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How to drum like Charlie Watts

2021-08-25 00:00:00

As several obituaries to Charlie Watts have noted, his drumming was key to the sound of the Rolling Stones — he played "with a minimum of motion, often slightly behind the beat," which "gave the group's sound a barely perceptible but inimitable rhythmic drag," as this piece in the New York Times put it.

But Watts also had an interesting trick that was key to his sound: When he hit the snare drum, he'd typically not hit the hi-hat.

This has two side-effects: It slightly isolates the crack of the snare drum, so you can hear it a little more prominently. And because Watts wasn't hitting the hi-hat on that beat, he'd move his right hand upwards and out of the way, allowing his left hand more room to smack the snare even harder. So, two things that together gave his snare drum a unique hit.

If you want to learn to pay that rhythm, that YouTube video above offers a good lesson!

More from that NYT piece:
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