– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

My first teacher sat me down, and the very first beat I ever played was:

boom bap, boom bap.

I’m Matt Johnson— groove number two for TED.

And he’s like, that’s the simplest beat, basically in the world.

But you will never master it.

And he was right.

Hey, you! Yes, you. Is there music inside of you?

We’ve recruited working musicians from throughout the industry

to help you hear it, hold it, and share it with this wild and wonderful world.

I got started playing music at a very young age because of my parents.

We had a family band,

so at age 13 I started to play drums with the family band.

I remember hearing KC and The Sunshine Band when I was five.

It's one of my earliest memories, actually, and I was like, what is that?

And knew kind of instantly that I wanted to pursue drumming.

I really liked watching footage of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard as a kid,

whenever they came on TV, I was always very excited by the flamboyance

and the showmanship and what have you.

And I kind of just wanted to be a piano player playing loud music.

I was a very mediocre piano player, but it was definitely a great entry

into other instruments subsequently then.

I got my first drum lesson when I was about 10 years old,

and I remember going home with my dad in the car and saying,

well he told me to practice, I think, for 20 minutes a day,

and I was like, well I’m going to practice for 40 minutes a day!

You know, I'm going to double the time and get, you know, twice as good.

I remember feeling very inspired at the end of the lesson.

The role of the drummer in the band is basically the heartbeat of the band.

Spinal cord of the entire body and keeping everybody together.

It’s basically teaming up with the bass players to form,

almost the sort of bedrock of a song and create a foundation

upon which the other stuff is added— the melodic stuff, the guitars, keys,

singing, et cetera, et cetera.

If you have somebody that's a little wishy washy on the drums,

the band does not sound good at all.

And everybody’s kind of tentative.

It’s hard to dig in when you don’t have a consistent timekeeper.

If you're a drummer, that's the thing that keeps you up at night.

And that’s the thing that, if you screw it up, everyone can hear.

And you have to make sure that you are perfectly on time

and you’re keeping that time

and your emotions are not forcing you to speed up or slow down.

Because everybody in the band will be performing to you.

I’ve always had a tendency to pick up the pace a little bit,

or play a bit more frenetically during an exciting moment in the song.

I think I would be disingenuous as a performer

if I didn’t allow what was happening to affect me in some way.

The reason that there are all these great rock bands back then

is really attributed a lot to the drummer’s style.

Like John Bonham with Led Zeppelin has his style,

and that’s why Zeppelin sounds like Zeppelin.

And then you have Keith Moon and The Who— he’s crazy and wild.

It's not just about hitting the drum and playing a pattern.

It’s connecting with it as if it was a part of your soul.

Rudiments are sort of like the periodic chart of drumming.

There’s a, I mean, a gazillion rudiments.

They’re sticking patterns, essentially.

So, a five stroke roll is a left, left, right, right, left, right, right,

left, left, right.

It’s almost like kung fu: right, left, right, right, left, left.

Usually the next thing you learn is foundational grooves.

Groove is basically like a rhythmic signature of a piece of music.

That’s it— right? So that’s the groove.

Just a four bar groove is— you could just loop it, loop it, loop it,

and it will make people dance.

Unbelievably primal groove—

that’s a rock groove that will sound different

with every single drummer that plays it.

You really just need the hi-hat, snare, and the kick for most grooves.

Then you can add tom-toms— those are for fills and for accents.

And you can do a million things with drums.

The drumming world is an endless world of possibilities

because there’s just so many types of drums.

You have the traditional drum set,

and then you have the classical percussion world,

the Latin percussion world: timbales, the congas, the bongo.

So many different things.

But it’s all based on one principle: rhythm.

I think it's important to learn the basic stuff,

but it’s just as important to practice and to play with people.

Don’t play just in your bedroom— you need to play with people.

That's the most important thing.

The sooner you can get out, play with people.

Because that really informs your playing better than anything else.

I believe a good drum instructor will strongly advise any new musician

or new drummer to actually practice with a metronome.

You’re just like, oh my god, this is not inspirational.

But, the more you practice with it,

is the more you’re going to internalize how to keep time.

I just make sure every day that I go in and play for at least a half an hour,

just to keep the signals between my brain and my limbs open.

At the end of the day,

yes, it can be mathematical because one bar has eight beats.

You know, you could keep subdividing it: 8, 16, 32.

Just subdividing it more.

But you have to be able to feel it, it’s about the feel.

It’s about this cadence that sometimes is not a 100% squared.

It just takes you.

What seems like something that might be good on paper

doesn’t necessarily translate once you’re actually trying to do it in the room.

So you’re continually listening and just trying to trust your own judgment

and actually how it just makes you feel.

Somehow my algorithm figured out I'm a drummer

and I get a lot of clips of people who are amazing,

the best drummer you’ve ever seen, but then there’s another one is even better.

And it's easy to get discouraged.

For your own peace of mind, you have to try and filter out that stuff

and just focus on whatever it is you’re doing

and try to figure out what your strengths are

and further develop whatever voice it is you have.

It's about doing it over and over and over again.

So it doesn’t matter who you play with, as long as you play.

You’re never too cool for anything. Just play, play, play, play.

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
music /ˈmjuːzɪk/ A1	noun - organized sound that is expressive or enjoyable
drum /drʌm/ A1	noun - a membranophone musical instrument played by striking a skin stretched over a shell
drummer /ˈdrʌmər/ A2	noun - a person who plays the drums
beat /biːt/ A1	noun - the basic unit of time in music, a regular repeated pulse verb - to strike repeatedly
rhythm /ˈrɪðəm/ B1	noun - a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound
groove /ɡruːv/ B2	noun - a repeated rhythmic pattern that creates a feeling of swing or flow verb - to play with a steady, flowing rhythmic feel
practice /ˈpræktɪs/ A2	noun - the repeated performance of an activity to improve skill verb - to perform an activity repeatedly to improve
tempo /ˈtɛmpəʊ/ B2	noun - the speed at which a piece of music is played
percussion /pərˈkʌʃən/ B2	noun - musical instruments that are played by being struck, shaken or scraped
metronome /ˈmɛtrənɒm/ C1	noun - a device that produces a steady beat to help musicians keep time
foundation /faʊnˈdeɪʃən/ B2	noun - the underlying basis or principle of something
feel /fiːl/ B1	noun - the impression or sensation produced by something verb - to perceive or experience an emotion or physical sensation
cadence /ˈkeɪdns/ C1	noun - a rhythmic flow of sounds or words; a sequence of notes or chords that concludes a phrase
master /ˈmɑːstər/ B2	verb - to acquire complete knowledge or skill in a subject
inspiration /ˌɪnspɪˈreɪʃən/ C1	noun - a stimulating or creative influence that prompts action or thought
consistency /kənˈsɪstənsi/ C1	noun - the quality of being steady and unchanging in performance or behavior
algorithm /ˈælɡərɪðəm/ C1	noun - a step‑by‑step procedure for solving a problem or performing a task