Drummer Cafe Community Forum

I guess this is sort of the opposite of the "what's your favorite song to play" thread.  Do you have any songs that for some reason you find particularly hard to play?

I'm not talking about some Frank Zappa song with a time signature that's divided by the square root of Pi. I'm talking about a "normal" song that for some reason gives you fits.

I've got one: I Love You More Today Than Yesterday by Spiral Staircase.

It's a silly little pop song that I've always kind of liked, but I find it murder to play. When we get to the part where the horn section comes in, playing all those off-beat accents, I have the hardest time just plowing through and playing the beat. I keep wanting to somehow emphasize those horn hits, but in the process, I muck things up.

To make matters worse, the band I play it with is using a sequence, so if I fall out of time, it's REALLY noticable. I've been doing the song for a few years now, and every single time I just BARELY get through it without making that section feel weird. This is with a band that plays only sporadically - sometimes we'll go months without playing together. So I've never had a chance to play it night after night and really "own" it. And I don't screw it up anymore, but every single time we play it, it takes all my energy to keep the time solid in that section.

Okay - there's my "true confession." Anybody else have one?

I used to have a lot of trouble staying focused on "(I Won't Tell 'em Your) Name, by the GooGoo Dolls.  I very simple tune, but it took me months to be able to just PLAY it without thinking about its structure.

Go figure.

Getting the repeating part on "Time of the Season" (ending with "ahh" or a splash when playing live) right every time.  It's really not difficult, but you can run into a brain cramp when doing it over and over.

I kind of like that song, too.  Whenever I hear it, though, I always get the impression that the drummer learned to play the bass drum really fast only two weeks' prior to the session.  This leads to my annoying, occasional practice of, when I hear a part I don't agree with, mentally rewriting it and playing that part mentally in place of what's recorded.

It was only the other month that I happened upon the feel of that little brush figure in Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know" (which does cover a good portion of the song, IIRC, so I hope it qualifies).  As soon as I thought sideways, so to speak, it fell into place.  I'm just getting over the habit of thinking only vertically with regard to the drums.

oops. i thought stevie wonder sang 'i love you more today.' i like that tune.

i can't play too many tunes beyond what we do, which is embarassing enough. but the one i tried mightily on is 'immigrant song.' i could never get those sextuplety fills he does in that second verse. one day i will.

i was also trying to play along to this old elton john song called 'your starter for.' it's a short, sweet instrumental on that album 'blue moves.' i could basically get through it, but i never sounded as smooth as nigel olson.

on the smogg front, we've got this one new tune that i want to beat up. it goes from 6/8 to 7/8 and i gotta tell ya -- it's a frustrating transition.

I'm sure there are plenty I can think of given enough time, but two that come immediately to my mind are ZZ Top's Heard It on the X and The Beatles come together.

Sometimes I can play Heard It on the X on an acceptable level, but most of the time I trip up after the transitions and especially during the part where Beard rides the bell.  The biggest issue I have with Come Together is getting the tom rolls sounding anything like Ringo played them.  It's the part before each verse.

There is a ton of stuff I can't play- but stuff I have to play for my bands, well I have a couple.

Red Hot Chili Peppers "Suck My Kiss"  Weird feel at times... I actually played it about the best I have recently, but still, that song is a bitch for me to play in the first set.

Same with Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" I have to learn it and I started it awhile back *tough as hell and I have the music*, got side tracked, now I know I'm going to be hurried to learn it and will probably screw it up for awhile.

There was a really tough tune (for me) from Godsmack that took me a while to really make happen, and even then if it starts out too fast it can sound awkward.  It's called "Keep Away".

My band's been working up Ricky Lee Jone's "Chuck E.'s in Love" to go with "Danny's All-Star Joint". Love both off them... and I'm happy with the way I play the latter...but the "Steve Gadd-signature-fill" in Chuck E's is very iffy for me. Half the time I get it OK and half the time I rush it or start late or do something to screw it up. Hopefully more practice will fix this.  :(

BigBill

Great tunes, and both very challenging! Do you play the two-footed shuffle on Danny's? That took me forever to get smooth.

I've always had a hard time with the timing on "Who knows" from Jimi Hendrix' album Band of Gypsies.  The way the guitar notes sound in the intro, I lose the one every time.  I feel like such a fool about it too. :(

Good Lovin': Young Rascals

I'm still not convinced its a dance tune, but to get it up to speed with Ride Cymbal ruffs/and 8ths on the toms every 4 &  --  to get loose enough, in the zone enough to have it groove and then stop it all for the guitar breaks with bell/tom accents and back to the groove. I never get it the way I want it.

And I've still never seen anyone dance to it, must be me.

That's something that could fill a whole thread in and of itself.

"Tunes that you'd rather not have to play in the first set."

That horrible feeling when you see the first set list just before you go on and realize that 3/4s of the fastest/hardest songs of the night are in there.  ::)

Yuk...

Yet another reason to be well warmed up.  ;D

Well, in this band I get no choice picking songs, how they are placed, or how they are played- no biggie.  I just show up, play and get paid.  I'm not complaining.

I think you simply mean a female dog??

I'm sure he did even better than that. :)  There is an auto-censor here at the Café that will substitute other words for words that some find offensive.  In this case, the programmer of the auto-censor interpreted the source word wrongly.

Great idea for a thread MR. A

One of the songs ive been having trouble with is, VIVA LAS VEGAS.
Its so fast and i never play it right . Ill end up doing a train beat .

This band likes to put this as the second to last song .  :'(

By the end of the night im spent. Four 45 min sets .  Its such a great song..



My two cents on,( I Love You More Today Than Yesterday) by Spiral Staircase.

The drummer is all over the shop on that one..    Its the bass drum that drives me crazy.. Its a great song but personally . i feel that it shouldnt have been a bass drum solo thru out the entire song..
NT

We just finished putting together the new Dierks Bentley song ( called How Am I Doing) and it makes me crazy trying to remember the changes between tom and snare parts.  I can visualize it perfectly in my head, but the execution physically aint been workin well.  
Know one really can tell except I know that my part is just not quite together yet.  I dread it when I see that song on the set list.

Yes, I use the two-footed "Steve Gadd shuffle" on Danny's. After learning it for this tune, I've grown to really like it and use in a number of other shuffle situations as well.

However, I wouldn't suggest the quality of my shuffle rivals Mr Gadd's or Mr A's  ;).

BigBill

BigBill, I feel your pain. I have been spending allot of time working on my halftime shuffle and "Chuck E" is the one thats KILLING me right now. I just get this weird mental block.
I do feel better right now knowing I am not the only one who stumbles on this tune. Havn't moved to Dannys yet, thats next, I figured one headache at a time!  :D

As for the Two footed shuffle, Does anyone have a chart or some site where I can get info on it so when I start learning this song I am at least in the ballpark?

-RHS

"I Feel Fine" by the Beatles.  Tough number for me to get the flavor right.

Darn "La Grange" by ZZ Top. :P

The verse in Teacher by Jethro Tull -- owns me. Nuff said. :(

Interesting topic this....possibly relating to a mental block situation.  In my last band, we had one song that put the fear of God into me when it was approaching in the set.  I wouldn't mind, but it was me who put the drum patterns and beats together anyway!!  It had a quick double bass beat in the verses, which if I wasn't on form, would be a bitch of a beat.

I got so anal about this song that I hated playing it, and inevitably started making errors.  Funnily though on the recording of the jamming session during which we wrote the song, I really nailed the drum patterns.....every time thereafter was a different story......

I think it's a mental block.  What the mind believes, the body will enact upon.......

In the last band I was with we entertained the idea of adding a second cover to our set: 'Sober' by Tool. It started out as kind of a joke (we weren't exactly 'tool-ish' with our sound ;)), but we still played with it a bit. For some reason the groove on that song just threw me for a loop. In particular, it was the last open HH note in each measure; I just couldn't get it to feel solid and flowing. The idea came up with only one rehearsal left before our shows in MN and I had to tell the guys that it just wasn't doable on such short notice. That happens to be one of those tunes that, IMHO, you simply can't do unless you get that groove right on.

Not a single song, but I always have trouble with tunes using 16th notes on the hihat and 2 & 4 on the snare.  I've just never been able to get comfortable and smooth on that groove.

Our singer has a mental block on the vocal phrasing for "Mustang Sally."  Try as he might, he just cannot get it right.  It's that sorta long pause after the initial words: 'Mustang Sally. . . . . . . .'  that get him every time.  He wants to (and often does) come in sooner.  It's become comical.

Dave, I feel your pain! This song is a staple tune in our set. Our guitar player usually sings it, and his timing is spot on, like a metronome.
Anyway, we were doing this tune at a charity gig, with a female "guest vocalist", no rehersal, she swore she knew the tune. Anyway, you know the stop after  the line "One of these early morniiiiiiin's"? Now, being the mainly self taught player I am, I don't count thru the stop, our guitarist's vocal  is as good a count as the rest of the band needs. This girl decides to employ her own original phrasing to the lyric.
TRAIN WRECK!
Everyone's cue is gone, I look at the bass player and see that all-too-familiar look of panic! It's like you first bungee jump,  just leap and hope for the best!
Well, I've had a phobia about that song ever since!
Oh, and fast shuffle and swing tunes, I've always found playing triplet fills at fast tempos awkward. I can play them fine in a 4/4 setting, but they are dodgy at any other time.

Ahhh, the guest "vocalist."  Enough to give anyone a mental block.  Sounds like we have that - and Mustang Sally - in common.

Yes, it comes under the heading - famous last words.....

"Rehearsal? Nah, we'll just wing it!"

Seems I get that a lot these days...maybe it's the crowd I'm running with. Starting to get used to it though, hehe ;)

Achy breaky heart, Sorry i just can bring myself to play it. ;D

oh my.......glad I don't have to play that one.

in my last band we had this one song that i could NEVER remember the beat for.  an original (what an understatement...),  "rectum inspection".  

it had this really weird feeling double bass part during the verses.  it was made even weirder by the other members not being able to stay anywhere close to in time.

Agree with jesster about "Sober".  That was a toughy for me as well.
Danny Carey always has a lot of fancy hihat work, see also track 2 on Aenima.

I think that "prostate exam" would've been a more politically correct title for the song!

'Oleo' and 'Evidence'.
I just never get the heads to those tunes down.

Good to see you still posting Sheldon.

I think "Bill is No Longer Allowed to Write Our Lyrics" would have been better.

nice to know you by incubus. it's a fairly easy song but i always seem to lose beat during the chrous.

Occasionally I'll try to play along with some jazz or swing tunes, to try and unlock that hidden swing monkey somewhere inside me, but alas...

when I try to play Birdland (Maynard Ferguson's version with Peter Erskine on drums), I always choke trying to imitate some of his effortless fills.

I know I'll probably get laughed at on this one but here goes. "Enter Sandman" by Metallica.  :-[
I practiced that one for weeks and never got it down. I still have problems with it.
I guess the biggest problem I have with it is it sounds like Lars is just making it up as he goes along. Throwing cymbal crashes here and there for no reason. Pretty much just keep hitting the drums until the music stops. Theres nothing in that song where you can say "I understand why he's doing that"

DanDaMan

Cool thread idea!

My band plays a KC and the Sunshine Band 'medley' (don't laugh) that eats me alive.  It's 4 songs and my band leader always insists on playing them back to back.  Well, that drummer pretty much uses the same groove for every song.  16th notes on the hihat, snare on 2 and 4, and a dotted 16th pattern (doom....dat....dadoom...dat) on bass drum.  Try playing that pattern for 10 minutes straight.  It's *murder* on your right foot.  After a while, when you get tired, it starts sounding like a dotted triplet instead of a dotted 16th.  Brutal.

Oh yeah.  As far as songs that I will *never* "get" I'd have to go with Spirits in the Material World by The Police.  That one really messes with your mind.

During the verse, it sounds like the hihat and guitar are on the downbeat and the bass drum is on the upbeat.  But when you get to the verse, you find out that it's the exact opposite.  So while you listen to the chorus, you think "ooooh, now I get it" but when the verse starts again, your mind thinks the guitar/hihat is on the downbeat again even though you just heard the chorus and you know it isn't.  

I've been trying to make that song work since I was in high school.  I don't think I'll ever get it.

Playing with emotion makes me have mental blocks.  This is because of me not getting my coordination or technique correct before trying to play a song that makes me feel a lot of emotion while playing.  And some days I can just play any song at any speed with dynamics and emotion.

When I get these mental blocks,it pisses me off and makes everything 10X worse than it really is:{  

"You May Be Right" - Billy Joel

The vocals in that song can really drag the tempo down. I have lots of problems with that one.

Just about every Tool and Meshuggah song. Listen to a song called "Future Breed Machine by Meshuggah. I can play parts of it, but all the other little things is what catches me, same with a lot of Danny Carey's stuff

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