you have any questions drop us an email!

Ross

There are some great things on the internet, but this has to be one of my new favourites. The Chrome Music Lab is a collection of cool music experiments built using the Web Audio API (more about that here).

From the Chrome Music Lab website:

Music is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works.

The experiments are great fun to play around with (the Rhythm and Oscillator are my favourites) and a great educational tool. If you are a learning an instrument, a parent of someone learning an instrument or a teacher — check it out!

Take 5 minutes to watch this. It's incredible.

Martin Molin designed and built the entire machine (14 months work) and composed the music. There are some incredibly talented people out there and Martin is clearly one of them! 

Visit www.wintergatan.net to learn more about the project and how the machine was made.

I was recently asked to compile a few videos of me drumming, so I thought I'd share them with you as well. Some of the videos are a few years old so please excuse the ridiculous haircut!

I'll add to this playlist as I come across more videos (I'm sure there are more out there) and when I get round to filming a few more.

Enjoy!

View the playlist on Youtube