Working on some Solo Techniques
Don’t forget, keeping time is numero uno in drumming. Keep all practices with a metronome, your rudiments, songs, practices. A band will hire someone who can keep time well compared to someone who can do flowery solo. That being said don’t shelve a skill in developing solo.
If you want to be a good drummer a band always gives space to the drummer to do a 8 bar or 12 bar solo.
So what is an 8 bar or 12 bar solo comprises of. Firstly, they are just a bar of fills. Of Couse don’t play a boring sixteen note fills, you are not going to impress anyone. Here are a few ideas to make your solo interesting.
- Give a lot of space in your soloing, do some incredible fills and then, hit the toms and crashes in spaces, it gives time for your audience to digest what you are doing. Remember you are not trying to impress drummers, your audience is a novice and knows nothing about drumming, so make it interesting and communicate well.
- A 4-stroke roll is a good solo rudiment hit snare, left tom floor tom in a triplet motion and add bass drum in a delay. This takes time to master. I practiced 5 min a day slowly and can do at incredible speed after a year. So be patient.
- 6 stoke application. Snare/ left tom/ floor tom/ bass drum 2x/ floor tom/ left tom/ bass drum 2 x/snare. Do it in one motion. It’s a 1 bar solo.
- The akira jimbo solo 1: right crash with bass/ left crash with bass/ snare (rrll) Do it continuously. (This is a paradiddle diddle technique)
Akira jimbo solo 2: crash with bass/ snare/ tom 2x/ snare 2x, then progress the same technique to other cymbals and toms. - Snare/ bass 2x/ left tom/ bass 2x/ right tom/bass 2x/floor tom/ bass 2x/ snare/ bass 2x/ left tom/ bass 2x/ right tom/ bass 2x/ snare. That makes a complete 1 bar.
There you go, keep working on this and develop your own crazy stuff to develop your 8 bar or 12 bar solo.
All the best
Andrew william
