Author Topic: Karen Carpenter's drumming  (Read 1632 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Dream Team

  • Posts: 5627
  • Gender: Male
Karen Carpenter's drumming
« on: October 27, 2016, 09:21:51 AM »
For those not familiar, she is more well known for being a lead vocalist and dying young from anorexia, but check out her drumming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdHyzGXAJPg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9IagAg7u5M


Offline Cyclopssss

  • Vocal Dinosaur pre-heat combustable
  • Posts: 2993
  • Gender: Male
  • Connoseur of love
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2016, 04:14:33 AM »
 :o Amazing!
From the ocean comes the notion that the realise lies in rhythm. The rhythm of vision is dancer, and when you dance you´re always on the one. From the looking comes to see, wondrous realise real eyes....

Offline Orbert

  • Recovering Musician
  • EZBoard Elder
  • *****
  • Posts: 19225
  • Gender: Male
  • In and around the lake
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2016, 12:17:43 PM »
The Carpenters were great.  I grew up on their music.  It was years later that I learned that they weren't really a "band" or even a "vocal group" because almost everything you heard on the albums was the two of them, Karen and Richard, multitracked many, many times.

But yeah, Karen was a great drummer.  I'm guessing that when they were growing up, Richard played the piano and/or other instruments, so she'd sing and play the drums just so they could work out the songs, and eventually she got pretty damned good at them.

Offline Kotowboy

  • Yes THAT Kotowboy.
  • DTF.org Alumni
  • ****
  • Posts: 28561
  • Gender: Male
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2016, 12:36:33 PM »
I was told once by a professional drummer that playing "jazz" grip in a rock band really doesn't make sense and that it was developed for the military who played that way because they had snares

strapped to them at an angle. He said the only reason rock drummers use the "jazz" grip is because they had a teacher who used that grip.

Pretty interesting. When I played drums I used match grip obviously but I occasionally tried jazz grip as you can play a bit softer and it's quite comfy.

Offline MrBoom_shack-a-lack

  • I hit things for a living!
  • DTF.org Member
  • *
  • Posts: 9235
  • Gender: Male
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2016, 02:40:37 PM »
I was told once by a professional drummer that playing "jazz" grip in a rock band really doesn't make sense and that it was developed for the military who played that way because they had snares

strapped to them at an angle. He said the only reason rock drummers use the "jazz" grip is because they had a teacher who used that grip.

Pretty interesting. When I played drums I used match grip obviously but I occasionally tried jazz grip as you can play a bit softer and it's quite comfy.
Yea as someone who teaches drums and percussion I only teach matched grip first because traditional grip is something they can study later if they want to. To be able to play properly with matched grip is important because it's more versatile especially if your gonna play orchestral percussion and all it's instruments, it's also easier for the youngsters to hold the sticks with matched because anyone that picks up a pair of sticks will automatically hold the sticks the same way with both hands, it's just a natural thing. Traditional grip was created for playing angled marching drums:



Alot of drummers that uses traditional grip nowdays do it because they either been taught to play like that or they just prefer if for whatever they play. Alot of Jazz drummers that mainly use matched use traditional when they play jazz because they simply think it feels better but honestly you can do everything equally as good with matched grip, it boil downs to personal preferences and feel.

Marching bands and Drumcorps that uses modern marching snares prefer to use traditional grip because it's visually more interesting than matched grip:

https://youtu.be/j8ouf688-SM?t=3m20s

Of course there's probably more reasons depending on who you ask but that I think is the big reason. Alot of stick tricks just looks better with traditional.

One of the drawbacks with traditional imo is that if you play drumkit you often have to lean a bit to your left in order to compensate for the snare not being angeld which I find is an unatural pose but i'm sure there's drummers who disagree with that like Buddy Rich for example, he has a pretty brutal message for matched grip players:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0V4Aqs2D48
 :lol
« Last Edit: October 28, 2016, 03:07:47 PM by MrBoom_shack-a-lack »
"I said to Nigel Tufnel, 'The door is open if you want to do anything on this record,' but it turns out Nigel has a phobia about doors." /Derek Smalls

Offline Kotowboy

  • Yes THAT Kotowboy.
  • DTF.org Alumni
  • ****
  • Posts: 28561
  • Gender: Male
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #5 on: October 28, 2016, 03:02:56 PM »
Thomas lang used to play trad grip exclusively but now he plays match grip a lot more.


Offline rumborak

  • DT.net Veteran
  • ****
  • Posts: 26664
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2016, 01:27:33 PM »
The idiosyncrasies of drumming are always a bit mysterious. Nobody ever talks about this, but I personally find it really odd that foot pedals are facing forward, not backward. It takes incredible strength training to get the shinbone muscle to be strong enough to consistently lift up the front of the foot (partially the reason why a lot of drummers hover their legs while drumming). Whereas, if you turned the pedal around, with you sitting on the bass drum, you could hit the pedal with the heel, utilizing the enormous calf muscle.
"I liked when Myung looked like a women's figure skating champion."

Offline Cyclopssss

  • Vocal Dinosaur pre-heat combustable
  • Posts: 2993
  • Gender: Male
  • Connoseur of love
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2016, 02:03:09 AM »
^^ That's a great observation! I often thought about why drummers have to twist the wrist to hit the hihats instead of using the natural motion while bending the wrist.
From the ocean comes the notion that the realise lies in rhythm. The rhythm of vision is dancer, and when you dance you´re always on the one. From the looking comes to see, wondrous realise real eyes....

Offline MrBoom_shack-a-lack

  • I hit things for a living!
  • DTF.org Member
  • *
  • Posts: 9235
  • Gender: Male
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2016, 03:40:51 AM »
The idiosyncrasies of drumming are always a bit mysterious. Nobody ever talks about this, but I personally find it really odd that foot pedals are facing forward, not backward. It takes incredible strength training to get the shinbone muscle to be strong enough to consistently lift up the front of the foot (partially the reason why a lot of drummers hover their legs while drumming). Whereas, if you turned the pedal around, with you sitting on the bass drum, you could hit the pedal with the heel, utilizing the enormous calf muscle.
Sometimes when playing multiple percussion instruments like for example vibraphone and a bassdrum, I turn it backwards and play the pedal with my heel in order to have my other foot at the Vibraphone.
Most drummers in the early days played with their heel down and moved the foot with the pedal as it was designed, you have alot more natural control with your feet and more balance with the heel on the pedal. You didn't need power and strenght it's more about control and be able to play delicate. Drummers eventually wanted to play more loudly and with more strenght so they started to lift the heel up and play with the leg basically although you still use the foot. Nowdays there's a bunch of techniques for playing bassdrums but the pedal itself has pretty much stayed the same and that's because it's evolved to be versatile. If I play jazz I play with my heel down for more control on playing soft. With Rock I have my heel up for more power and speed.

^^ That's a great observation! I often thought about why drummers have to twist the wrist to hit the hihats instead of using the natural motion while bending the wrist.
If you ask me it's because alot of players are simply lazy and don't utilize their wrist for more control. I always use my wrist in whatever I play. However there's also diffrent hand techniques like the so called french grip:


I just think alot of drummers play what feels right and don't think so much on how they play it. I use the so called american grip because I can use my wrist and it feels more natural and free to me.
"I said to Nigel Tufnel, 'The door is open if you want to do anything on this record,' but it turns out Nigel has a phobia about doors." /Derek Smalls

Offline Sir GuitarCozmo

  • Official Forum Sous Chef and broler5
  • DTF.org Alumni
  • ****
  • Posts: 13979
  • Gender: Male
  • Kelly Clarkson BEEFS
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2016, 08:52:38 AM »
So the other day they had this special on PBS about the Carpenters and Mrs. C. wanted to watch it, so despite not being a Carpenters fan, I watched anyway.  4 things:

1) Despite what an amazing voice Karen had, I can't come up with very many of their songs that I'm even remotely familiar with that didn't depress the hell out of me.

2) Reading up on her death, I knew it had to do with anorexia, but the details were cringe-worthy.  Ugh.

3) Good lord, that woman was a f*cking excellent drummer.

4) Holy shit, Richard can play the f*ck out of a keyboard.

Offline emtee

  • Posts: 2837
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2016, 02:56:35 PM »
The idiosyncrasies of drumming are always a bit mysterious. Nobody ever talks about this, but I personally find it really odd that foot pedals are facing forward, not backward. It takes incredible strength training to get the shinbone muscle to be strong enough to consistently lift up the front of the foot (partially the reason why a lot of drummers hover their legs while drumming). Whereas, if you turned the pedal around, with you sitting on the bass drum, you could hit the pedal with the heel, utilizing the enormous calf muscle.

there is a company who made bass pedals like that. I never bought them but came very close because as a long time drummer, when
I am not playing but sitting in a chair or what have you, and playing along with my feet this is the way I do it. Toe down, heel up and I
am WAY more agile and coordinated with this methodology. But yes this makes so much sense to me I'm not sure why it never took
off more than it did.

Offline splent

  • Moderator Emeritus
  • *****
  • Posts: 9348
  • Gender: Male
  • DTF's resident music educator/conductor
Re: Karen Carpenter's drumming
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2016, 03:36:24 PM »
So the other day they had this special on PBS about the Carpenters and Mrs. C. wanted to watch it, so despite not being a Carpenters fan, I watched anyway.  4 things:

1) Despite what an amazing voice Karen had, I can't come up with very many of their songs that I'm even remotely familiar with that didn't depress the hell out of me.

2) Reading up on her death, I knew it had to do with anorexia, but the details were cringe-worthy.  Ugh.

3) Good lord, that woman was a f*cking excellent drummer.

4) Holy shit, Richard can play the f*ck out of a keyboard.

 I need to check that out. I've always liked the carpenters, I didn't really grow up during the time that they were popular, but my parents did and so I heard a lot of their music growing up. I also remember watching behind the music with the carpenters one that was on about 20 years ago and I'm learning about that, but they never really went into how good of a drummer that she was, and it wasn't until very recently that I realize how talented she was. I think  I think she's a very underrated drummer, and doesn't get enough credit.
I don’t know what to put here anymore