Customer Reviews

4-Way Coordination: A Method Book for the Development of Complete Independence on the Drum Set

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Folks, this book is a gem for drumset development, one of the drum bibles. Exercises are thorough in exploring different permutations of hand and foot rhythmic sequences. Working this book will open up those synaptic nerve paths and program your muscle memory for every possible rhythm pattern. This is the perfect preparation for Gary Chester, Jim Chapin, etc. Even if you don't have drums, you can work this book on the drum pad while tap-dancing your feet on the floor, and you will have a rhythm vocabulary the very first time you sit down at the drums.

Most reviews touch on what this book is about, I just want to add what you get
when you get it. Endless permutations of rhythms that break the
standard mold of a "normal" drummer. Forget snare on 2&4 or straight eights
on a hi-hat. The books seeks to break you down from the "normal" rhythms
of the kit and to enable you to hit linearly -- any joint at any time in any
order at any point on the kit.

But...

You don't need a drumset to work it -- all you need are hands and feet to
get better. the "score" is set out in various patterns of LH,RH, LF, RF
(left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot). So if you can't get
enough of drumming, take this on the road with you for vacations, work
trips, whatever and work on breaking the mold. The floor, your knees
and any flat surface in front of you will do for practice.

This is one of the few drum books you can literally practice from
anywhere at anytime with nothing but the book and you.

This book has been around for at least 40 years, originally (c)1963. It is a fantastic book, with great exercises, mostly written in eighths and eighth-note tripletts. You won't be three lines into the exercises on page 4 (the beginning page of exercises, after a couple of pages in introduction and explanation), before you will find yourself doing stuff you've only dreamed of doing.

You can (should) do the exercises with a metronome, forcing you to count and driving you to keep up and not despair. If you have an auto-stepping metronome, you'll find yourself playing the exercises open-close, and increasing to speeds (from the very beginning) that will surprise you. This book, like G.L. Stone's "Stick Control" is one of the all-time great books, proven many times over.

And, wait until you see the pics of Dahlgren and Fine on the inside front cover...you'll never think of yourself as a geek, again. Get this one; you will not regret it--but only if you use it.

There are a few books that I believe belong in every drummers library. The absolute essential books are Syncopation For the Modern Drummer, Stick Control and 4-Way Coordination. Of course there are many other great books out there such as New Breed, Accents and Rebounds and many others but these are essential.

Why is 4-Way Coordination essential? Well, as far as fluidity on the drums this book has definitely helped me the most. By the time I worked through just the first page my skill level increased dramatically. It did take a few weeks to work through the first page, I didn't just blow through it so even though this book will elevate your skill level quickly, it still takes time to really work through each exercise.

This book has helped me in all aspects of drumming. This book is focused on limb independence but the exercises will help you gain speed, off-hand development, control and fluidity. This is because each limb is exercised, the exercises don't favor one side or the other, you exercise both sides evenly.

I have heard reviewers complain that the exercises in this book don't have any groove to them. This is true, but this should not have a negative impact on the quality of this book. The purpose of this book is to gain limb independence and it definitely does that. There are plenty of books out there that teach crafty grooves, but this is not one of them and it doesn't try to be. If you can work through this entire book then you will be a MUCH better drummer, limb independence is definitely one of the keys to great drumming. Don't go in to this book expecting to learn crafty drum beats, but go in expecting you will gain so much limb independence that you will be much more creative behind the kit, which leads to crafty drum beats.

This book is definitely challenging. I believe a lot of people might give up because the author says at the beginning of this book that any proficient drummer should be able to do these exercises at the target speed (and even much faster as he says). This may discourage some because the target speeds are fast! The first exercises are 120 BPM on the half note, so on the quarter note (What most metronomes default to) that's equivalent to 240 BPM. Believe me, it's quite a challenge coordinating all of your limbs at 240 BPM, even if they are just 8th notes. People may beat themselves up and think they aren't proficient drummers. With all due respect to the author, don't pay attention to this. Start each exercise off VERY slowly and work your way up.

I work through this book one exercise at a time. My goal is to get to around 3/4 speed before moving on to the next exercise. If you try and reach the target speed before moving on then you might be working on the first exercise for months! Of course this is just me, you might be able to blaze through these much faster then I. So set a goal for each exercise, 3/4 speed, 1/2 speed - whatever - then start moving forward. I revisit each exercise every day and try to increase my speed. Once I work through a page then instead of practicing that page one exercise at a time, I practice the entire page as if it were a single exercise. This has helped me a lot. I'm sure you will find your own way to work through this book, this is just what has worked for me.

Don't give up. This book is very challenging but I believe beginners and seasoned pros can both work through it. New guys just need to start VERY slow, even if it's just 40 BPM. The hard part is coordinating your limbs, once you successfully complete an exercise then it becomes much easier to bump up the metronome - the coordination is the hard part at first. Get this book, you will be amazed how much skill you gain by working through these exercises! This book is one of my daily essentials.

like the title states, this book really helps with coordination and independence. i am not even halfway through the exercises in this book (although i have been working very dilligently) and i am throwing patterns into my playing that i never would have before. the beginning half of this book really covers playing different hand patterns over foot ostinatos, where you filly in the gaps in the foot ostinatos with your hands. its very very difficult at first, it had me very frustrated when my limbs just wouldnt cooperate. but after a couple weeks, i seem to have "broken through a wall", and now i am sight reading many of the exercises cprrectly the first time. another cool thing about it is that dahlgren forms these exercises with clear patterns in mind (i.e, keeping the ostinatos the same but moving them around in the measure and having you reverse your hand patterns over the same ostinatos) so that you could easily come up with similar exercises yourself. i highly reccomend it.

Having a book like 4-Way Coordination will do nothing for you, unless of course you are willing to invest the time toward mastering each excercise contained within.

It would be impossible to speculate just how far you could go, but your playing will improve exponentially once you have mastered the incredible musicality this book offers!

To effectively and indelibly burn the contents of this book into your musical vocabulary, you would need to spend considerable time playing each bar at 35 mm on the metronome ad infinitum. Then take it up from there!

Rumour has it that this book was the main focus Tony Williams used to develope his incredible playing. Rumour also has it that Tony could effortlessly play each excercise at the highest metronome settings.

One could spend a lifetime working toward discovering every permutation and combination this book offers!

This book is a definite "must have!" Buy it now!

Dan Bodanis

Professional Drummer

wwww.thedanbodanisband.com

When I first saw this book and the exercises, I think that I can finish this exercises in a small time period. But when I started to practice, things weren't same as I thought. It is really hard and creative book I think. Exercises in this book is only with hi-hat, bass and snare. But it is really increasing your technique and hi-hat control if you practice slow to fast. This book is also recommended by my one of the best drummer; Danny Carey of Tool. If you are not new to drums, and want to increase your technique, this book is one of the best and you have to know that patience is very important when practicing with this book.

This book will soon have you moving your limbs in unexpected ways if you practice according to the authors' recommendations. You'll find minimum speeds suggested by the authors; they'll seem wildly fast to you at first, but here's my advice: set your metronome at a low speed, between 40 and 50 beats per sec; practice each excercise for 2 minutes without stopping and increase the tempo by one beat (50,51,52...). Don't skip one single speed. By doing this, it should take you days or even weeks, depending on how much time you put daily, to play an excercise at the suggested tempos. However, once you finish, you'll be amazed at how precise and fast you will have become with the excercise, and most important, you'll notice you can play grooves and fills you couldn't play before (this is how I played some double bass for the first time). I have only been playing for one year and a half; I'm a beginner, but a promising beginner, and I owe a great deal of my progress to this method.

Okay, when I first got this book, I found it to be interesting. As I began to work through this book, I found it to be very fundamental in helping create independence and a great aid in developing deliberate intent, the purposeful playing, the intentional timing of what you play with what appendage. And I found it a lot of fun, too.

As a single bass pedal player, with the left foot I play the hat. If I ever decide to get a "second" kick pedal add on, I will go through this book again to develop that talent. Those of you with that second kick will be able to do this right away. But don't neglect switching to the hat as part of the learning process either. Lots of hat work opportunities here, believe me. I've found some cool ideas working this out using the hat since I don't have the second kick pedal.

The holy grail of drumming is independence, to play different beats and rhythms with each appendage to create a cohesive whole. If you are having trouble with developing independence, buy this book and begin to learn, one exercise at a time.

I put my students through this. It is quite a bit of fun to watch them struggle -- because I relive my own struggle learning to get my arms and legs to work apart from one another, yet create a whole rhythm pattern by what each contributes to the overall effect. Once they get it, the light glows in their eyes. "Hey! This is kinda cool." Indeed. It really is.

but it still warrants 5 stars or 20 stars
I'll explain what I mean.
When you consider how most of us learn how to drum, (let's assume that we're all right handed to simplify this discussion), we learn to keep time with the right hand and to then have a very dominant right hand, and largely a weak left hand that can never lead. As for the feet, forget it. If you're a self-taught pop/rock drummer, you just memorise a few key patterns with your right foot and your left foot tries to raise the hi-hat to make an exciting sound (for most of us the left foot is basically useless).

So this books sets out with a program to give every limb a chance to develop. Someone here was complaining that it had no grooves, or that it was boring, or whatever. Even the patterns on first page of actual examples, are impossible to do the first few times, until you get your 'head' around them.


The main idea of this book is to develop all the useful permuations of Right hand/Left Hand/Right Foot/Left foot that you would just never even think of doing if you just happened to either be playing the drums or accompanying some musicians. And with good reason. You have to work very hard indeed to embed these patterns. Once you do, you find that your whole previous emphasis on leading with your strong right hand and just playing the bass drum patterns for the beats you knew and having a weak left hand and a non-existent left foot just ends. And the first set of exercises are all sequential limbs playing (never two things at once). After that it's one hand and one foot at any one time and finally any combination of up to 4 things (the most demanding)

The whole drum kit opens up to you bilaterally (left and right and also , hands and feet).
It just adds intelligence to your feet and the excercises become more and more elaborate (but always doable slowly) and it becomes basically a test of whether you put the hours in.
If you do, you will be very handsomely rewarded behind the kit.

Many people have compared Thomas Lang to this, I haven't seen his books, I've seen him play and although he's a supremely talented drummer and musician, I find he doesn't do anything for me. His books though may well worth be checking out!
This is more of a 'old testament' of hand and feet independence than any kind of modern take on anything and already a couple of people have mentioned that Tool's drummer and Bernard Purdie were great fans. My own guess is that this book is the secret behind many a talented drummer that we've all come to admire, maybe they weren't too keen to share their 'trade secrets'.

Like other people my advice on how to practice is ignore the metronome markings. Get a metronome play it very slowly indeed and aim for even-ness and conviction behind whatever pattern you are doing. If you can play something slowly and well eventually you'll be able to play it fast and well. But first...you have to be able to play it at all at an even tempo!

On an amusing aside...I used to get annoyed when people kept me waiting but these days, I never mind how long I wait, as any time I gain, I can use to practice the patterns from this book that I can remember, I get so absorbed, that I'm almost sorry when my friend(s) turn up.


One final thing, this is just one weapon in the arsenal of the thinking drummer, this book has nothing really to say about rudiments, accents, press rolls, manual dexterity, it's really about re-wiring your brain and totally integrating your hands and feet so that when you come to improvise you have many more inner resources to draw from as you feel your way to undreamed of chops...I'm profoundly grateful this book exists, it has transformed my enjoyment of drumming and therefore my life.


now the execution.
this book is horrible in its explanations which could not be more terse or cryptic. it's as if all the effort of figuring out the patterns left them exhausted and they couldn't be bothered to write anything vaguely approaching the pedagogic, or they had a limited budget, or they thought you'd always have a teacher with you.
But...it is nearly 50 years old and for the sheer content of its hands/feet interplay sequences and patterns, it's a total classic.


Stick with it! honest.