Timing is Everything: How Drummers Can Improve their Pocket
It’s about time! You’re finally here reading this article! No but really, that’s what this blog post is about. Timing. Pocket. How to hone your drums skills to get everybody dancing. We all know that timing is everything when it comes to drumming – it's the heartbeat of the music, the rhythm that keeps everything in sync. So we’re going to give you some timing exercises that'll have you drumming like clockwork in no time. Some of these will take time to learn, but they’re also fun to try and will show marked improvement on your pocket as a drummer.
Metronome Mastery
Ah, the trusty metronome – every drummer's best frenemy. It either comforts you knowing that it’ll keep you right on track or stresses you out worrying about when it might all fall apart. Or maybe you’ve been in the all-too-common situation where you’re playing live with a metronome in your ear and the band gets ever-so-slightly offbeat and the metronome just confuses the heck out of you. It happens to everyone now and then. The key to mastering the metronome requires practice and a bit of creative fun. Here are some practice exercises that will help you to hone your timing. For all of these exercises, I would recommend setting the metronome to click without any accent on the first beat of the measure to avoid confusion.
Just Jam to It
Let’s start with first things first. If you’re just starting out, the simplest way to practice your timing with a metronome is just to jam to your own beat with the metronome clicking away in your ear. Pick a beat that you like and go crazy, all while keeping in time with the clicks! Throw in some fills every now and then to practice those in time with the beat as well. It’s a common problem to rush our fills when our adrenaline kicks in and we want to be the star of the moment! Practicing your fills to a metronome helps you to learn to slow them down and come right back into the beat. Even if you don’t use a metronome during performances, always practice with a metronome for at least part of your practice sessions to get a feel for staying in time.
Slooowww it Dooowwwn
Slow your metronome down to half-time or even quarter-time while you’re practicing so that the metronome only clicks on the first beat of each measure or maybe the first and third beat of a 4/4 time signature. This will force you to keep time yourself until that click comes in on beat 1 and tells you that you’re spot on! I like to set my metronome to 40-60 beats per minute (bpm) while I actually play at 160-240 bpm to force myself to listen to my playing and pay more attention to my tempo to keep myself in time.
Play Off-Time (On Purpose)
This is a bit more difficult, but one of my favorite exercises is to play along with the metronome clicking on every off-beat. In other words, you’ll play a beat in 4/4 time and let the metronome click in between each beat (1-click-2-click-3-click-4-click). It seems strange, but no other exercise has personally improved my pocket more than this. You can also practice alternating between drumming on the beat and drumming off the beat, seamlessly transitioning between the two. Not only does this help with your timing, but it can also help you to grasp odd time signatures. And if you want to increase the difficulty even more, you can let the metronome click on the first or last 16th note of each beat, forcing you to hit the beat ever-so-slightly before or after the click.
Practice Your Subdivisions
You can practice subdivisions with a metronome too, which I would strongly recommend, but I’ll set this one apart of the metronome exercises because it’s a concept all its own. “Subdivisions” are basically quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, sixteenth note triplets, etc. You can practice your timing (especially for fills) by switching seamlessly between different subdivisions all while staying in time. For example, start on the snare drum by hitting one measure of quarter notes, followed by one measure of eighth notes, one measure of triplets, one measure of sixteenth notes, one measure of sixteenth note triplets, and then back down in the opposite direction. As I mentioned above, it’s best to use a metronome to make sure you are, in fact, staying in time as you go up and down the “scale” of subdivisions. To increase the difficulty, jump around to different subdivisions in different sequences. You could also add an underlying beat to the subdivision routine. For example, add the bass drum on beats 1 and 3 and the snare on beats 2 and 4 while running through the subdivisions on the hi hat as the ostinato.
Polyrhythm Party!
Time to get fancy! Experiment with layering different rhythms on top of each other. Try playing slow triplets on the hi hat while playing an eighth note pattern on the drum and snare. Or try any other combination that sounds like fun! Learning your basic rudiments helps quite a bit with learning polyrhythms (although I know that sounds odd), but rudiments are a whole other topic for a whole other day. Suffice it to say that polyrhythms are kind of like juggling for drummers – challenging but oh-so-satisfying when you get it right!
Conclusion
Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is perfect timing or pocket presence. Practice these exercises regularly, stay patient, expect to make a bunch of mistakes, and most importantly, have fun with it! Before you know it, you'll be drumming with the precision of a Swiss watch and the groove of a German commuter train (which they say are always on time…).