Striking the Drum

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Transcripts

So, once you feel comfortable holding the stick like this, and you might try and exercise, where you let your fingers out, bring them back in, just so that you know that youre not loosening up at the fulcrum, at the thumb and the first finger. Then it's time to hit the drum. Again, anybody can hit the drum, all you need to have to do is drop the stick, but you want to do it again, efficiently so that you dont use more energy than you need. Think of a single stroke as being a quick motion down to up, down up like this, I will hit the drum. This is our ideal stroke, because it uses the least amount of energy and effort on our part. We are pushing the stick down, gravity is helping us, then relax the muscles in your hand as soon as it strikes the drum and the stick will bounce back. Be careful when you try this at home, but I just want to demonstrate the rebound properties of the drum. As you can see the drum wants to propel the stick back, so lets use it to help us. Start with your stronger hand and Im going to assume thats your right hand, so you can reverse everything that I say, if youre left-handed, but start with your wrist fairly low, again, straight off your arm. Bend your wrist back slightly and then stroke down up. Say down up as you do it, so you think of it as a single word in a single motion. Down up, down up, down up. When that feels very comfortable, do it with your left hand; down up, down up, down up, down up, down up and thats the basic way we want to hit the drums. I say the basic way because there are many, many other ways we might want to strike the drum to get different sounds, and because were in a three dimensional environment once we start working on the drum set, but if you have this basic way down then it's going to be very effortless as you move around the drums, and you will be able to alter as you need to. So, this is the first step. Generally through these lessons get really good at each step before you move further, dont go to the next clip until youre real comfortable with what were doing in this clip. The motion, again, is all by the wrist, were not going up and down with the arm, keep your arms relaxed, elbows to your side, use your wrist, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, do it slowly and precisely so that you can feel and think about what it is your doing and you can monitor yourself to make sure nothings going wrong, it will eventually get into your muscle memory. In other words, it will become a habit to do it right, and thats when you can really move forward on the drum set.

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