What is an accent?
Just like placing an emphasis on a certain syllable in speech, an accent is simply an emphasis on a certain stroke or count.
Why do drummers need accents?
You’d got to remember that even though your drumkit can’t produce words, you’re drumming because you and your bandmates have something to say. Accents are one way to help get your point across.
Types of accents
There are 3 basic types of accents musicians of all skill levels should know how to use, and they’re gotten by: increasing volume, changing pitch (especially raising pitch), and increasing duration.
This is just like in speech. You can illustrate the concept to yourself by saying the same (true) sentence with the last word accented in 3 different ways:
Louder volume: “Drums are FUN!” [Say fun really loud] Music nerds would call this a dynamic accent.
Extended duration: “Drums are FUUUUUUN!” [Say fun really slowly] To a music nerd, this is an agogic accent.
Higher pitch: “Drums are fun!” [Raise the pitch of the word fun] A music nerd would say this is a tonic accent.
You should notice that each way of accenting the word fun makes your sentence sound way more enthusiastic about drumming than saying “Drums are fun” with a dead-pan, monotone voice. But you might find a certain type of accent preferable, depending on the situation.
Dynamic (volume) accents:
This is the probably the most straightforward type of accent on the drums: just figure out how to make the accented stroke noisier than the strokes before and after it.
Dynamic accents on the snare/tom:
Just hit harder – just figure out a way to not beat up your hands when you do so! If you’re already hitting as hard as you can, then you’re going to need to do the inverse: play every non-accented beat more softly, instead. Listen to Radiohead’s Weird Fishes to hear the drummer accent the 2 and 4 on the snare while he fills in the texture with quieter strikes.
Another way to up the volume is by flamming. Hit the drum with both sticks so close together in time that it sounds ‘fat’. It takes some practice to learn to control how the timing of stick landings, but you can land the sticks closer together in time for a ‘tighter’ flam, or more spaced out for a ‘looser’ flam. On a snare, you might find tight flams are more effective as accents than they are on longer drums, like the floor tom.
Dynamic accents on the high-hat:
Hit it using the shaft of your stick. On the high-hat or ride, you smack the shaft of the stick on the cymbal instead of the tip, and also hit it a bit harder. Listen to Bill Wither’s Lovely Day to get an idea of the effect this produces.
Dynamic accents on crash cymbals:
On crash cymbals, you can hit it a lot harder with the shaft of your stick – just avoid hammering the cymbal towards the pole, as I’ve heard you can break your cymbals that way.
Dynamic accents on the kick drum:
Just kick harder – again, you might need to make your other kicks more gentle for a hard kick to stand out. But really bury your beater head into the drum, no letting it dribble or bounce back. You won’t break it!
Tonic (pitch) accents:
Each drum/cymbal in your kit has a different range of pitches it can produce. You may want to go higher or lower in pitch, depending on what you want your accent to ‘say’. You can really have fun here!
The one word of caution is that high pitches from drums can overwhelm the sounds produces by the other musicians, especially the high pitches from cymbals and the snare.
Take special care to moderate your volume and use of higher pitches, especially when you play with harmonica players, singers, or pianists. Especially with singers, when they’re holding a note (i.e. doing a duration accent!), it might be good to play loud pitch accents to…accentuate that, but if they’re singing a million words a minute, you should keep it low-key. It’s really easy for the drums to completely swallow their sound!
Tonal (pitch) accents on snare/tom:
Whatever drum you’re playing, play the accent on a different drum. Go up in pitch by using a higher tom, or the snare – the snare wires produce high pitches, regardless of how high or low you tune you snare.
Layer on a high pitch:
If you want to go up in pitch without changing drums, you can stomp down on an open high-hat with your foot. This will add the high pitches of the high hat to whatever pitches your drum is already producing. This is a pretty popular choice to add brightness to a rock snare backbeat on the 2 and 4, for example.
One of my favorite accents is when the open high hat and bass drum are struck at the same time. The high hat is usually closed 1/2 beat afterwards. For example, Bill Wither’s Use Me features this every few measures.
Another popular technique is to use a crash cymbal + another drum. For example, it’s pretty common in rock to hear drummers play the snare and crash at the same time. This is definitely an attention-getter! You can hear it on The Cure’s Just Like Heaven as a way to introduce a vocal phrase.
Tonal (pitch) accents on cymbals:
Each spot you hit on the cymbal has a different pitch, depending on how far it is from the center. Each cymbal is different, so you’re going to need to play around with yours to figure out how to use it best.
On a ride and crash cymbals, the most dramatically high pitch you can get is from the bell. Practice incorporating the bell into your ride groove during the exciting part of a song, or a quasi-fill in the middle of an exciting verse – after the singer’s phrase is on its last note, so you don’t compete.
Listen to Steely Dan’s Peg to hear Steve Gadd use the bell during the second chorus.
Agogic (duration) accents:
It might not be obvious to non-drummers, but there is a duration to the noise produced by each drum and cymbal. It’s your job to manipulate that duration and use it to your advantage.
Agogic accents on toms:
In general, the longer the drum is from top to bottom, the longer it takes for the sound to bounce around between the two drumheads. That means you’re gonna naturally have a longer duration when you strike your floor tom than you would on your snare.
So if you want to just suddenly ‘boing’ on your floor tom, that alone qualifies as an accent.
Another technique that applies to the snare as well as the tom is to do a roll that’s fast enough to where it’s hard to hear the individual strokes. I’m gonna call this a muddy roll. On a floor tom, even if you don’t have a great buzz roll because you’re a beginner, it’s still very easy to muddy roll no matter how sloppy your technique is. Try it and see!
Agogic accents on the snare:
Snare strokes are usually pretty well-defined, so usually an agogic accent is going to consist of a buzz roll that lasts for the required duration. You might have this is a long buzz roll that increases in volume as a way to introduce a song, or you may just have a quick roll as a way to break up a monotonous groove.
Another way, though, is to release the snare and let the drum ring just like a tom. Of course, this is only going to count as an accent if it’s surrounded by shorter-duration strikes, say on the high-hat.
Agogic accents on the high-hat:
Open the high-hat and strike it. Keep it open for the duration you want, then snap it closed exactly at the right moment to keep the groove cooking. Listen to especially the chorus of Stevie Wonder’s Knocks Me Off My Feet. The whole album Songs in the Key of Love could be used as a study on accents using the high hat, actually.
Agogic accents on crash cymbals:
Ok, the easiest accent is to just CRASH! and let it ring.
Word of warning: if you let your cymbals keep ringing when the singer or soloist starts, you might get a dirty look. Grab that cymbal with your hand to stop it from ringing! Extra points if you do it in time to the music.
The other common way to do agogic accents on cymbals is basically to do a roll on your crash cymbal. Especially one with the shafts of your sticks, it’ll be loud but you won’t be able to easily hear each stroke because you’re striking so fast.
You can actually build up quite a bit of volume with this, too, because the cymbal will start to ‘swell’. This is how about half of all rock songs end. Add interest by using a different cymbal with each hand.