Power Trip - Walkthrough

Preview

# Music Lesson: Techniques for "Power Trip"

In the metal piece **"Power Trip,"** I'm going to change some of my techniques a little bit.

### Changes in Technique

1. **Snare Drum Stick Position:**
- I mentioned earlier the possibility that with some rock pieces, you might wish to turn the stick around.
- So, rather than playing it like this, turn it around and hold the stick from this end.
- This change gives:
- **More weight**
- **More volume** to the snare sound
- **More consistency**

2. **Hi-Hat Playing:**
- Rather than using the tip of the stick to play the hi-hats, I'm going to use this part of the stick because it digs in a bit more.
- For this style of music, we definitely want **more weight** and **more heaviness**.

### Demonstration

To show you the difference:
- If I were to use the tip of the stick on the hi-hat and play the snares quite lightly for the first two bars, it would sound like this:
- **"That's okay."**
- It could still be in time.

Now let’s see how the first two bars of this piece feel with:
- The snare stick turned around
- Me digging in a little bit more on the hi-hats.

You can always play the snare stick this way around, but just hit a bit harder.

### Space Between Notes

Again, let's have a look at the first line:
- There's quite a lot of space between the notes, so you might choose to count eighth notes to land nicely on:
- **Beats 1 and 2 and 3**

**Attention to Detail:**
- At the end of the first line, on beats three and four, you're just playing the hi-hats.
- Moving into the next line, you again only have hi-hats on beats one and two.

### Bass Drum Timing

- Effectively, we have four beats across two bars where we're only playing hi-hats.
- It’s unusual not to have a bass drum on beat one.
- As you get into the second line of this piece:
- Ensure you're ready to play the bass drum on:
- **Beat 3** in the first bar of the second line
- **Beats 3 and 4** in the second bar of that second line
- Then we go back up to the snare on bar four of the second line.

### Preparing for the Eighth Note Rock Beat

- There's another half note rest, providing ample time to prepare for the next section, which features an eighth note based rock beat.
- I recommend just for this example:
- Use the snare stick turned around
- Dig in with your hi-hats

When we come in with that groove on the third line, it should have a bit more weight.

### Transitioning to Quarter Notes

As we continue through most of the third line, be mindful of the rest between the bass drum and snare drum at the end.

**Line Four Warning:**
- Be careful when suddenly dropping back to quarter notes.
- It will feel like there's a lot of space in the hi-hats, especially since we’ve been playing eight hi-hats per bar for an entire line.
- Now we drop back to **four hi-hats per bar.**
- Count in between, perhaps the eighth notes, to help you adjust to that feel so that you don't rush through the last line.

### Importance of the Last Line

The last line of the music is crucial because it's the climax of the song.
- Let me play the fourth bar of the third line and the first bar of the fourth line, so you can hear that difference.

### Maintaining Tempo

There's lots of opportunity for that new time feel, with fewer notes potentially leading to a speed-up when we don’t want it.

### Final Bars

In the third bar of the last line, we have some eighth note bass drums going to the hi-hat.
- The hi-hat on **beats two and four** replaces the snare back beat that we'd normally have.

Let’s do bars three and four of the fourth line (the last two bars of the piece):
- Ensure that last snare hit is powerful.
- **"Make sure you really dig in with it."**
- **"Make sure it's a nice loud snare because it's the end of the piece."**

About the instructor

Explore the course