Practice drums along with a slowed-down song

The tempo is the lesson

For a drummer the useful control is the speed. A fast fill or a tricky groove is a timing problem, and the way to solve it is to play it correctly slowly and then less slowly. With PitchShed the song keeps its pitch while it slows, so it still sounds like the record.

Doing the arithmetic

The popup shows speed as a percentage, not as beats per minute. To work out your tempo, multiply: a song at 120 BPM played at 80 % runs at 96 BPM, and at 90 % at 108 BPM. Write down the speed where you can play the part cleanly three times in a row.

Loop the part, not the song

Press Set A at the start of the fill and Set B just after it, with a bar of the groove on either side so you hear how it enters and leaves. The part repeats by itself, and your hands stay on the sticks.

Headphones and the click

If your kit is acoustic, play the song through headphones, so the recording is the click. At slower speeds the groove of the record changes feel, so use the slow speed to learn the pattern, and the faster ones to get the feel back.

What to listen for

Use the kick and the snare of the record as your reference. At a slower speed they still land where they should relative to each other, so if your pattern drifts against them, you can hear it. Fix the drift before you add any speed.

Climb in steps

Raise the speed by 5 % each time you can play the part three times in a row without a slip. PitchShed remembers the speed for that video, and the next session starts where this one finished.