Ghost notes do a few things:
They add texture to your groove. They keep the time flowing due to the motion happening. And they also fill in the empty silence between your strokes if this is required by the music, or if this is what you want to have happen while soloing.
As for Carter, here's the story as I remember it from his video. :)
Carter was exposed to Buddy Rich at a very young age simply because his parents didn't have a baby sitter, so they had to take him along. He was about 3 or 4 years old. When he saw Buddy, he became fascinated by the look of Buddy. The speed of Buddy. He wanted to "emulate his every move", so Carter took this image of Buddy he had in his head and tried to mimic exactly what he saw... Carter saw Buddy's snare and hi-hats on the right side of the kit (from the audience perspective), and so he set his hi-hat and snare up on the right, and put the ride on his left, and basically just set up a mirror-image of a right-handed kit. He was a very young kid, and didn't know any better, nor did he understand the concept. So Carter learned how to play leading with his left. Everything was always leading with his left. He was a right-handed drummer playing on a left-handed kit, and he later realized that wasn't the look he wanted. Carter then first tried opening it up (open handed on a left handed set up) on the left handed setup, and found that things weren't flowing very well, so he then set the kit up right-handed and played cross hand that way, and he found that things weren't flowing as they should, and he wanted to play certain things and couldn't, so he then decided to open it up on the right-handed setup, and once he did, he found that a whole new world was opened up for him. He could do things he couldn't do before now that he was leading with his left on a right-handed kit.
So it's not something he went out and learned, he's just been playing that way his entire life, so it's something he's used to. He suggests that if a drummer wants to learn to play open handed, he just says take it very slowly. As slowly as you can. What I personally suggest doing so you can enable yourself to do ghost notes, is play the basic chorus drum part to Smells Like Teen Spirit, but slowly. The bass drum doesn't have to be any specific pattern, but the sticking is basically
8ths with the left. 2 and 4 with the right. Ghost note as MANY of the "ah" and "ee" beats as possible. You obviously can't really ghost the "ee" before 2 or 4, so you can use your bass drum to do that if you want. But for now, I suggest just 8ths with the left, 2 and 4 with the right, and accenting the "ah" and "e" 16th note beats that surround counts 1 and 3. So for example, the bolded are the strokes for the right-hand in the open handed left-hand lead style (underlined and bolded for a stronger stroke if you wish.. or for later use once you've become comfortable with the sticking):
1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah 1 e & etc.... (8th notes are 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &) |
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