Drum Practice: 7 Ways to Improve Your Drum Time Keeping

When you’re taking drum lessons it’s important to develop your time-keeping skills in addition to your technique. Here, Saint Paul, MN drum instructor John S. shares his practice techniques to help you improve your time keeping on drums…

Time keeping is an essential element of modern music, for both live and recorded songs. It’s very important to develop a strong sense of time. The drummer is often looked to, more than any other musician, to provide a solid, consistent pulse in a musical performance.

How Do You Fix the Timing on a Drum? 

Wondering how to keep a beat on drums? If  is something you struggle with, follow these simple tips: drum timekeeping

• Practice with a metronome or click track
• Try practicing at different tempos 
• Alternate playing and stopping
• Practice your fills
• Play along to recordings 
• Record yourself playing
• Try a time keeping app or drum time keeping software

Another way to improve your drum keeping time skills? Consider taking lessons with a professional drummer. By learning from the best instructors, you’ll naturally develop a better sense of how to keep time on drums. 

Here’s a video that can show you the many benefits of taking drum lessons: 

 

What is Good Time Keeping on Drums?

Technically, time keeping is a term that can mean anything from being on time for a meeting to being able to tell time on a clock. Of course, for drummers, we need to get a bit more specific here!

For the beginners, let’s talk about what time keeping really means. Time keeping refers to a drummer’s ability to play in time with the pulse of the music. In contrast, timing (which is often confused with time keeping) refers to the drummer’s coordination of his own limbs, as well as his playing relative to the rest of the band.

It’s possible to be good at one and struggle at the other. For example, a drummer may be able to play extremely complex rhythms using all four limbs (good timing), yet he may be unable to play those rhythms at a consistent tempo over a period of time (poor time keeping). Timing and time keeping are both critical skills to develop as a drummer.

In fact, if you’re looking at lists of some of the best drumming tips, keeping time almost always has a place at the top of the list. 

How Do Drummers Improve Time Keeping?

Now that you know the importance of time keeping on the drums, here are some time keeping methods that you should learn to improve your skills as a drummer. 

1. Practice With a Metronome / Click Track

In this day and age, all drummers are expected to be able to play along to a steady click track. The vast majority of studio recording is done to a click track, and more and more musical groups are using click tracks in the realm of live performance.

Even if you don’t find yourself required to play along to a click track, practicing with a click/metronome will drastically improve your time keeping which, in turn, will attract fellow musicians to your steady sense of pulse, and, down the road, will help you get more gigs.

All musicians should have a metronome, and luckily, metronomes are extremely easy to find. Almost all electronic drum sets come with a built-in metronome, and if you have an acoustic drum set, there are countless metronome apps and websites.

Acquiring a metronome is the easy part, but using the metronome effectively is a bit more challenging. There are many different ways to use a metronome, but here are a few healthy practice habits to keep in mind when practicing with a click:

2. Practice at Different Tempos

I encourage my students to alternate between faster and slower tempos. For example, repeat an exercise 15 to 20 times at a tempo of 70 BPM (beats per minute). Then, increase the tempo by 5 to 75 BPM and repeat the exercise another 15 to 20 times.

Next, lower the tempo to 65 BPM and repeat the exercise another 15 to 20 times. Then switch to 80 BPM and repeat the exercise, adding and subtracting 5 BPM from each tempo as you work on an exercise.

Whether you use this technique or make up your own, I always recommend alternating between faster and slower tempos because simply increasing the metronome by a few BPMs with each exercise may subconsciously train the drummer to speed up when playing without the click.

TIP: Remember to start with a slow, comfortable tempo before trying faster and slower variations.

3. Alternate Playing and Stopping

This tip is especially important when learning a new, challenging concept that’s too difficult to play in time for 10+ measures in a row. Play a rhythm for one measure and then rest for one measure, letting the click continue while you take that measure to analyze your performance.

Inserting a measure or more of rest quickly reveals if you’re rushing or dragging. This technique forces you to lock into a steady tempo. I find it often takes a few measures to get into a solid groove with the click, but this practice technique will strengthen your ability to feel the pulse from your very first note.

4. Practice Fills

Drummers are notorious for speeding up or slowing down while performing drum fills. It’s common to rush fills at slower tempos and speed up during faster tempos. Challenging fills are also very difficult to keep in time.

When you practice fills with a metronome, make sure you’re playing them in the context of a groove, just like you would if you were playing with a live band. I always encourage my students to practice in groups of four measures (alternating three bars time with one bar fill, or two bars of time with two bars of fill).

5. Play Along to Recordings