Last Train Home...

So I was listening to Lostprophets earlier today, and I got to thinking about how their drummer, for the “Start Something” album, creates a really good example of brilliant musicianship and creativity for drummers in that album. The three main things that Mike Chiplin (Lost Prophets 1997- 2005) demonstrates are:

Great use of accents and tap strokes

really good use of the high hats to change the feel of the track

expertly performing to a click track

These are all things that are really important in terms of musical drumming. And what I mean by that is drumming that adds to the track, that gives it just a little bit more personality with out over powering the rest of the band. More importantly he executes these things with 100% accuracy, I really want to stress the importance of being accurate with your playing, its no good being able to throw in lots of licks and ghost notes if it throws you and everyone else off the beat. The most important thing is the grove. So I'm going to look at those three things in detail so that I can explain exactly what I mean.

Accents and Tap Strokes

The track that inspired this title for me is Last Train Home (hence the post title). Listening to the drumming in the verse, you can hear the use of tap strokes and accents clearly on the snare drum. Chiplin starts by accenting the off beats before moving the accent around, still using semi-quavers, but playing a syncopated pattern with the accents to change the feel of the grove. Pay attention to how he uses doubles and tap strokes in the verse, they are quiet and controlled which means his accents don't need to be loud, as they sound load anyway in comparison to the tap strokes. My uni teacher said to me once that “ghost notes should be felt rather than herd”. Obviously you can hear ghost notes, but they should be so quiet that it seems more like a feeling than a sound. This is something that is really important to think about when drumming musically. Remember that good control over all your strokes allows you to be as creative as you want with your drumming.

Hi-Hat feel

To really get an idea for how to get a great hi-hat sound and dynamic range, you should listen to Chiplin's drumming on the track “I don't know”. Here he demonstrates how you can use the high hats to sound tight and metronomic and then washy and loud, as well as throwing in lots of great hi-hat licks. So the track opens with a clean, electric guitar, and Chiplin uses an up tempo beat, opening and closing the hi-hats to accent the guitar rhythm. He also throws in some short licks on the closed hats to give a cool and controlled feel. When the verse kicks in, Chiplin then uses a closed hi-hat sound and plays a straight solid beat occasionally opening the hats for fills. This changes the feel for the whole song making it sound crisper and even. Already we have a great demonstration of how to use your hi-hats to instantly change the feel of the song. A simpler example of this in rock would be using closed hi-hats during the verse and then using open hi-hats in the chorus to make that load, washy rock hi-hat sound that we all love. Going back to the Lostprophets track, in the pre-chorus, where the track goes into a half time feel, Chiplin gradually goes from closed hi-hats into open so that by the end of the pre-chorus he has created a great Crescendo to go into the chorus and ride on the crash. This is a great tool for any genre, but it particularly common in rock music.

Click Track

Performing to a click track takes loads of practice, and there isn't really loads of advice I can give you about that other than to keep listening to yourself and make sure that your feet and hands are in sync and dead on the click. After that its just practice practice practice! You should be aiming to get to the point so that when you are playing a grove, you can't even hear the click, that's how in time you are, and then you can start concentrating on pulling in all your licks and fills in time with the click too. On all of the tracks in this album (Start Something) you can clearly hear how tight and accurate everything that Chiplin plays is. This is partly because he will have been given plenty of time to get a perfect take in the studio, but it is also partly due to hard practice, again and again to a click.



Conclusion

Its fair to say that I am a big Lostprohets fan, so I could be a bit biased. But I do really believe in everything that I've written and I have personally learn just from listening to all of their music because they are, as a whole, very clever and talented musicians and they are well worth listening to. They also put on an amazing live show :).