John Bonham and Triplets: How does he do it?

Saw the Led Zep DVD the other day and John Bonham is God!

I can't tell if he's doing triplets or quadruplets (probably both) but it sounds sweet.

Any ideas how he does this?

(Example, Right hand snare, left hand tom, bass drum)

Also, how did you develop your triplets and how do you do yours?

Thanks!

Start sloooooooooooooooooowly and work up the speed. Doing triplets like that on multiple drums at a fast speed make for great sounding rolling fills. Very cool. I suck and can't do them very well. But I'm working on it.

Like Moby Dick, where he sounds like he's dribbling a basketball?

I love his bass/snare triplets, the old 'how the heck can he do that with one bass pedal' trick. Those make for nice ankle workouts!

I pretty much try to work out all the combinations I can think of.

The Thomas Lang DVD went thru quite a few interesting permutations, making sure to reverse anything you learn- figuring it out backwards is a real eye opener.

Yeah, but what is he doing?

Triplets with two quick bass hits?

I'm still in the dark

Well, he employs quite a few different types...

Can you cite a particular instance of the ones you're curious about? A song or part specifically?

he does lots of bass-bass-snare triplets, you'll find them snuck into many a verse. Good Times Bad Times has some of his more infamously tricky bass/snare trips.

I don't know the technical terms, if there are any, for particular kinds of triplets, but I know what I like.

Probably everybody knows the right-hand/left-hand/bass triplet. With 2 toms and bass, that gives the basketball effect.

I like a RH hihat/LHsnare/bass trip, you can stack and alternate those for some cool trippy triplets.

Was there a specific song you had in mind from the DVD?

I found it easier to learn this by starting with your foot first. So basically you'll be doing this:

Foot-Right-Left

It's important to not go on "auto pilot" and rely purely on reflex because things tend to get sloppy when you do this. Really concetrate on hearing every note to make things sound cleaner.

After learning the "John Bonham" triplet trick, I started working on doing doubles with my foot, then following them up with my hands like this:

Foot-Foot-Right-Left

Even though getting the doubles down with the feet is a little difficult, it really pays off in the end because it's easier to work these groups of four into your fills rather than triplets. You can even get really fancy and do this:

Foot-Foot-Right-Left-Right-Left

These are excellent tricks to develop coordination between your hands and feet. Once you get the basics down you can eventually improvise between your hands and feet which sound really cool!

Thanks guys.

I stole the bass-bass-snare trips and I think it sounds cool after you get it down. I do it all the time and don't even realize it.

But the others were tricky. I didn't know if he was using bass first, floor tom first or what. To me (during songsl like Dazed and Confused) it sounded like he would hit a snare and then about three dribbles of a basket ball.

That guy is amazing.

I also enjoy doing the Tool trip which involves a double bass (cheating): Right BD, Left BD and then snare and a symbal at the same time.

Yeah, there's a lot of those double-bass triplets in many Rush songs too. I think that's where I picked that one up from.

In fact, those are about the only songs I ever play where I use the double-bass, come to think of it.

YES! that is awesome.

Those triplets like in Moby Dick are done with:

R hand - snare, L hand - tom - kick then

R hand - floor, L hand - tom - kick

The right hand always leads. You can then choose when you want to throw the snare hit in but it's the same pattern R hand, L Hand, Foot. Pick the drums of your choice for some variations.

Peart very rarely does triplets in the Bonham fashion. It's double bass quadruplets.

It's the same theory as the triplets except the R kick is followed with a L kick. R hand - L hand - R foot - L foot. Again pick the drums of your choice for an almost endless variation.

For a Peart triplet, I had in mind the cymbal/double-bass- snare/double-bass phrase of 3 triplets at the end of YYZ, right before the outro run of tom triplets. Definitely not Bonham-style, that's true. Looks like they'd be RH/RF/LF x3. You know, that old thing. I'm sure there are other examples, that's just the one that occurs to me. I guess he uses them more often as tags at the end of phrases than as continuous fills a la Bonzo.

If you're going to do some spiffy one-hand fills, mastering that kind of triplet is required! Not that you'd want to do that...

yes that recent led zep DVD where bonham does the solo at albert hall is absolutely jaw dropping... a must see for drummers.... and even non drummers

..... it blows away the crappy madison sq garden video that everyone equates zep too... the song remains the same video did more damage than good for the bands image and performance

Yeah! Thanks for the help Demon. Now to go practice!

I can't belive how good those guys were--and so young!

When the first album came out Robert Plant was 19. Jesus! I think Page was the oldest because he was in the Yardbirds but damn that's young. I've already missed the boat becuase I'm 21 and don't have 2 kick ass records out yet.

The Dvd is fantastic but it's too bad they don't show much bass. Jones kicks ass too!

By the way, I bought that DVD from Best Buy with a gift card. Got to the desk and they didn't know what they were doing, couldn't get it to work ect. 30 mins later they tell me to go to the service desk. Finally I buy it but the second disk would get stuck at like track 6 or somthing. So I take it back and the second disk works fine--BUT THE FIRST DISK IS MESSED UP!! Damn.

gotta say i love his drum sound on both the song remains the same and the double disc dvd. the vistalites sound awsome especially when hes doing the super fast triplets cause they seem to have a really cutting sound but still nice and deep.

The end run on YYZ is quadruplets. The kicks lead, R-kick, L-kick followed by 2 snare hits R-snare, L-snare. The third repetition ends with a flam on the snare instead of the right-left. It is of course quite fast. Then the long tom run follows that.

I've seen them transcribed as triplets, but I guess those aren't always right...

feels like threes though, I guess the flams would count as one beat.

He is damn good.

+1 to that!!

How does he do his quads?

Right snare

Left Tom

Kick

Right Floor?

or maybe

Right snare

Left Tom

Right Floor

Kick?

Thanks.