Endings

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
Of songs.

Are you like a kid at Christmas when it comes to pulling off endings or are they more like the bane of your existence?

Any rules of thumb you follow? Do you have a lot of variations on your very last cap note? Do you get tired of your ideas? Are your bandmates good or not with endings? Is there anything you wish you could do during endings that you're not?

A good dismount is important.

I see my fair share of drummers that overplay during the song, but when it comes to a legitimate place for them to bust a nut, they peter out and don't give the ending it's proper treatment..

What's up with that?

Feel free to discuss your exit strategy.
 
A good dismount is important.
Two waiting glasses of wine is classy ;)


Seriously, I am conscious of repetitiveness across a set. Additionally, endings that are musically interesting, or would otherwise be attractive in a recording, don't necessarily get the job done in a gig setting. For live work, endings need to be definite & easy to predict to maximise audience reaction.

I am doing a live fade out on one track at my next gig - that takes a bit of pulling off effectively.
 
We fade one song, "Lay Down Sally". It works good usually.

One thing I noticed, you can do the song great, but if the ending hiccups, it tarnishes the whole song. Fresh in the mind and all.

Thanks to you Andy, I now know what a Malbec is.
 
I suck at big endings. Seriously. I'd rather have the song end with a full stop so I don't have to play them. I'm self-conscious about not ending every song the same way, so I tend to force in things that don't fit just to make them a little different.

Jim Riley told me that a lesson he learned from working with a producer once a long time ago was not to worry about repeating the same fill; if it sounded good once and it would sound good again, don't feel the need to somehow change it just so you're not repeating it. I have tried to take that advice, and if I was smart, I would probably apply the same lesson to endings.

But, alas....
 
I'm surprised to hear that Lar. To me endings are just like one big long syllable where I try and fill as much space as I can with anything I feel like. No time to be lazy, endings. If there's enough time, I'll try and work some "Bonham" trips in there.

A lot of times the thing that sounds best for the stuff I play is just a cymbal wash, transitioning between different cymbals usually. I use that a lot. Sometimes drums detract from certain endings IMO, and sometimes nothing else will do.

Lately I've been starting with some fast tom-y snare-y hand stuff morphing into some kinda cymbal wash thing. I don't even know what my bass drum is doing. Mainly I keep my eye on the lead guy and end with him, even if I have to stop short. If you're a front person, you want your drummer to be johnny on the spot with the endings. Most front people I know of don't like to be left hanging waiting for the drummer to finish lol.

I use the snare flam quickly followed by a single kick note as my "landing" note quite a lot. It never gets old for me. I like endings. It's the one thing that's not scripted, we feel each one out. By now we know the other's tendencies.
 
I like endings. I get annoyed if the band doesn't listen during them-- it's not just making noise-- it should be like a little free composition. It's not just time to go crazy on the drums, totally out of character with the rest of the song/tune. I do enough to make a sustained sound, and for it to go somewhere, either with mostly drums or mostly cymbals-- if it's an exciting tune I'll do more, if it's a mellow tune I'll do less. If there's any kind of grand pause before the last note, I'll often set it up with one or two big notes on the drums. If I'm going to end the fermata with a crash, I telegraph that to the band, and definitely want somebody playing it with me. Occasionally, if I want to make an epic out of it, I'll go back into playing time on the last note of the fermata, and fade out-- either by myself, or with whoever is on top of it enough to join me.
 
I have a bagful of 'endings' I lean on from time to time, some of these include;
- the What is Hip ending - sizzly hihat hold - followed by a loud snare flam-kick
- the fast single stroke snare roll alternating with the fast cymbal roll
- the kitchen sink roll around the skins - or rolling up and hitting crashes as triplet accents from the toms
- lots of foot-tom roll combos - but honestly the killer rolls at the end of each song get tired pretty fast which is why I...
- change up the speed eg. a fast roll followed by a half speed dramatic phrase

Or my favorite ideas for endings come from watching the great SNL drummer - Shawn Pelton!
 
I think big endings are cheezy. If we do them they are last song only. We do originals in my bands, so we get to write interesting endings for most songs, and there are a few that lend themselves to a big ending for the leave the stage moment. Maybe 25% of the time we go ahead and do it.

I mostly utilize dynamics to make them interesting. Start soft, and build up on cymbals, play a good smattering of 32nds on the toms and let the level come up. Sometimes I'll do a kind of oscillating thing with the dynamics, soft to loud then soft and loud over and over till I see the boys start to wind up whatever nonsense they are doing, this works well on the toms alone. Try to end it all at the same time.
 
Thankfully, I don't have to worry about them as most of our songs have fixed endings.

But a few rock numbers end with a guitar solo, I watch the guitarist and he gives me the nod which means "finish whenever you like now", I slow down over one bar, flam on 4, then cymbal wash over his final twiddles. And sometimes, when he's hanging on to his final note and thinks it's all over, I go into a couple more rolls and then EVENTUALLY a final flam and we all stop on a cymbal crash. (And then when it's all stopped I sometimes throw in a ba ba dum on the floor tom - just for the hell of it).

But this is only if the crowd is really up and into it. Usually it's - crash, check the set list, next !
 
Let one guy break time while everyone else counts four bars silently, then play on more measure of time, its way better than the Ol ritardando.
 
I like the gradual slow down thing but it seems I keep getting into bands that want an ACDC ending to every song. Playing big tom rolls and cymbal sustains are a bit fun but a bit embarrassing at the same time.
 
I really like snappy, structured endings and also a little variation rather than the big drawn out ta-daaaa every time.

When it comes to final stings - the very last big note - it seems to me that concert bands usually won't end songs with a single sting but finish with a double sting or a short snappy phrase.
 
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I tried to get my band into big blow-your-wad endings but they just don't like them. A bunch of our songs seem to work pretty well with abrupt flams or a few whole notes on the toms. nice and neat.
 
We have a few set endings and in those there are the occasional big finish.

The only issue I have is that one of our guitarists is notoriously bad at looking up from his guitar at me to see when the last crash is coming.
He's had drumsticks (jokingly, not with any mallace) thrown at him in the past to teach him a lesson but still falls on deaf ears, his attention is solely on his own playing.

My previous band’s guitarists would sometimes try and do this with their backs to me whilst on stage to try and look cool, it never worked and they would end half a second later than me.

Damn guitarists!

Reg. Fade Outs we've done this a few times. Always gets a good response from a crowd, espcially if you play it up a little. We've even done a fade out and back in before another fade out which went down very well, and fun to do as a band.
 
I aim for variety... some tunes just beg for the big 'stadium' ending, others a cold stop serves better - still others, just letting the last notes hang in the air work well... just so everything isn't the typical thing every song

I always thought it was cool to have the end of one song lead right into the next tune.
 
We structure all our endings, the ending, like the beginning, is part of the song. If the band starts and finishes well, and at the same time, you can forgive quite a bit of what went on between.
Personaly I hate car crash, give it big licks, endings. I think they are so over done.
 
I like the gradual slow down thing but it seems I keep getting into bands that want an ACDC ending to every song. Playing big tom rolls and cymbal sustains are a bit fun but a bit embarrassing at the same time.

On a related note, with slight twist

Every AC/DC Song Ends The Same Way. Here's Proof.
 
Depends so much on the arrangement of the song.

I think a good drumming end to a song follows the song itself...obviously...

I don't think there is a formula...I think there is taste, consciousness of the songs movement and context of your drumming in relation to the band and song as a whole.
 
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