How to Play Along to a Record When It's Hard to Hear the Drums

One of the funnest things to do as a drummer (regardless of what level you’re at) is to play along to a great record. Putting on your favorite song and jamming out is so cool, and that’s how pretty much every drummer gets started learning the drums. This is also a great way to stay musically motivated and inspired as your grow and develop as a player.

But a lot of times there’s a challenge associated with this task: What do you do when it’s hard to hear exactly what the drummer on the recording is playing? It can quickly become frustrating when you’re trying to play along…but you’re realizing your parts are never lining up with his parts. This is where learning a song can suddenly become exasperating. How do we get around this? Here are my “song-learning” steps that I think will help…

1. Before you ever actually play along with the recording, listen to the song a few times. Familiarize yourself with the groove, the fills, and the overall flow of the song. It’s much easier to hear everything going on when the sound of your drums isn’t layered on top of the recording.
2. *BONUS POINTS* - Write a chart for the song after you listen to it a couple of times. Notate the groove, and write out the song form (i.e. - Verse, Chorus, Guitar Solo, Bridge, etc.). If you’re not sure what I mean by this, check out this free guide that takes you in depth into a fast, efficient way to "cheat" at learning a song!
3. Jump over to the kit and practice playing the groove from the song, just you and a metronome. Practice any tricky passages or fills, so that you’ll be ready for them when you crank up the recording.
4. You’re now ready to “jam out” and have some fun. You know the basic groove, and you’ve practiced the key fills. You know the song form because you wrote it out on a sheet of paper. You can now play along, knowing what the drummer’s playing and knowing what’s coming next at all times. This is huge when it comes to playing along to a recording and having fun doing it WELL.

Go learn some songs! Follow these steps, and you’ll find yourself learning songs and drum parts much more efficiently. These are the steps I follow when preparing for any gig. Often I need to learn songs fast, and this is the most practical way to do it. Try the 4-step method yourself, and let me know what kind of results you get!

Stephen