Okay, this is something that I've been having trouble with for a while. How do I improve dynamics in my playing? The problem's that with my band, as my guitar player says, I'm always way too loud, so that the hard parts really don't seem that hard and the soft parts don't really breathe. The musicality, in short, suffers. Please help me.
Stick height/stroke length is your volume knob: the higher you play from the drum, the more momentum the stick builds up before impact, which generates more sound.
So, to play quietly, you need to practice quietly, which means playing from very low heights with as little muscular force as possible. Here are some simple exercises that will help you get a better handle on your dynamic control.
1. Get a copy of
Stick Control and play pg. 5 from between 3/8" and 1" from the drumhead. Use relaxed wrist strokes and apply as little force as possible to get each stroke. Start VERY slowly, i.e. eighth notes at 40 BPM.
2. Once you've got a handle on the above (give it a week or two of daily practice) Alternate playing the same exercises from 6" and 1" so that on each repeat you change the stick height. Ensure you play from only two different heights, watch your stick tips to see if you're being accurate. Moreover,
listen carefully to the sound you're making and strive for control and evenness. ALL soft notes should sound the same and ALL loud notes exactly the same. Ensure that there is no "bleed" when you move from one stick height to the next as it is common to play the first stroke of the next repeat at the previous stick height. Use a metronome to keep your time steady, there is a common tendency to speed up as we play louder and slow down when we play quieter.
3. Take simple stickings like Single Stroke Rolls, Double Stroke Rolls and play them in ascending and descending stick height (i.e. crescendo and diminuendo). Take your time starting from
ppp and going all the way to
fff and down again. Try to make each stroke a little higher/lower than the last to ensure a smooth transition through the entire dynamic range. For instance, you can take 2 bars of 16th notes to get from softest to loudest and 2 more to return to softest once again. Again, start slow so you can focus on controlling your stick height. Above all,
listen to the sound you're making - are your crescendos and diminuendos smooth like someone turning a volume knob?
4. Take everything you play with your band (even the loud parts) and practice playing it from lower stick heights, keeping the volume down. Focus on creating a good internal balance of instruments - i.e. keep the HHs and cymbals lower in volume and let the snare and bass drum speak a little more loudly. This will help make the snare and bass drum sound "bigger" in the overall mix - remember that dynamics are
relative. A lot of players start by whacking the hats so hard that they need to darn near drive the stick through the head to get the snare to sound "big" and balance their hats. A simple solution (that'll save your hands and sticks, too) is to simply drop the volume of the hats so you don't have to work so hard to get the snare to stand out.
Put in some time on these and I guarantee you'll come out with improved dynamic control.