The Highest of Hats

Basically every drum set, from rock to country to jazz, has a piece called a hi-hat (or hi-hats, depending on who you ask).  It looks like this:

It's two small cymbals sandwiched together.  It's great for keeping rhythm without making a loud sound, like during the verses of a song.  The pedal changes it from open (where there's a small space between the two) to closed (where they are right next to each other, touching).  The picture above shows the hi-hat as open.  Here's a good demonstration - the long string of yellow notes is the drummer playing the hi-hat closed, and when it switches to a blue note, the hi-hat is opened, quickly played, then closed again before the next note.  The first time it happens is at 0:12 in the linked video.  That splashy sound you hear is the hi-hat being hit while it's open, then the drummer pushing down on the pedal and closing the hi-hat while it's still ringing from the hit.  It's a pretty cool sound.  You can also just leave it open, but it sounds more similar to a standard crash or splash cymbal that way, as opposed to the cool closing sound.

The problem is that this is really hard to play correctly.  It's not just the coordination of using a fourth limb - that is a challenge in itself, though.  The hardest part is the fact that you end up opening and closing it between notes.  If you look at the demonstration below, the drummer is holding down the hi-hat pedal until the red line, at which point he lets the pedal up for a sec, plays the blue note and the yellow bar (hi-hat and kick drum), then presses the pedal down again to close the hi-hat at the purple line, then plays the next set of notes (yellow closed hi-hat and red snare).  

It's tough!  My brain wants to either let up the pedal at the same time I hit the note (which is too late), or wants to press down on the pedal again at the same time as the next yellow note (too late again).  It's very hard to get used to lifting up the pedal and pushing it down again between notes.  The reason I mention all of this is because I've been trying to learn how to play the hi-hat correctly.  I can do it fairly well on simple (slow) beats, but something as fast as Tom Sawyer (shown above) absolutely kicks my ass.  It's just another one of those things that really makes you appreciate how talented and coordinated good drummers really are.

A bit of Shocking news

I've tried to keep this mostly about drumming, because well that's what it's about.  But sometimes I just have to talk about something else.  So every now and then I will talk about something that is not at all related to drumming and pretend that it is.  This will be one of those times.

Recently I have begun to think that I am becoming a superhero.  You know how all superheroes have origin stories, right?  Spiderman got bit by a spider, Dr. Manhattan got fried in a some kind of a particle physics reactor, etc.  Well I have been getting shocked a lot lately.  And I know what you're saying now - it's winter, the air is dryer, everyone gets shocked!  You must be an idiot!  Well I probably am.  But listen, this is supernatural levels of shocks.  Like, every time I see a metal doorknob I brace for impact.  I went out for a pizza the other day and it was dark at the time (late meal, what can I say).  When I touched the doorknob of the pizza place, I saw a blue spark of lightning shoot from my finger to the door (or maybe the reverse, I forget which way it goes).  It was like this:

At least that's how it felt.  Not only that, but when I got home, I kicked my car door shut (so I wouldn't get shocked), and I got another visible bolt of lightning from the car door THROUGH MY SHOE.  So I know what you're saying now - ok you get shocked a lot, but that's not an origin story, so you can't be a superhero (you're probably not saying that but I know I would be).  And that's where you'd be wrong.  You see, I've been having some problems with my hands lately so I went to the doctor.  Apparently the test for carpal tunnel is SITTING IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR.  I kid, it's more like sticking various parts of your arm in an electrical outlet.  

The point of the story is, I feel like ever since I had that test done, I have been getting shocked more.  That definitely qualifies as an origin story.  So if you see me shooting lightning bolts out of my hand someday (not like this), you will know why.  Also, I haven't decided if I'm going to be a hero or a villain yet, so if you were mean to me in high school, you might want to start praying for hero.  Just sayin'.

And this related to drumming because...umm...I played Ride the Lightning in RB the other day and helped Reuben pass it for the first time on expert guitar.  See, I told you I would make the connection somehow.

I suck at Rock Band now

Things used to be so simple.  Little notes falling down the screen.  I see a red one, and I hit the pad with the red ring around it.  See this below?  This was easy.  Four colors and a pedal.  Evenly spaced, all on the same plane, in the same order that they appear on the screen.  Equal, predictable rebound.

I used to be able to 5-star most of the songs in my collection.  I gold-starred over 1/3 of them.  I could get 100% on some songs!  Oh, how the times have changed.  The first time I played a song with the new setup, I barely passed.  It was one of the easiest songs in the game.  Sigh.  This is what I have now:

Chaos and madness.  I know it'll get better though.  I played a few songs and started consistently 4 starring harder songs (instead of failing them outright), so things are looking up.  It's easier if I just ignore the cymbals and pretend I'm playing a weirdly-shaped RB kit, but that's not really why I got this kit.

I've done a little thinking, and I'd say there are a few reasons why it's harder now:

1)  I haven't adjusted to the new kick pedals yet.  I get a lot of double hits because the pedal springs back after a hit and I'm still pressing it down, so it hits the pad again.  I feel like that's something I can learn to control.  

2) My muscle memory isn't in place yet.  I used to see a yellow note and know exactly where I had to put a stick to get the right result.  I could play my RB kit with my eyes closed.  Now, I find myself missing pads (cymbals especially) or getting there late.

3) There are choices to make now.  If I see a green note coming down the screen, I have to decide if I should hit the floor tom or the crash cymbal.  In a lot of cases it's obvious - you play the cymbal during the long streaks in the verses and chorus.  You play the toms during fills.  But many times it's not obvious.  In the two cases below, the top one is much easier to deal with.  There's no thinking, you just do it:

It's a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing.  If I'm playing a song that's 120 BPM (which is not even very fast), that's two beats per second.  BPM counts quarter measures, so that's two quarter notes per second.  If I'm playing 16th notes during a fill (four notes per quarter measure), that's eight notes per second.  I think I did that calculation right...  

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, if I have an eigth of a second to decide what pad to hit, that's not easy to do.  It's tough to get used to, but overall I appreciate the challenge and I think it will make me a better drummer in the long run.

(Seriously though, look at those MSPaint skills)

Making some upgrades

Special Edition Super Long Post With Pictures today!  But first, a brief intro.  I have known for some time now that a stock RB drum set wasn't going to be good enough.  It's fun, of course, but I wanted to simulate the experience of drumming a little more closely.  So I did what any reasonable person would do - I bought an electronic drum kit that I could hook up to Rock Band.  After doing some bargain shopping on ebay, the packages arrived:

First I opened the smaller box that contained my kick pedals.  It's a double pedal, but I don't imagine I'll be using the left one any time soon.  Some assembly required, it seems...

Next I opened the big box, and the first thing I noticed was DEAR GOD THAT'S A LOT OF CABLES:

After my cablephobia subsided, I started pulling things out of the box.  Below the frame you can see the hi-hat pedal, the kick trigger, a couple of cymbal mounts, and above them the drum brain:

But we can't forget the pads!  Laid out on my couch you can see the three small pads for toms, the big white pad for the snare, a smaller hi-hat cymbal, two big cymbals (crash and ride), and the massive nest of cables:

So I started assembling everything and noticed something peculiar - the bolts that held the frame together had a square head.  But then, a flash of inspiration - I took the bit out of my screwdriver, and it worked perfectly:

Then I hit a bit of trouble - I realized everything was on the wrong side!  Whoever I bought it from must've been a lefty.  You can see in the picture below, the small snare arm and the hi-hat connector are both on the right side instead of the left.  I checked online to make sure that my assumption was correct:

Yep, it was on the wrong side all right.  So I took off the top cross-frame-piece-thingy and moved some things around.  I then started attaching some pads and eventually got things how I wanted them.  I then put my kick pedals in place, as seen below:

The final piece was a great adapter box made by Doc at Doc's Rockband Mods (those guys are amazing).  This box allowed me to hook up my drum brain to an Xbox 360 controller so I could use it for Rock Band.  Here is a picture of the box:

And that was it - I had to do a little research to find out how to map my drum pads to the right MIDI codes for Rock Band, but the guys at Doc's did most of the research there so it wasn't too hard.  Below is the finished product:

Click on that last one for labels.  I got a little crazy with the labels..so sue me.  But now I can play Rock Band on a real drum set!

A Few Words About Ebay

I recently decided to try and upgrade my Rock Band setup a little bit. Get a real kick pedal, maybe a few other things. Make it so it is better at helping me learn to drum. I figured that I could get some used equipment for cheap, and Craigslist has turned out to be near useless in this regard, so I thought I would give ebay another try. Up until about two weeks ago, my only experience with ebay was buying a used Guitar Hero 3 guitar so that I had two guitars for RB. This was almost a year ago, so I was a little rusty.

After bidding on various things throughout the week, I have come to a few conclusions about ebay.

1) You can get some good deals if you get lucky.

2) People are jerks.

3) The end of an auction can get CRAZY.

To illustrate point 3, here's the approximate timeline for an item I bought recently. At the beginning I decided that I would pay $115, given the condition it's in:

5 days, 17 hours to go - The item is up for $20. I bid $100, so I am in the lead at $21.

2 days, 3 hours to go - Someone bids $30. I lead at $31.

0 days, 14 hours to go - Someone bids $40. I lead at $41.

0 days, 45 mins to go - Someone bids $80. I lead at $81.

0 days, 40 mins to go - I up my bid to $110. I still lead at $81.

0 days, 5 mins to go - someone bids $100. I lead at $101.

0 days, 1 min to go - they bid $111. I am no longer in the lead.

0 days, 45 secs to go - I bid $115. I lead at $112.

0 days, 20 secs to go - They bid $116. I am no longer in the lead.

0 days, 8 seconds to go - I bid $125. I am in the lead at $121.

Time expires before the other guy can outbid me again. I win at $121, which is $6 more than I wanted to pay. I know that it's still a good deal though - if I had bought that item new, it would easily cost me $250+. Here's the thing - I was easily the leader no question until less than an hour to go, and then it just got wild. Some people really like that about ebay...it gets on my nerves. I would rather just buy an item and get it over with.

This can just as easily go the other way though - there have been quite a few auctions over the last week where about 3 hours before it ended, the bids went higher than what I was willing to pay. I have won 4 auctions over the last couple weeks, but probably bid on 50 things.

Here's one of the things I bought - someone may be getting a gift soon (if you can read the inscription on the side it may be a clue). And no, this isn't what cost me $120 (it was more like $10):

A brief sidenote on scammers - they do exist on ebay and you have to be careful. I have a solid team of Internet Experts that help me out with this kind of thing (actually it's just Anderbra, but that's close enough). It's hard for me with my Frugalitis to buy things that I'm not sure about the quality, but so far so good I guess. Maybe i'm just not built for ebay. But as long as I keep finding deals on stuff that I want, I'll keep playing the game.

A Jagged Gorgeous Winter

Not much happening around here. For various reasons The Band (name pending) hasn't practiced lately. There was a birthday dinner with parents, then a sick band member, then someone working overtime on the weekend. It's ok though - I don't think anyone's avoiding the band or bored with it or anything. I mean it sucks - I wish I could play, but the time will come. I am thankful for the time I've had playing so far.

The good news is that I can still play Rock Band, which I love to do. RB has a score tracking mechanism called gold stars - to make a long story short, it stands for "really good job, almost perfect". So I decided to try and gold star as many songs as possible. I'm up to about 1/3 of my catalog now. There's a cool website I use to track this stuff - you can see my profile here.


It says there's 11 songs I haven't beaten, but that's a clerical error. There's really only 5 or 6. A bit of explanation about the graphic above - 5 stars means you did pretty well on the song. 100% is obviously, you hit 100% of the notes. FC means you never broke your combo - that is, in addition to hitting every note on the chart, you never hit a note when there wasn't one.

Anyways, I'm not trying to brag about how awesome I am. Just wanted to say - RB2 has goals I can work toward. I know that when I gold star a new song it means I'm getting better. It is a good reason for me to keep practicing and playing (besides being fun, of course!). Hopefully next week we'll get back to practicing.

Meet the band

I decided I should finally introduce you to The Band. I was going to get some better pictures, but we haven't practiced the last couple of weeks for various reasons, so I'll see what pictures I can dig up.

Erica - bass

(Flattering picture right?) Erica is my coworker and the band's bassist (is that a word?). I don't know how many years she's been playing for but she's pretty good. This is her third band at the moment, besides the previously mentioned Ducksicle and Blueflowers. She plays bass in all three bands. I guess when you like an instrument a lot, you stick with it.

Erica also owns not only our band's practice space (her basement), but also the drum kit that I play on. At least I think she owns it. Either that or somebody just left it there one day like an orphan and she took it in and raised it as her own.

Erin - vocals

Let's see if my history is accurate - Erin and Erica have been friends for many years (I think). Or maybe Erica was friends with Erin's roommate, Erica (I know, I'm confused just typing it. Erica, Erica, Erin, and Aaron...sigh). Erin is the singer in the band. I believe this is her first time being in a band, so I guess we have something in common (other than an awesome name). She always seems to be smiling, laughing, etc which is a good quality to have in a band member (although I don't know if happy singers write good lyrics, haha).

Helmut - lead guitar

Helmut is our German guitar player (he is German, not the guitar. At least not that I know of). Helmut is in Ducksicle along with Erica and they've known each other for a few years. He seems very mellow and is always willing to help me out with things like "maybe throw in a crash there at the transition" and "try hitting the toms during the bridge instead of just the bass". He's very good at giving me suggestions without making me feel like I suck for doing it wrong.

Mystery member

Supposedly we will also be having a rhythm guitar player (who possibly doubles as a keyboardist too), but as I have not practiced with said mystery member yet, she cannot be introduced. I also have no pictures of her.


So that's the band. They're all pretty cool and I've had fun playing with them so far. I hope that things work out and we get to play together for quite awhile.