Another drumming grasshoppa

Ry The Drummer

Junior Member
Hello everyone. I recently started trying to really improve my performance on the drums, and I've been lurking around here reading some of the topics to expand my drum knowledge. I've been playing for a few years, but mostly on a casual basis with only self-taught experience.

Ry is pronounced like the Rye in Rye Bread, and is short for Ryan. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida. I am about to graduate with a BAS in IT Management. I have a few other hobbies such as cooking, drinking, video games, etc. etc., but I want to really focus on my drumming as much as possible in my spare time for now. I actually started to teach myself how to read music, using Meytal's youtube videos for the basics.

I bought some of Avenged Sevenfold's sheet music so I have something to practice while I learn to read. Don't get me wrong, this is quite an ambitious choice - I'm surely not on their level skill-wise. I figure I can just learn it bar-by-bar, while practicing other stuff too, and just make progress as I can. The particular song I was thinking is Nightmare.

So, for a general sense of what type of music I want to play I will list a couple examples. I enjoy the styles of: Tool, Avenged Sevenfold, Five Finger Death Punch, and some ( i guess "punk"?) stuff from Rise Against/Rage Against the Machine/some others I can't think of now, and I love playing hip-hop type beats. I like some heavier stuff such as Meshuggah, but sometimes the screaming gets too annoying.. I find that Five Finger Death Punch has a better balance between screaming and singing. I also like some easier listening stuff, but I tend to get bored on the drums when I'm not busy enough.

I am currrently practicing on a Yamaha DTXplorer e-kit. It has 4 toms total (1 "floor" tom), 1 ride, 1 hihat, 1 crash. Of course I can program each of those to be any drum, but I figure that basic set up is most versatile. I also have my Iron Cobra double pedals set up on the e-kit. I moved to this condo a couple years ago, and that is when I purchased the e-kit. However, I miss my acoustic Gretsch more and more as time goes on. It's just no comparison between the two. It might be better if I could afford that badass Roland e-kit, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon. So I plan on trying to sound-proof a spare bedroom I have in the condo so I can set up the acoustic set again and get back on track to practicing.

The Yamaha kit is too cheap for me to be able to seriously practice on. My knee hits the snare when I get to really going at the double bass, and it is already raised as high as the kit will allow it. Im 6 foot 2, so yeah I'm tall but I'm no giant. Not to mention that the hihat pedal had the plug on the right side, so it was quicky destroyed by the double bass pedal next to it, which means my hihat randomly opens and closes now. It's quite annoying.. Oh, and I need a new double pedal as well, since the Iron Cobras got their connecting bar bent during the move :( :( so so sad... It makes the left pedal have an unnatural resistance and makes it hard to keep in time.

The Gretsch kit is currently deconstructed sitting in that room. So one of my goals is to start planning out the sound proof construction. I'm going to draw up some plans and run them by a friend of mine who is really handy in construction, as well as my Dad who used to run a recording studio. When I start really getting down to planning, I want to see what you guys think as well. Also, I'm pretty amateur-ish when it comes to discipline and practicing, because I'm 100% self-taught, so hopefully I can pick up some other useful tips here.

In case an admin happens to read this - I have a technical question in regards to my account - I tried to register an account named "Rye." The problem is that the email never reached the address I provided. I've had trouble registering this email acct for forums in the past, and I think it may have something to do with the fact that it's an AOL address. I guess either AOL rejects it, or the sending mechanism doesn't like AOL for whatever reason. So if you want to either delete that altogether, or if you want to change my name to just "Rye" that would be great. I mean, obviously I'm a drummer if I'm here, so no need for "The Drummer" in my name.. I'm just not creative when it comes to making up names so I just added that to the end when my first attempt failed, haha..

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. I'm used to writing so it just kind of flows out.. If only drumming was as easy.

Ry
 
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