Oh, right, use the metronome. It's an incredibly helpful tool, and very easy to use. the discipline is the hard part.
Here's a brief story about a VERY seasoned drummer here in B'Town:
We're between drummers and our lead guitarist called in an old friend to help us nail a demo CD. The showed up with the simplest kit imaginable; set up and we ran through the set. One take, no rehearsal. He'd never played these songs before.
I took home a CD of the set so I could get my chops and lines tight. I dragged the songs into "Garageband" and synced up the tempo for each. Just for fun, I checked the drummer's timing 30 seconds, then two minutes into each song. In every case, he hit the downbeat exactly on the barline. His fills were nothing fancy, nor his cymbal work. But he WAS the groove. When I grow up, I want to be a professional like that.
Here's a brief story about a VERY seasoned drummer here in B'Town:
We're between drummers and our lead guitarist called in an old friend to help us nail a demo CD. The showed up with the simplest kit imaginable; set up and we ran through the set. One take, no rehearsal. He'd never played these songs before.
I took home a CD of the set so I could get my chops and lines tight. I dragged the songs into "Garageband" and synced up the tempo for each. Just for fun, I checked the drummer's timing 30 seconds, then two minutes into each song. In every case, he hit the downbeat exactly on the barline. His fills were nothing fancy, nor his cymbal work. But he WAS the groove. When I grow up, I want to be a professional like that.
