3 ways to practice with a metronome | Drum Lesson

What's up everybody Simon here and today I'd like to show you three ways to practice with a metronome and how this sound might become your best friend at the end of this video. Here we go! I know the problem of rushing in a drum fill or slowing down by playing a groove over a long period of time. These three exercises will help you to become a better timekeeper on the drum set. And for this lesson I'm using the smartphone app called Tempo Advance. It's available for the iPhone and it has a lot of settings that you can adjust. It's really great. Unfortunately it's not available on Android phones but I think there's tons of different apps that you can get for Android phones. So let's start with the first one! So first of all you choose a tempo that is I'm running on 80 now. I want to go to 95. So I hold the plus button and then I increase the tempo by 10 and then I add five more. And then the big knob is for your quarter notes and the smaller knobs underneath are your subdivisions. So I want to play in 4-4 and by swiping right I add quarter beats. One, two, three, four. And by tapping on the button I change the click sound. Now I have my 4-4 beat with different click sounds. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Okay then you add a subdivision. Let's say eighth notes. You do the same. Swipe right. And then you have eighth notes as a subdivision. Three and four and one and two and three and four. Okay so now you start playing a groove. Either one or three bars and you play a fill in that subdivision that you decided to choose. So now it's in eighth notes. So I play eighth notes fills after a bar of beat or three bars of beat. So here we go. One, two, three, four. Okay so you do this now for a minute and then you increase the bpm by five. And what is pretty cool about this app is in your upper right corner you have the possibility to do this automatically. So you go up in the upper right. Hit the button. Then it's select one of the other options to automate bpm change. You go to by time. Then increase bpm by five. And then every minute. And this is set now. And then you have to push the return button right here. And then push play. And you're ready to go. Two, three, four. And then you do the same thing again and after a minute it increases the bpm by five. So with the second exercise you can check how consistent your timing already is. You set up your mitronome. Your mighty metronome. Your metronome up to four bars by swiping right in the tempo advanced app. So one, two, three, four. Yeah okay. So then you change the click sound by tapping on the bottoms. It might take a little while. Okay and your last bar has no click sound. So it's three bars of click sound and then one bar without a click sound. And this is how you can check how consistent your timing already is. So when I show you this now I use the first bar as my count in. And then I play two bars with a click sound and my third or the fourth bar is then without a click. And then I start all over again. And the goal is to have the same one after this bar of no click beats or click sounds as your metronome. So here we go. Okay so you do this for a couple of minutes or like five, ten minutes. And then you change the bars with no click sounds. So you use two bars of click sound. Two bars of click sound and then two bars without a click sound. Let's try. Okay so you can do this then with one bar and three bars off or even over a longer period of time. So let's move on to the third and last one. Okay so the last exercise. The third one is actually the hardest one. You have to hear your downbeat click on the fourth 16th note of your 16th note subdivision. So it's one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a. It's pretty hard in the beginning. I still struggle with it. But believe me it will be really good for your timing. And like the hardest part is actually to get into hearing the click sound on the last 16th note of your 16th note pattern. So what I do is I hear the click on the downbeat first like one two three four and then I count the 16th out loud like one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a so that I get a feel how the 16th notes feel in that tempo. In the tempo that I wanted to practice it. And then I hit a crash on the downbeat and on my second 16th notes and then I try to change the feel in my head. And then I keep playing my bass drum with the click first so that it's like and then I can start open I can start to open my groove. Okay so let's give it a shot and here we go. Two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and Okay so now I have a feel how this feels like. I have a feel how this feels like and I start playing. So as you can see or hear it's really hard to keep track with the click track and when it's on the fourth 16th note on the beat. And I'm still struggling with it and this was just playing groups. So you also could do it or should do it with playing fills. And then next step would be you hear the click track on the e and you can check this out for yourself. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. Click like, hit the subscribe button, ring the bell so you get notified when new videos come out. Write down in the comment section if you practice with the metronome. Do you hate the metronome? How do you practice with the metronome? Just say hi, whatever. Leave a comment. Thank you so much. I think that's it. I see you in the next video. Simon out!