Music Lesson: Techniques for "Power Trip"

In the metal piece "Power Trip," I'm going to change some of my techniques a little bit.

Changes in Technique

1. Snare Drum Stick Position:

   • I mentioned earlier the possibility that with some rock pieces, you might wish to turn the stick around.
   • So, rather than playing it like this, turn it around and hold the stick from this end.
   • This change gives:
     • More weight
     • More volume to the snare sound
     • More consistency

2. Hi-Hat Playing:

   • Rather than using the tip of the stick to play the hi-hats, I'm going to use this part of the stick because it digs in a bit more.
   • For this style of music, we definitely want more weight and more heaviness.

Demonstration

To show you the difference:

• If I were to use the tip of the stick on the hi-hat and play the snares quite lightly for the first two bars, it would sound like this:
  • "That's okay."
  • It could still be in time.

Now let’s see how the first two bars of this piece feel with:

• The snare stick turned around
• Me digging in a little bit more on the hi-hats.

You can always play the snare stick this way around, but just hit a bit harder.

Space Between Notes

Again, let's have a look at the first line:

• There's quite a lot of space between the notes, so you might choose to count eighth notes to land nicely on:
  • Beats 1 and 2 and 3

Attention to Detail:

• At the end of the first line, on beats three and four, you're just playing the hi-hats.
• Moving into the next line, you again only have hi-hats on beats one and two.

Bass Drum Timing

• Effectively, we have four beats across two bars where we're only playing hi-hats.
• It’s unusual not to have a bass drum on beat one.
• As you get into the second line of this piece:
  • Ensure you're ready to play the bass drum on:
    • Beat 3 in the first bar of the second line
    • Beats 3 and 4 in the second bar of that second line
• Then we go back up to the snare on bar four of the second line.

Preparing for the Eighth Note Rock Beat

• There's another half note rest, providing ample time to prepare for the next section, which features an eighth note based rock beat.
• I recommend just for this example:
  • Use the snare stick turned around
  • Dig in with your hi-hats

When we come in with that groove on the third line, it should have a bit more weight.

Transitioning to Quarter Notes

As we continue through most of the third line, be mindful of the rest between the bass drum and snare drum at the end.

Line Four Warning:

• Be careful when suddenly dropping back to quarter notes.
• It will feel like there's a lot of space in the hi-hats, especially since we’ve been playing eight hi-hats per bar for an entire line.
• Now we drop back to four hi-hats per bar.
• Count in between, perhaps the eighth notes, to help you adjust to that feel so that you don't rush through the last line.

Importance of the Last Line

The last line of the music is crucial because it's the climax of the song.

• Let me play the fourth bar of the third line and the first bar of the fourth line, so you can hear that difference.

Maintaining Tempo

There's lots of opportunity for that new time feel, with fewer notes potentially leading to a speed-up when we don’t want it.

Final Bars

In the third bar of the last line, we have some eighth note bass drums going to the hi-hat.

• The hi-hat on beats two and four replaces the snare back beat that we'd normally have.

Let’s do bars three and four of the fourth line (the last two bars of the piece):

• Ensure that last snare hit is powerful.
• "Make sure you really dig in with it."
• "Make sure it's a nice loud snare because it's the end of the piece."