When it comes to translating Indian percussive traditions onto the drum kit, Sarah Thawer is the guru! In this video, Sarah uses an odd time rhythm called the rupak to demonstrate the beauty of not accenting the one.

You’ll learn how you can integrate this type of rhythmic thinking into your drumming and how to feel odd time signatures differently (and possibly even more comfortably, depending on how your mind works).

Follow along with the lesson:

• Tala (or ‘taal’) is a rhythmic cycle.
• The rupak is Sarah’s favorite tala, and it’s broken down into 3-2-2 (or 3 then 4).
• Rather than always putting the emphasis on the 1 (common in western music) you accent it like so: one two three ONE two THREE four.
• You can vocalize this pattern with syllables: tin tin na DHIN na DHIN na (where the ‘dhin’ represents the lower-sounding drum of the tabla, a classical percussion instrument from the north of India). This can help you feel the music better.
• The first (unaccented) half of the cycle is ’empty’ (known as khali) and the second (accented) half of the cycle is ‘heavy’ (bhari). So the rupak rotates between khali and bhari.
• To translate tabla-based music onto the drum kit, you could assign the lower sound (DHIN) to the bass drum and the higher sounds to the snare and hi-hat. But there are no rules!

Here’s the loop Sarah plays along to in the video. Try it yourself:

If this lesson got you thinking differently about rhythm, you’ll love Sarah’s course ‘Exploring Indian Grooves’, available for Drumeo members. Sign up for a 7-day trial here and get access to Sarah’s lessons on Bhangra and Garba, plus hundreds of other courses, thousands of play-along songs and more!

Here we go!

Sarah Thawer tackles this classic Super Mario medley on a hybrid kit, where cool patterns and accents meet samples from the original games. Her detailed, articulated playing and unique style make this short but sweet video a fun watch (and might give you the burst of nostalgia you didn’t know you needed).

If you’re a fan of Sarah, check out these videos too:

Sarah Thawer Plays “Thriller”
Exploring Indian Grooves On The Drums
Drum Beats To Make People Dance

I thought I had the validation I needed. I thought I was good enough to get into music school.

Playing piano growing up, I understood notation and how to read music but I didn’t know what rudiments were. I would play drums at a music store and they’d say “Cool inverted paradiddle”, and I didn’t know what they were talking about.

I got rejected from almost all of the schools that I applied for. Berklee said no. Manhattan School of Music said no.

I thought I was living a lie. If all of these schools are rejecting me, am I even good? Has everybody been lying to me? Maybe I’m not a prodigy. I felt completely lost. Being self-taught, and having a father who was self-taught, we had no guidance of where I would go from here.
 

If all of these schools are rejecting me, am I even good? Has everybody been lying to me?

 
However, York University in Toronto gave me a chance – and a $40,000 scholarship, the Oscar Peterson Scholarship. While I was there, I bought all the books I’d been tested on in every audition and started working on everything. I found it very easy to catch up theoretically.

I grew up in a household where Indian music was the only music we listened to. We didn’t have YouTube to look things up, so for me, it was whatever my parents brought in the house. We had tablas and Indian percussion laying around. I would listen to all of these percussion-heavy Indian songs, and then in my spare time I would take the tabla parts and play them on the drum set. I would play it all on the floor tom and pitch bend it with my elbow and then put my face on the snare to mute it. I loved being creative and having fun. I would put my face on the snare drum. I would hit the rim with my pinky ring to imitate the Dholak. I was thinking of the drum set like a percussionist in a very unorthodox way.

When I applied to the music schools, they would ask me if I knew of Buddy Rich and Dave Weckl and all these contemporary drummers. I definitely did. But I also knew Zakir Hussain, Trilok Gurtu and I listened to Folk music, Qawwali, Ghazals, Bollywood music. My reference points were always percussionists. No school really catered to my journey. Everybody who I knew of grew up playing drums in the church and surrounded by drum kits.

I felt like I didn’t fit in. I didn’t meet one person who was my gender, my skin color, with my upbringing. I felt completely lost and like I had no way out.
 

I didn’t meet one person who was my gender, my skin color, with my upbringing.

 
I was sitting in a gospel music rehearsal at university, and there was a drummer there. He started playing his kick drum in a certain way and my mouth was on the ground. What is this? What is gospel music, what is funk, what is fusion, what is this hip-hop stuff that I’m listening to? My life turned around.

I remember after watching that rehearsal I went back into my dorm room and cried for hours.

I suck! I don’t know what this is!

I made a decision. For those four years of school, I hid my identity of Indian music and percussion. I was already getting recognized in the Bollywood industry, but I wanted to get more into North American culture. I wanted to be immersed in understanding the full technique of drum kits. I had to put the percussion mindset aside for a while.

I started listening heavily to gospel, fusion and funk, going to all the jazz clubs and staying up until four in the morning shaking hands, going to all the jazz festivals, playing gigs around Canada five days a week, hustling, learning who’s who in the scene to get understood and recognized and to soak in this new knowledge of music.

I played gospel music in a church for about five years, and that also changed my life. I wanted to understand the gospel feel that you can only get by immersing yourself in the culture, the same way you learn and understand any genre of music. I tell people that I’ve had two lives, and this was my second life.

Indian music actually encompasses so many genres that you become versatile without even knowing it. I’ll never forget when I went for my first private lesson at university. I played a mambo groove on the conga and I was like, “Check out this Indian groove!”

They told me otherwise.

“This isn’t an Indian groove. This is a Cuban groove that comes from the Cuban culture.”

My mind was blown that I was playing a lot of these rhythms in the Bollywood tradition and it was not authentic. My goal was to become as authentic as possible.

I finished university with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in Jazz performance and World music and graduating with the Summa Cum Laude distinction. I became a full time gigging musician and started to notice a shift in my life. All the people who looked down on me or didn’t accept me at the universities started becoming my colleagues and friends. I finally got validated by the Berklee professors, and started getting offers to be endorsed by various prestigious drum companies. It wasn’t impossible to catch up.

I just wish someone was willing to tell me what was missing in my life. Unfortunately, no one saw the potential I had. I had to be my own cheerleader.
 

I had to be my own cheerleader.

 
Later, I met Dave and Jared from Drumeo at NAMM and they invited me to come out to do a lesson. They were like, “What do you want to talk about?”

I was like, “Coordination, independence, creativity.”

“Sarah, you know, so many people have covered this topic. What if you do Indian grooves?”

Oh my god.

Being self taught – hearing Indian grooves on the tabla and then playing them on the kit – I thought if I talked about it, no one would understand it. It comes from such an organic place, I thought maybe I’d be looked down upon. I tried to hide this identity because I thought nobody could relate and that it wasn’t cool. I was ashamed.

But this time I thought, you know what, let’s give it a shot.

After I did my live lesson, it went viral, and my life changed. In the drum industry, my branding became how I’m a versatile drummer, but also somebody who makes Indian grooves and applies it to modern music and beats.

When I was younger, I thought I was a failure because I didn’t understand proper technique, and because I didn’t have a stick control book. But I realized that you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are. You just have to push through these hard points and embrace it.

Even if you don’t know anybody who had the same growth as you, you have to be your own cheerleader and have faith in yourself. Know the power that you have. Know what you’re capable of doing and what you’re not capable of doing – even if you will be capable of it one day. Own who you are.

I was constantly trying to get everyone’s approval. Everybody has an opinion and their own perspective, but there’s no such thing as right or wrong. One person will say “you should bury the beater” while another says you shouldn’t. You’ll be told you’re holding the sticks too tight, or too loose, or that less is more or that more is too much. Opinions and opinions.

Don’t be afraid to really form your own identity. Don’t be afraid to color outside the lines.

Sarah Thawer

Are you ready for some spooky grooves? Sarah Thawer slaughters this cover of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” just in time for Halloween!

Aside from her talent, you may notice two other things in this video: the traditional Indian clothing Sarah is sporting, and the fact that she’s a pro drummer in a male-dominated industry. After she plays the song, she has a very important message about both of these things, so make sure you watch the entire video.

While growing up with supportive parents as a self-taught drummer, society never encouraged Sarah to play the drums. “As long as I can remember, I have never felt welcome or accepted as a female drummer,” she says, talking about the constant negative comments and insults that included statements like “when are you going to have children”, “you can only do this until you’re 30”, “this is a great hobby that will help you get into med school,” and “when are you going to get a real job?” Every music university she applied to rejected her, and she felt like the odd one out at every convention she performed at.

Like Sarah says, drumming is gender neutral, and the gender and ethnicity of the player should have nothing to do with it. “We need to stop listening with our eyes and start listening with our ears. We need to be the generation that empowers women and everyone else who experiences prejudice to pursue their passion without fear or judgement.”

Sarah has three challenges for anyone who sees this:

1. Share this video with everyone you know.
2. Support a female drummer by leaving a nice comment on one of their videos.
3. Call out bad behavior when you see it.

And finally, she has an important message for other female drummers and those who come from different backgrounds: “Embrace who you are. Don’t worry about the people around you. Be yourself. Embrace who you are and keep shining.”

Sarah Thawer knows how to make people dance with her drumming – and she’s here to teach you five things to consider so yours gets the audience grooving, too.

The goal is to hold the pulse and make the music feel good – but how do you get your audience to feel the pocket? Look into the audience while you’re playing. Are they bobbing their heads or are they bored?

It’s up to you, as the drummer, to make sure they’re moving.

So what do your beats need so they absolutely kill it at the club?

1. Consistency

When someone can anticipate what’s going to happen next, they can get comfortable with the pattern or groove. If there’s too much going on, people don’t know what to grab onto.

Not only is a consistent pattern important, so is the sound balance. Every hit you play should be at the same volume as the previous one. Many of these dance genres – like EDM – use grooves based on drum machines and computers, so it’s important to be authentic to that.

2. Four on the floor

This is essential to dance music – especially styles like soca or calypso – and it can get anyone on the dance floor. It gives people a pulse to follow. Keep that bass drum consistent and build on it. Even if your hands change what they’re doing, four on the floor will make sure you don’t throw off the audience.

3. Space

Give the music a chance to breathe. If you listen to well produced music – especially in EDM – you’ll notice how much space there is in the song. Start simple. Four on the floor. And then add layers to build the groove.

4. Melody

You can add a melody using other drums around the consistent kick and snare. A good way to test your idea is whether or not it makes your body want to move when you sing that melody in your head.

5. Feel

What brings the feel in a groove? It’s more than just going through the motions. Are your notes and subdivisions tight while playing in the pocket? Are you behind or ahead of the beat? Are you paying attention to the dynamics between your limbs? Is your snare really popping? How much are you pushing it?

Take everything you’ve learned here and test it on friends, family, or at a gig. Does your drumming make people move? Whether you’re playing EDM, R&B, funk, gospel or other styles of dance music, you want to make sure the dance floor is packed. Go get ’em!

Drummers can sometimes get tunnel vision when it comes to what can be used as a percussion instrument. Sure, we have drums and cymbals… But are they the only musical-sounding objects we have at our disposal?

In this lesson, Sarah Thawer will challenge your preconceived notions of what you can make music with by taking a random object and playing a surprisingly musical drum solo with it. Use this lesson as inspiration and see what you can come up with on your own.

Looking for another creativity challenge? Check out Sarah’s video on Unconventional Sound Sources that covers how to create brand new sounds from your existing setup!

About Sarah:
Sarah Thawer has been making a name for herself since setting foot on stage to perform for the very first time, when she was only 6 years old. A self-taught drummer at heart, Sarah has found great success by embracing the world of formal education, by studying jazz and world music at York University where she was the recipient of the Oscar Peterson Scholarship, the highest award given by the institution, in addition to graduating with the Summa Cum Laude distinction. All her accolades and work ethic have taken her to share a stage with world-class artists including AR Rahman, Ruth B, Jane Bunnett and Maqueque, Del Hartley, and D’bi and the 333, just to name a few.

Today’s video focuses on two main concepts: conventional sound sources and unconventional sound sources.

Conventional sound sources are the tools (and the way you hit those tools) you’ve already been using up to this point. The snare drum, kick drum, toms, and your cymbals. These take up the majority of what you’ll be using to create sounds, but we also have…

Unconventional sound sources. These are sounds that aren’t so obvious at first glance. This could include the rims on your drums, cymbal stands, the way you hit your drums and cymbals, and even changing up what you use to hit these sources.

So the next time you’re playing on a kit that might not have all the tools you’re used to playing with, keep these concepts in mind and start exploring your options! What are some of your favorite unconventional sound sources?