Very occasional quote of the day: technique

What if you think of something to play that doesn't have a standard technique? That's what jazz cats have been doing since jazz was born. All of a sudden, you want to play something that a flam doesn't encompass, or a paradiddle doesn't encompass, or anything else.

What is it? Maybe it's a flubadub. I don't know, but you play this flubadub, and the only way to play this thing is to use the technique you discovered to play it. So you have added to the standard technique by playing this thing. And if you can use it musically—it works!

There is no right and wrong. If it's musical, it works. So just to sit and practice standardized techniques from drum books will not make you freer. The concept makes you freer, not your technique.

- Barry Altschul, Modern Drummer interview by Rick Mattingly, November, 1982

I answer technique questions

A question about technique from Ben in Australia: 

I have been working on my grip which has become prominently German.

I'm finding that it's very comfortable and natural for the slower aspects with grooves, sticking patterns and general playing on the kit.

However I find that as it's a big wrist movement grip.....it gets to a point where there's no increase in speed. I have the control for sure.....but my speed becomes almost stunted. I can't seem to employ my fingers well with the German grip.

I find if I'm doing singles using the German grip and I start speeding up.....my hands morph into more of a french grip which allows me to use my fingers a LOT more.

Is this something that is perhaps natural for me or quite normal or could it be perceived as perhaps the beginnings of a bad habit? 

It might be limiting on speed— though I don't know how fast you're talking. I can play fast enough for all normal professional purposes with it. I could have better technique for very dense, finely controlled playing at very fast jazz tempos— equivalent to 16th notes at quarter note = 165+.  It seems like a lot of people's idea of speed is either way slower than I can play, or way faster— youtuber speed, vanity speed. I don't know where you are with it. 

I don't believe technique is primarily about achieving ultimate speed. It's first about getting a sound, handling normal musical materials, and precise timing. And form for handling technical materials and dynamics. 

I think if your hands move to another grip when doing a particular thing, it's not a big deal. As long as you're doing it well. My hands move around doing different things. I think the only thing that counts is what works when you're playing with people. Technique in the abstract on practice pad doesn't count— people try to do things on the pad they don't remotely know how to deploy musically when they're playing. 

With a controlled German grip, keeping stick heights pretty low (~9" off the drum at the highest, mostly in the 3-5" range) you should be able to do most of what you need to do in music. I can't account for the high sticking thing people use to demonstrate things— 13-36" off the drum— I never have to deploy a lot of chops that loud. I don't think that's a good way to learn technique, playing so high you have to use arm. You don't have to train to use arm, you do have to train to use only/primarily wrist.  

Read these posts for some more thoughts on technique. 

Drum lesson with Murray Spivack

Here's a rare thing, a famous drum teacher, Murray Spivack, giving a drum lesson to Louis Bellson: 

The portion with Spivack is dedicated to basic stuff: holding the sticks, making basic strokes, and playing rudiments. 

I think Louis Bellson was a lot more influential on drumming— via the clinics he used to do in the 60s/70s— than he gets credit for, and a lot of this technique style filtered down to me as a student in the 80s, via a number of people. 

It's interesting that in my playing, I've need to work out some things that are contrary to this technique; at least I needed some other things in addition to it. Doing every stroke as an up-down, for example, has you stopping the rebound at the end of every stroke, or double stroke, and puts the top of the stroke— which determines how loud you're going to play— in an undefined kinetic area, where you are only for an instant. 

When working on pure technique, I am more down-up oriented now, which makes for better dynamic control. And instead of practicing stopping the stick down low after each stroke, we're practicing getting ready for the next note quickly, which can't but help your speed. Also, generally, this whole approach frontloads each stroke with a lot of extra stuff between the beginning of the movement, and the bead actually striking the drum, all of which affects timing— having to lift the stick before playing a note, and leading the stroke with the arch of your articulated wrist, with the bead of the stick trailing that. It's not inconsequential— in drum corps, we had to train to get a precisely timed attack when starting the stroke with a lift. 

Clearly a lot of great players have used this technique, and it has worked well for them. As an excellent professional drummer using a similar technique, I found myself needing some things not directly addressed by it.    

There are some other small, interesting things: Spivack singing a Flam Accent #1 starting with a pick up. And when Bellson demonstrates double strokes slow to fast, or “open to closed”, in old terminology, at the fast end his roll becomes multiple bounce. Which was always my understanding of the term closed, but I've never seen that actual change in stroke type done in practice. My teachers all taught open (meaning double strokes) and closed (meaning multiple bounce) rolls as different things, not as a continuum depending on how fast you're playing. In fact Spivack does correct him on that, asking him to play his doubles more open, and not switch to a multiple bounce roll. 

It's very cool to hear from somebody who was an active drumming professional as early as Spivack was. I'll be looking through Stone's Technique of Percussion to see if there's an early mention of him. 

[h/t to Buddhadrummer @ DW]

How not to hit a drum

Hey, it's been awhile since I've watched a drumming video, and rendered the tidal wave of complaints and irritations that come with it, so here are some comments I wrote when someone made me watch the following video. You'll fully get the point for everything that follows by about the four minute mark.  

We'll take this item by item, as long as my patience holds out: 

1. Hypnotic is not a desirable quality. There's no love in that. It's a very low form of manipulation. The only place I've ever experienced music trying to be hypnotic was in playing a contemporary church gig, where the music was as banal as it was despicable. Maybe it was just a poorly chosen word, but part of our job as communicators is to have better words. 

2. The premise of changing the groove by adding a single ghost note is ridiculous. It's like me leaving the room, doing up one additional button, coming back in and saying don't recognize me, do you? Does this form please you? 

Guys, I'm thinking about trying a different groove on this song. [adds one ghost note] 

No. The whole video is one groove, with some minor variations, and some barely-significant embellishments.  

3. Don't move your hands like that when you're playing the drums. Play the notes you're playing, don't play the air. He's coming within a couple of mm from doing some accidental rim shots at times. It looks amateurish, and practicing always moving your hands in unison 8th notes impedes gets in the way of doing other things.  

4. A large part of why YouTube is BS is the overemphasis on technique, and techniques. Exhibit A: the finger technique on those ghost notes here is ridiculous. Nobody but youtubers and people who watch too much youtube do that. Take the stick and hit the drum. 

Stop that.

There is a point in every enthusiasm-driven movement— Heavy Metal music, hoppy beer, the mullet hairstyle, wide leg jeans, YouTube drumming videos— where it becomes insular, losing the thread of what was originally cool, good, or useful to people, and becoming entirely about taking some superficial aspect of it “further”, whereupon it loses all connection with non-enthusiast reality. That's what we're experiencing with the technique displayed here.

5. The whole premise is false. If we're going to talk about musical intentionality and control, it's got to be much wider reaching than this, mainly about handling musical events within a piece. Making variations on a groove. Developing a groove musically. Something. Having the will power to play a repeating drum groove for a long time is not a feat of control. It could actually be a feat of not knowing anything else to play, or of being afraid to play anything else.

This does come up as a psychological problem for ambitious drummers, who are disposed to try to make a piece of music better by playing more stuff. It can't be addressed by just playing along with a milquetoast looping track, you have to be playing a real job with a real piece of music you really want to make good. See Andy Newmark's Modern Drummer interview for somebody talking about that in a serious way.   

As with a lot of these videos, I think somebody had an idea for some “content”, and the educational reasoning for it came after the fact, purely to sell the video, which is why it's so unconvincing. 

Conclusion: a negative post, but some are amused by my ranting and raving. And there's some serious stuff in there. For YouTubers, any engagement whatsoever = success, and controversy = $$$, so the video maker should be completely fulfilled by this. Everybody wins. 

Whither the hihat foot

What does it do?

Right up front: in playing the drums, the left foot is basically subservient. A lot of people vaguely suspect they're not doing enough with it. Some go on to become fixated on made up ideological goals like the four limbs are supposed to contribute equally— seeing the drums as a four co-equal limb operated apparatus.  

Which it is not. The drum set was first a snare drum and bass drum instrument, which became a cymbal and snare drum and bass drum instrument (plus some other junk). And it still basically is. In some periods and styles of music, the hihat was the main cymbal sound in that equation. It doesn't matter. Hihat = cymbal. 

But the fact that it takes a dedicated limb to control it makes people think that it has some role beyond just cymbal. It's not about appendages, however, it's about the musical instrument they control.  

The hihat device itself controls two vertically clapping cymbals, and is not conducive to finessed technique. To get a dry sound we have to do essentially a dead stroke, which is hard to do fast. It's easier to play open sounds quickly, but then you lose definition— the ringing cymbals negate whatever intricate thing you were trying to accomplish. 

And to what end? What are the musical functions of its available sounds? If this is going to be a musical instrument, we have to be thinking about that. We don't just play whatever because it's a drumset and the stuff is there, and we practiced it. 

Tone control
When playing the hihats with your hands— holding the cymbals varying degrees of closed and open. There's a lot of very nuanced expression possible here, not limited to the obvious choking effects.  

Simple rhythm
Playing the 2 and 4, or quarter notes, or 8th notes. Supporting the cymbal rhythm, or providing a grounding rhythm while doing looser stuff with the rest of the set.  

Accents and color - splash sounds
Splashing the cymbals with your foot is a particular kind of sound, used to best effect on ballads, or where you want a raucous vibe.

Alternative comping/texture voice
This is where people get really active with it— playing independent comping statements, or playing as part of a rhythm texture with the snare drum and/or bass drum. Occasionally, or as part of the main groove. The sound of the instrument itself is just a little strange in that role. It's not real expressive played with the foot— the sound itself, and the difficulty of doing much with it.    

In that role it's really acting as an occasional contrasting sound to the snare drum. Some drummers will develop one big gratuitous show stopping lick with it— that seems to be a thing. 


Part of a composed groove
For example that shuffle groove we've seen on a couple of versions of Midnight Special. Or in a semi-repeating way as Elvin Jones did on a waltz or Latin feel, or as in Steve Gadd's well known 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover groove.

Complex ostinato
Clave rhythms, most notably, or repeating rhythms with open and closed sounds. The clave rhythm may be a necessity if you're playing Latin gigs where there's a shortage of percussionists, and you're having to cover multiple people's jobs. That's the reason for that. The ostinato with splash sounds is more a showy solo item. 

???
Multi-pedals, other percussion instruments, feats of independence, etc etc. We're entering the world of people whose entire job description is to be amazing. We're not talking music any more— maybe quasi-music. Some people don't see the distinction.

But Jack Dejohnette is often amazing, isn't Joe Blow the amazing clinic/YouTube drummer just an extension of that? No, he isn't. This is something to think about and figure out. 

Still: there are real possibilities for people to develop a real personal musical thing with that, for music where the percussion is centered. If you're the person to do that, you already know who you are— everyone else, don't sweat it, you're not obligated. 

It's good to have clarity on stuff like this. It's just inherently a second order, supportive item, and it's fine. It's not just another thing we have to worry we're slacking on being amazing with.    

Hand dominance: still bull

Advertising a belief.

Yes, hand dominance is still bull. At least with regard to drumming. It happened again this week: a new student, right handed, who had never hit a drum before, automatically led everything with her left hand. I've seen it happen many times, maybe even a majority of the time. I pretty much expect it now. 

Why would they do that? My primitive drummer's brain believes that if hand dominance were a big deal, people would automatically lead with their preferred hand. Don't you think?  

Handedness people like to point out that, doing one-handed activities, the dominant hand does the work, and the other hand helps. We're to believe that that is the universal dynamic for all activities. But if that were the case, I would expect more students to attempt to play an entire rhythm with one hand. I've seen that rarely, and only with very slow rhythms. 

Drumming is a two-handed activity, and as with other activities requiring equal dexterity— and high dexterity— from both hands, people are able to do it. Like playing the piano or typing— both of which are regularly mastered to a reasonable degree of skill by large numbers of humans. For the most part there are no backwards keyboards and typewriters available, and no endless complaints from users about “weaker” hands.   

Where we get people with really weak left hands, it's a acquired thing— they've been playing the drums awhile, mostly playing basic rock stuff, with the right hand playing 8th notes and the left hand playing backbeats. Often they've settled on a left hand technique and movement that locks them into just slamming the 2 and 4. Plus they're used to having the right hand on the hihat all the time, so their left hand is chronically restricted that way. They don't practice a whole lot, and don't really know what to practice if they did. 

And to an extent it's a natural thing with more advanced players— the drum set, and the common vocabulary for playing it, are right hand oriented. So the right hand leads more, and usually plays more.  Unlike with piano, we're mostly not playing a literature that demands we develop the left hand equally, so it's easy to get away with slacking on it.  

It's endless.

But it's acquired— we're practicing to be that way. There's no reason both hands can't be equally able, and no reason anyone can't make any playing orientation work— right handed, left handed, “open” handed— regardless of which hand or foot they believe is dominant. There are other reasons to choose one of those orientations over the others, but that's another conversation.

Dominance and weakness are compelling, comforting words for enthusiasts, and the topic is heavily marketed to them by YouTubers, who are happy to have their viewers be disability oriented. The enthusiasts like talking about their “weak” hand, and having that be their main practice issue— not learning vocabulary, or other things they don't understand.  

Improving a “weaker” hand that has become less able through practice is extremely simple: open up your copy of Stick Control, maybe Accents & Rebounds, and practice it in front of a mirror, checking carefully for, and correcting, uneven stick heights and undesirable hand motion. Play left hand lead exercises about twice as long as right hand lead ones. That's it. You do have to do it.    

Very occasional quote of the day: sound and touch

“I’m not happy with my sound at all. I wish I sounded like Art Blakey or Elvin Jones. You have to be born with a certain feel or touch. Blakey had that African sound. It was so physical. Art played on my old Slingerland drums once at Minton’s Playhouse, and they were tuned tight like Max’s. But Art managed to capture his own deep sound on my drums. That’s when I realized it’s really physical.” 

“I try to practice lightly. I played so loud and hard with Miles, and even on some of the gigs I did with Sonny. That’s what they wanted. But now I’m going back to the ’60s, approaching things in a much lighter way. I just don’t think you have to bash. You can get the same intensity without bashing. Billy Higgins proved that. You could feel the tune building with each chorus when he played. You could feel the fire getting hotter without the volume getting louder. That’s what I’m trying to get back to.”

- Al Foster, 2003 Modern Drummer interview by Ken Micallef 

Brute force freedom

Not Mickey Roker, never will be

In the Josef Hoffman piano technique post I said: 

We read this now and put an emphasis on the freedom part, but he's talking about freedom through massive technical abilities— the music he's playing, and the setting in which he performs it, demands that. And there are definitely drummers active now who agree with it, e.g. Mike Mangini. 

It occurred to me that most people now probably agree with that— you simply dedicate your life acquiring a massive amount of skill, and you'll then be free to play whatever you want. It's popular among segments of the drumming community invested in drumming being as difficult as possible— possibly to explain why they're never able to do it very well. 

But if that's how FREEDOM works, why does Mike Mangini always sound like Mike Mangini? Why does he never sound like Max Roach, or Elvin Jones, or Roy Haynes, or Stewart Copeland? Like, even a little bit? Why can't any of the hyper technically able people sound like Mickey Roker? 

Answer: They can't, and don't, because it's a false concept of freedom. 

There's a video of Jim Keltner hanging out with Terry Bozzio and Vinnie Colaiuta and some other seriously able players, and he talks about his place among players like that. Paraphrasing, he said I can't do what they do, but they can't do what I do. We're so worshipful of ability that it sounds like false comfort, but it's absolutely true— they cannot do what he does, and they don't get called to try to do what he does. 

The acquisition and the non-acquisition of massive technique both shape what you do in ways you have no control over. Both your playing and your career. The massive technique people usually have no desire or inclination to be great in the way the non-massive technique people* are great. None of them are trying to be Connie Kay or Al Jackson Jr. Most of the time, judging from what I hear on recordings, the massive technique people aren't even learning how to use their instrument more effectively, or in a more personal way. 

* - “Non-massive technique people” = most drummers, great and not great, for all time. Massive technique is a historically exceptional weird pursuit. 

And the reality is that we've got one timeline to work with. One person can really only do one thing at a time, and the path you commit to takes you that way. Mike Mangini is a career prog guy and technical superstar guy, and that's it. He will never be a any kind of rock musician, jazz musician, studio musician, whatever other category you would think he'd be able to fulfill given his abilities. The name Mangini = massive chops, and no one is going to ask him to do those things in any kind of meaningful way. So where's the freedom?   

High art to me doesn't just include concert pianists and massively technical prog drummers. It includes Delta Blues musicians, some rock & rollers, night club musicians, pygmy musicians. A lot of people who don't necessarily dedicate their entire lives to the acquisition of technique. And you can't do what they do just by acquisition of massive technique. 

When you have great music that is impossible to duplicate being made by average non-professional humans, all bets are off. Anyone can create great art— art that was worth more than the time and attention it took from you. How much that is in an individual's control is the question. 

I think freedom is more of an attitude than a technical achievement. The artist Jasper Johns said: 

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.'

He didn't say as soon as I reach X Y and Z technical goalposts I'll be an artist. He's saying what I do is the art. It may be up to others to decide if it's good or bad art, and if it's worth money, but what I do is what it is. It's not on its way to being what it is. 

Where gaining abilities becomes an issue for us drummers, is when we want to become professionals— then there are certain realities where we want to be able to play a lot of different kinds of jobs, and have a lot of knowledge so we're able to teach. That overlaps with the thing of learning the instrument, and music, for its own sake, as a lifestyle. That describes what I do pretty well, and a lot of my peers. I don't know if “freedom” is the goal— I think the motivation is way more complex than that— but developing as players is what we do. 

Carl Friedberg on touch and technique on the piano

More from Piano Mastery by Harriette Brower— some words on sound and technique at the piano from Carl Friedberg (1872-1955). He was the principal piano instructor at Juilliard in the mid 20th century— Nina Simone was one of his students. 

I've edited it slightly. There's plenty here that everyone will recognize from our day to day experience: 

I believe the legato touch is of the most importance in piano playing. I am aware that some modern players do not agree with this: they think everything should be played with the arm. I must differ from those who hold to this idea, for I emphatically believe and can prove there is a legato on the piano. It is the foundation of beautiful tone.

The tone an artist draws from his instrument should be round, full and expressive, capable of being shaded and varied, just as is the bel canto of the singer. We should learn to sing with our fingers.

I endeavor to give my piano tone the quality of the singing voice.

I first require a correct position: sitting on a chair which would be the right height to keep the level of the arm and wrist, not allowing the elbow to hang below the keyboard. The knees are to be close together; the heels planted on the floor, with the soles of the feet resting on the pedals, but not depressing them. The arms fall easily at the side, but not pressed against it. Now the hand is placed on five keys, in a vaulted position. I will now hold my hand in this position, and depress one key with the middle finger.

As you see, the condition of arm is quite loose and relaxed. You can move my arm back and forth, or in any direction you choose, but it will be impossible for you to dislodge my finger from the key, for it remains there with full relaxed arm weight.

In regard to equalizing the fingers, some players struggle to make all fingers equally strong; yet with all their effort the fourth finger can never be made as vigorous as the thumb. And why should all the fingers be equal one just the same as the others? It is not necessary. Just those slight inequalities of touch give variety and expressiveness to the playing. There are times when it is better to use weaker fingers than strong ones.

For all this technical drill I use hundreds of exercises of my own, which have never been printed. I do not adhere strictly to one set of these, but invent new ones constantly, perhaps changing them every week. 

I believe in making everything musical, in always making the tone beautiful, even in technical exercises and scales.

The piano is more than a thing of metal and wood; it can speak, and the true artist will draw from it wonderful tones. It should be part of his constant study to create beautiful tone. I believe a single tone can be made expressive.

Touch and grace

Combining two different posts I was working on, because they overlap, and are fairly inextricable: developing good touch on the drums, and developing some physical grace in playing. Sounding and looking like a musician and not an animal. As drummers it can be hard to get respect for our musicianship, and you can help people give it to you by telegraphing it visually. A few people will notice when you get a good sound and not a bangy sound. 

Lift
Play like a timpanist and follow through— play the end of the stroke as much as you do the attack. A lot of us emphasize the down part of the stroke, not so much the up part of it.

This is not the same thing as the popular stick-bounce thing— this is about a deliberate motion created by you, not by physics. Some teachers will talk about “drawing the sound out of the drum” or “playing off the drum”— phrases I hate, but maybe they're helpful. 

Get some timpani lessons from someone who doesn't downstroke and doesn't bounce the mallet. There are a lot of timpani technique videos I don't agree with, but here's a good example of the type of stroke I'm talking about: 

A good exercise— I got from Jeff Falcone, another student at USC, who got it from Ed Soph— is practice your jazz cymbal rhythm at around 40 bpm, using exactly that stroke. 

Don't hit
A lot of people whack the drum with a kind of aggressive muscular snap. Instead of that, think in terms of a quick hand motion— down and back up— hitting something doesn't enter into it. The surface isn't important. This doesn't mean you can never play loud or never downstroke or dig in, we just want to get away from always kinetically battering the drums.  

Relaxed grip
When I talk about technique, I advocate a pretty controlled grip— mainly because my usual grip, which is quite relaxed, is not good for everything. I work on a controlled grip so it's there when I need it, like if I have to play quieter than I would want, which is often. When I'm free to play the way I want, my grip looks a lot like Rakalam Bob Moses's grip:

It's the difference between an execution mindset and a playing mindset. Execution mindset means you're focused on correctly playing a part or playing a setting— that may not be real natural for you. Hence the more controlled grip. A playing mindset means you're focused on playing the way you play. 

Inner Leopold
To an extent you can telegraph what you're playing, promoting cohesion in the ensemble, almost like you're conducting with the sticks. Almost. You're still playing what you're playing. Sometimes you actually conduct, like on an ending, an improvised riff, a free/rubato section, maybe on a ballad. 

Easy, Baryshnikov
Just don't overdo it, or it starts looking contrived. It's a little bit of BSing. Like you've heard Mickey Roker play a cymbal beat, but now I, the musician am here to play it with proper respect and seriousness. Take a look at anybody great, they mostly don't seem to be doing that much. Usually their technique looks ordinary and economical. 

But you also can't be afraid of ever looking ridiculous. Being relentlessly ridiculous earns a certain kind of respect. People's initial response is is this guy kidding, and they soon learn the answer no, he's f*g not. Find your own balance.  

The first thing is always what you play. What you play. Thinking about your movements can be helpful in puts you in a certain frame of mind about it, but our product is auditory.

Don't confuse good touch with playing like a wuss
The musical goal of creating energy has not changed— we still want an exciting sound, high energy sound. I do, anyway. But separate musical intensity from physical intensity— or from hitting energy, hitting harder. Channel your physical energy into a more lithe kind of intensity.   

Rimshots vs. no rimshots

Here's a little video of me stunningly adorned in lush Irish wool, playing some crap for a second in response to a drum forum question, about technique for low-volume rimshots. You'll notice there's very little difference in my hand position on regular taps vs. the rim shots. They're pretty integrated, I just drop my wrist slightly. Pay close attention after 0:33 and 0:45. 

I think I may have practiced my rimshots around 1986— David Garibaldi had an article in Modern Drummer where he talked about his technique for them. Ever since then I've just played about ten million of them in the course of playing the drums. I learned to do them quietly on the job— where you're trying to figure out how to get a decent funk sound, but they're also yelling at you about volume. 

You also get a look at my cymbal technique, during the swing portion. That very open grip you see at 0:25 is just me being cazh— that's not a deliberate technique. With all those doubles you don't see any particular finger activity at all, but the doubles are relaxed, not stiff. I'm just holding the sticks. It's not unlike Bob Moses's grip. 

The sound quality on an iPhone from two feet away isn't terrible— I may do more of these. I just don't want to be in a position of trying to be a desperate drum video a-hole. If you ever catch me doing that, I invite you to fly out here and slap me one. All expenses paid— I'll do a contest.  

Very occasional quote of the day: a lot of technique

“I could be playing for a month and never run into anything that requires a lot of technique. It might require that I play very simply. If you've got a lot of chops and you get bugged because the music doesn't require great chops, it's difficult to be open minded about the music. You have to get beyond that wall you set up for yourself.”

- Steve Gadd, 1978 Modern Drummer interview with Aran Wald

Accents in Reed

TOTAL nerd stuff here. I use the accent pages in Progressive Steps to Syncopation (pp. 47-49) with my students for convenience, but I find them be a pain. They're thorough, but poorly balanced— so if students (e.g. me) just start on line 1 and try to plow through it, they (e.g. me) are going to burn out about halfway through the first page, and never get to the interesting ones. To do this stuff year after year you have to manage your interest, and that of your students. You can't reasonably expect people to motivate themselves by brute force forever.  

I think I need to start marking this book up with a four-color pen. Bracket off each section in black, circle the good exercises in green, the critical ones in red, whatever. Get out my 50mm acrylic marker and black out everything I hate. Something. 

Here are how those pages are organized, with my suggestions on which ones to include in general practicing. Whether you like my line choices or not, when covering this topic students should be playing at least a few lines from each category:


Lead hand accents - Lines 1-10
Most of the first page of exercises, and quite dull. I may have students play four or five of these, for different reasons. Shave it down to lines 1, 2, 6, and 9.   

Two accents together - Lines 11-14 
Only four lines, no problem. Always do lines 11 and 14. 

Off hand accents - Lines 15-22
Inverse of the lead hand accents. Lines 16, 18, 21, 22. 

Mixed accents - Lines 23-28
These are the interesting ones, and the most useful for learning to play accents well. There aren't many of them, but we're just using this as preparation for playing accented 8ths as an interpretation, using the regular exercises earlier in the book.  

Single accent displaced - Lines 1-2, 15-16
That's an important set of exercises, too bad they're on two different pages. 

Here: I've pared down those pages by about 30%, and dragged things around into the order I would have wanted them, with the four single accent patterns grouped together at the end. Print these out and put them in your copy of Syncopation: 

 

By the way, I don't just use these pages for their intended purpose— playing alternating accented singles on the snare drum. I'll use them for getting into applications like my rock drill, or harmonic coordination method. 

I rarely use the other non-8th note accent pages. Never the dotted-8th/16th pages. The triplet pages are most useful, they're also an organizational mess. Perhaps I'll pick them apart on another occasion. 

If you like reading my complaining about this book, also check out my itemized critique of it from another occasion. 

A little technique video

Let's talk more about me. I just posted a little technique video in response to a forum conversation. Someone was confused about the meanings of the stroke types, and wanted evidence of my competency to speak on the subject. With that handy visual reference, let's talk a little bit about technique.

Also see my Three Bloggers post about technique, and my other long post about it. 

I do a quick demonstration of the level system stroke types, then flams, an open roll, and Swiss triplets, because that's what the cat wanted: 

 
I say all the time I'm not a technique guy, I'm not a snare drummer, I'm not a chops guy— it doesn't mean I'm not proficient. I can still do most of what most professionals can do on the drum, and more than many. What we're seeing here is my unconditioned baseline, when I haven't practiced snare drum in a couple of weeks. 

Something about those Remo pads makes me always revert to 80s power drummer mode. I don't play like that normally; it's a detriment to the playing I do on the drum set. My grip, with my index finger hanging off the stick, is roughly what Dom Famularo described (in a lesson with him ~1989) as a “power grip.”

First, notice the stroke types: full, down, tap, up. I'm more picky about these than most people. I do the strokes fast, especially the lift after the full stroke and the up stroke. Fast hand movement. You'll notice I don't lift the stick before the stroke— most people habitually lift the stick when attacking a note, even when the stick was already at the height you wanted for the next note. It's totally unnecessary, and it can't be accomplishing anything but slowing you down and making it harder to play the dynamics you want. I attack the note by directly moving the stick downward. No “here we go” lift motion. I've talked about this before.

With that full stroke I am not doing a “free”stroke, where you fling the stick at the head and catch it when it bounces back in your face. It's all wrist, my hand never opens up. My grip is controlled but light. The up stroke is also important— you have to pick up the stick. You get no assistance from surface bounce, if you're attempting some kind of Moellery/Famularo-y bounce technique. When practicing technique I always do that motion as fast as possible, regardless of the timing of the notes. The more practice you get doing a very fast lift, the more prepared you'll be for playing flam rudiments fast, and anything else requiring a fast upstroke, like a shuffle. 

On the flams, notice that I don't lift the grace note— maybe very slightly, because my hands are not real conditioned at the moment— the stick is already in position after its downstroke in the previous flam, so any lift in the stroke only makes the grace note louder than I want it. Mastering this no-lift thing was the major thing that finally gave me real control over my dynamics. 

I play the open roll slow-fast-slow, which I never do when practicing. I want to be practicing everything in time, so I'm against that in principle. I may start doing it just to see what happens, though. At the slow end I'm playing each double as two full strokes, all with the wrist. As we get into actual roll speed, there's a rebound happening, but I'm not changing my grip. I'm not opening up my hand or using fingers or anything. Just the motion and the natural flex of your hand creates those powerful doubles. At the fastest speed the doubles are getting a little crushed because my hands aren't conditioned and I'm a little tense, and my left hand seems to be slicing somewhat. Generally my stick heights are all over the place. That isn't really acceptable if you're trying to polish your technique, or are playing in a drum line, or whatever serious purpose. For day to day life as a jazz musician... whatever.   

The Swiss triplets: I feel like I haven't practiced a Swiss triplet in five years, so I'm surprised they didn't fall apart at the faster end. I don't have a lot to say about them. They're possibly good conditioning for open rolls— they'll often turn into an open roll when you try to play them faster than you're able.  

I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere, this controlled grip needs to be done carefully, so you don't stiffen up. Light grip, well articulated wrists— it's hard for a lot of people to actually move their wrist joint. Emphasis is on a fast motion, all strokes, quiet or loud, moving at the same speed. Dynamics come from stick heights, not force. 

Three bloggers: technique

“Technique we always think of as being a thing having to do with fastness, [but] technique is, in its highest sense, is the ability to handle musical materials.”

“You could get to a point where if you played any more notes it would be funny. So, I mean, how far can you go in that direction?”
- Bill Evans 

Another quasi-synchronized column by me, Jon McCaslin, and Ted Warren— The Three Bloggers! The topic du jour is drumming technique. What is it, why is it, how to do it. I wrote an overview of my approach to technique back in 2018, so here I'll try to expand on that a bit, mainly from a teaching perspective. And I'm appallingly late posting this, and I'm not real satisfied with the content, but I blame the topic. It's not a real deep subject to me.   

The first purposes of technique are to get a sound on an instrument, and to enable playing normal repertoire— everything a professional plays in the course of working. Ordinary mastery. That kind of playing can be done with a range of idiosyncratic techniques, not all of them necessarily “correct” by conservatory standards. I think what's important is to use technique efficiently, and much of what this site is about is to designing and highlight practice systems that don't demand high levels of technique to master.     

So I'm not a technique-forward teacher, I'm a minimalist. I find that many or most students are able to hold the sticks more or less correctly by just looking at me, and grabbing the sticks, and hitting a drum. After getting an acceptable baseline there, we mostly work on learning what to play, and improve technique through learning musical materials, making adjustments and refinements, and acquiring new skills, as they become necessary.    

My dedicated technique instruction is primarily about developing an efficient wrist stroke, and a few basic things: grip, hand position, and the basic strokes— single strokes, double strokes, multiple-bounce strokes— and learning the level system for playing accents, flams, and dynamics generally. Fine control is a big focus, at the appropriate time. The major reason for it is to be able to handle the volume requirements of playing professionally— so you can still play well, and creatively, even when you need to play softer than you normally like. 

To that end I focus on simplifying the stroke, and eliminating some very common waste motions and habits— like lifting the stick unnecessarily before a stroke, or habitual downstroking. A side effect of the common bounce-oriented methods is that people don't know how to finish a stroke after hitting the instrument— their hands don't know how to do anything but let the stick bounce. So that's a thing I try to correct.   

For a more detailed description of all of this, see my technique post from 2018. 

At this point I'll talk about some popular misconceptions about technique, and teaching technique, as I see them: 

Right from the start
A popular idea among technique people is to focus on perfect technique right from the beginning— otherwise you're ingraining “bad habits”... suggesting that there are good habits. Maybe think about doing things on purpose, and not playing by habit at all.

At any stage of development technique shouldn't be grossly wrong, but it doesn't need to do more than to serve the player's immediate purposes— either the music they're playing right now and in the near future, or the next logical thing they're working on to continue their overall development. 

At any rate I don't believe in finished technique, or “set” technique— learning one thing perfectly as a student and then using that one thing to play all your stuff for the rest of your career. Personally, I've massively reworked my technique at least four times since I began playing, due to the nature of the music I was playing at the time. 

Fear of injury
People justify their obsession with technique by focusing on the possibility of injury— which I have never noticed to be as much of a problem as the online conversation about it suggests. In my experience most people don't practice or play long enough, or wrong enough, or intensely enough to hurt themselves. I think focusing on it with young students is demented.  

Consider it if you're blowing your face off in a punk band with your whole body tensed up, or if you're playing kevlar surfaces or hard practice pads 10 hours a day, or using hardwood sticks. Everybody else can relax. 

“Free stroke”
The free stroke— a technique where you basically fling the stick at the head with your wrist, and catch it when it bounces back to the raised position— is the founding move of the stick bounce-centric world, which is based on a doctrine of ricocheting the sticks off the playing surface, basically. 

It's impressive when it's displayed, but increasingly I don't see the point. Most percussion instruments are not optimally bouncy for that kind of kinetics-based technique. Playing a marimba with a rattan-handled yarn mallet, for example, or a concert bass drum, or a floor tom. What kind of tone would you get on the timpani if you were just flinging the mallets at them to make them bounce really high? Not good. Your touch on an instrument should not be based on how far you need the stick or mallet to ricochet of it.  

To be in that world, dynamics have to be basically irrelevant— it's a good technique if you're playing quite loud to extremely loud. But professionals and serious students have to play in a wide variety of settings, with a wide range of dynamics and volumes, and that kinetic style doesn't work for most of it. 

As I mentioned, people half-trained in this style also have the problem of not knowing how to play a complete stroke. You can watch them play at normal volumes, and after the hit their hand just flops like a dead trout thrown against the wall. 


With that, I'll have to end this. I imagine there's more to say, but I'm a week past deadline, gang. Be sure to check out what Jon and Ted have to say. 

Backsticking drill for switching grips

I use matched grip virtually all the time in playing, but about every 5-7 years since ~1986, I make a serious effort at getting my traditional grip happening. When I have it conditioned, I can do just about everything I can do with matched grip— but for whatever reason, I don't use it much when actually playing. There's some subtle psychological block there.  

Lately I thought getting really good at switching grips might help with that. Traditional grip has your wrist in a vertical position, matched grip has it horizontal (“German” grip, anyway), and all you have to do is rotate your forearm a quarter turn, and the stick naturally flips into position. In one grip you'll be playing with the tip of the stick, in the other, the butt. I usually play with the stick reversed in my left hand anyway. If there's any confusion about the basic motion, this videos demonstrates it pretty well. 

So, a little drill for developing that transition:

R = right hand | T = left hand, traditional grip | M = left hand, matched grip

RRRR RRRR TTTT TTTT RRRR RRRR MMMM MMMM

RRRR TTTT RRRR MMMM

RRR TTT RRR MMM

RRRT RRRM

RRTT RRMM

RTRM RTRM

 

You do have to adjust the stick in your hand a little bit to be fully in one grip or the other, which is difficult to do with the last two stickings— they  might not be real useful for that reason. Try to do them slow enough to get the left hand fully into the correct grip. We're not just practicing drum corps-style backstickings here.  

40 international drum rudiments— a frank appraisal

Here at last is my opinionated commentary on each of the 40 PAS international drum rudiments— the good are praised, the questionable are denigrated and hounded from the public sphere. The abstruse are eschewed.

I'll put my bias up front: I'm most interested in what helps me play creatively on the drum set, and on that instrument I'm not a very snare-drum centric player. I don't do band, orchestra, or rudimental percussion professionally/seriously, though I did get a serious education in them.

We should also be clear on the basic terms the way I use them, the way they were used in the community in which I was educated:

• Roll is reserved for running doubles, singles, or multiple-bounce strokes that are rapid enough to sound like a long tone.
• Ruff = an unmetered multi-stroke embellishment.
• Open = double strokes, closed = multiple bounce strokes. Traditionally in rudimental drumming, those are often taken to mean slow and fast.
• Drag = one multiple-bounce or double stroke, played as an embellishment, or as part of an ongoing rhythm. This is not a universally correct definition, but it's how the word was used in the field by people I was around.

Download the Percussive Arts Society's pdf of their 40 standard snare drum drum rudiments and proceed:

Single stroke roll rudiments

Single stroke roll
Rapid single strokes are used for making a long tone on most percussion instruments— cymbals, mallet instruments, timpani, concert bass drum, almost all other concert percussion instruments except snare drum. It's usually a mundane thing, with discussion of it centered on what is correct for the particular instrument— mainly for sound. Speed is only a concern to the extent that instruments with long sustain call for a slower roll, and instruments with shorter sustain call for a faster roll. As technique enthusiasts have taken over, now the single stroke roll is thought to be just a high performance item, and the major concerns about it are speed, and training methods.

Standard 4-stroke ruff notation

Single stroke 4
Traditionally known as a 4-stroke ruff, written as you see on the left, and played with single strokes, with three grace notes embellishing a main note. PAS now writes it as a rhythm, with four even notes. Somebody just decided 4-stroke ruffs are not a thing any more, despite it being a common item in concert snare drum literature.

Single stroke 7
Since when was this a rudiment? Why is there a single stroke 7 and no single stroke 5? A 4 and no 3? If this is how we're going to do it, just give all of the standard roll rudiments a single stroke equivalent. Quit fooling around.


Multiple bounce roll rudiments

Multiple-bounce roll  
Or “buzz” roll, or closed roll. I use all three terms. This is the only type of roll used in band/concert snare drum— and only on snare drum. No buzz rolls on timpani or cymbals, please. It is a fundamental technique for anyone serious about the drums; still, many set players rarely need to play one.

Triple stroke roll
This is a way of playing sixtuplets in corps drumming, and serves no purpose at all outside of that activity. Really not in the same category as a multiple bounce roll; multi-strokes are not the same as multiple-bounce strokes. The triple stroke roll is a flash corps item, a multiple bounce roll is universal snare drum technique for making a long tone. I might conceivably use a variation of this as a chops developer, starting with a single note, so the last note of each triple stroke falls on the 8th notes.


Double stroke open roll rudiments

Double stroke open roll 
Just say double stroke roll or open roll, saying them both is unnecessary. I say open roll. Used in drum corps, and in soloing and embellishing on the drum set. It's an essential drumming technique, despite not being widely used in concert percussion.

5-stroke roll, 9-stroke roll
Two essential short rolls. These are played multiple-bounce as frequently as double-stroke, so it's misleading to put them in this category. Same with the 7 stroke roll and longer rolls.

6-stroke roll
One of the hippest of all rudiments for flashy, fusionoid soloing. Much used and abused by many, many “choppy” drummers. Typically played with double strokes, in two major forms: as a sixtuplet (which to me is not a “roll”), and as 16th note accents / 32nd note doubles.

7-stroke roll
Another essential short roll, and Exhibit A for why learning rudiments from a list sucks. This needs at least three examples to demonstrate its most common usages— 16th pulsation starting on the beat, 16th pulsation starting with a tap, 16th triplet pulsation starting on an &.

13-stroke roll
One-beat roll played with a sixtuplet pulsation. I never use this term, but like the 5, 7, and 9 stroke rolls, this is really one of the essential short rolls.

10-stroke roll, 11-stroke roll, 15-stroke roll, 17-stroke roll
I never use these terms, ever. With any roll longer than one beat, or more than 5 movements, I'm thinking overall duration and pulsation. To me these are relics from the days when drumming was just about stringing together named rudiments.


Much more after the break:

Annals of wrong things: UNUSED POTENTIAL

Here's a little sub-rant of my other recent teaching rant. I wrote this in January, and wasn't going to post it— it's kind of silly. But people seem to enjoy these, and it's not totally devoid of educational value, so here it is.

Some things are so wrong you have to talk about them at great length just to understand how wrong they are, so here's that graphic from that other post:

I grabbed it off the web and shoehorned it into that post because I couldn't find anything better to illustrate the subject: drum instruction that is totally divorced from reality.


What are we seeing here?
The graphic is taken from from Dom Famularo's book It's Your Move, and posted online at a site called The Black Page, where it is used to illustrate an article called “Pedal control.” I don't know the site, but it appears to be about the development of extreme drumming chops in the Jim Chapin / Dom Famularo mode.

It's a kind of diagram of the universe of developing drumming abilities. There are axes of SLOW/FAST and SOFT/LOUD, each expanding outward into infinity. Within that field there's a sort of Venn diagram of the overlapping slow/fast/loud/soft requirements for three ways of playing the drums: JAZZ, FUNK, and METAL. The three ways.

In the ether of that dual-binary cosmos, beyond the scope of all abilities you could conceivably need  for THE THREE ways of playing, floats the infinite gulf of your UNUSED POTENTIAL. We could alternatively call that “technical skill unneeded for any known music.” It hovers out there forever like Original Sin, since it is infinite, and every human being will always have unused potential.


What? No.
In plain old musical reality, there is no infinite frontier of speed and volume. There's no such thing as SLOW, for example. It's an illusion. In drum technique terms, there is nothing slower than a single isolated note, regardless of the actual space between notes, or the tempo of the musical context. To play slow tempos we subdivide; converting the slow tempo the audience hears to a more easily performable faster tempo. So slowness is not a thing.

Fastness has the problem of the long tone barrier. We've talked about this before; above a certain rate, the human ear perceives single notes as a long tone. The rate at which that happens varies with the instrument, but it is well within the reach of any committed student. Rates faster than that are purely statistical, because they have little musical effect, beyond a slight change in texture.

The pursuit of infinite quietness is checked by the meathook reality of the signal to noise ratio. There's a certain level of volume beneath which room noise, the sounds of player's fingers on their instruments, blood pressure on the human participants' ear drums, tinnitus, the waitress serving drinks, begin to disrupt the perception of the music— for the listeners, and just as importantly, for the other performers. All music intended to be heard needs to be loud enough relative to environmental sounds to be perceived continuously. Try it sometime. Learn to play really quiet, and then play that way on a job. You may not get any complaints, but it will be a weird experience for everyone.

I'm getting bored, so let's just say this of infinite loudness: is anyone really asking you for that? If so, get a PA.


There are other things
What did these qualities slowness/fastness/loudness/quietness ever do to earn this claim on your time and energy? Try listening to records, learning about African music, playing piano, composing, arranging, learning about recording, learning to paint, writing poetry, raising your kids, finding a spouse, maintaining your relationship with your spouse. Learn to cook.


Dude
It's just a graphic from a drum book. I know this. But you can't introduce the concept of infinity and UNUSED POTENTIAL and then limit your scope to these tawdry and ultimately wrong metrics of ability. Come on.

Very occasional quote of the day: technique

There are a few technique-related posts coming up, and after last week's teaching rant, this quote from Bill Evans is particularly timely. Italics are mine:

“Technique we always think of as being a thing having to do with fastness, too, you know, and technique is, in its highest sense, is the ability to handle musical materials. In that sense, Miles is one of the all-time master technicians, in that he could play something which is an entirely original conception over something that’s very ordinary. So, there are different ways to look at it, too. And actually, he is virtuosic, certainly, and in the best sense of the word. You could get to a point where if you played any more notes it would be funny. So, I mean, how far can you go in that direction?”

— Bill Evans

That's from an almost-lost radio interview from 1979, mostly on the making of Kind of Blue— do read the whole thing.

Leave them kids alone

Dumbest, wrongest quasi-educational thing
I could find to illustrate this post.

This little rant has been kicking around my drafts folder for awhile. I wasn't even going to post it, but then I had another frustrating lesson with the student mentioned in it, and I got mad all over again.


True story: I have a young student whose last teacher— a local guy who is into technique, and is fairly active online—clearly viewed him as some kind of lab specimen for trying out his technique theories. He had the kid playing “open handed” on the drumset, and counting drum beats with some kind of weird verbal method. They obviously spent way too much time working on rebound-centric techniques, and already the kid is talking about tendinitis... I'm trying to reteach him how to hit a drum and he's worried about tendinitis. It's like talking about VD on the first day of Sex Ed. The only thing the guy “taught” the kid about playing the drums is that he has a million choices about how to hold the sticks, and he's going to get tendinitis if he does it wrong. No idea what a quarter note is, or how to hold the sticks, he has to be untaught this bullshit counting system, which he now doesn't want to give up... it's totally insane. It's malpractice.

It's time to get serious, people: if you don't know what you're supposed to be teaching, you have to find out, or do something else. If you're not an expert player, do not teach according to your personal theories, even if you believe they are vouched for by Marco Minneman or Dom Famularo or the internet or whoever. Lessons are not your time to try stuff out on people too trusting and uninformed to defend themselves against them.


What you do is:

Know how things are normally done
Know when you're teaching something normal, and when you're teaching a fringe technique, and then don't teach the fringe thing. If a student is going to get into your specialty thing later, that should be his or her informed choice.


Know what a normal musical life looks like
Your school-age students' musical lives are going to consist of taking band class in school, practicing lesson assignments, listening to music, playing with friends. The serious ones are going to try to get into the higher level band and orchestra, youth symphony, theater, maybe drum corps, and will maybe consider majoring or minoring in music in college— jazz, percussion performance, or music education. A very few of them may eventually play some professional gigs. They may eventually want to focus on drum set, concert percussion, marching percussion, or “world” percussion, playing a wide variety of percussion instruments. This is what your lessons are supposed to be preparing students for.

Get a beginning snare drum book
Open it to page 1. Teach what is there. Continue thusly on the following pages. You're supposed to be teaching people about rhythm and meter, how to read music, basic musical terms, and the basic rudiments.

Teach basic technique, “German” grip
So-called German grip is the foundation technique for most of the percussion world using sticks or mallets. It is simple, versatile, easy to teach, and easy to understand. Moeller technique, finger technique, “French” grip— all of the special techniques that are so fascinating to hobbyists— will be totally useless if the kid ever wants to take up mallet percussion, for example. The way you're teaching French grip will probably be useless for actually playing timpani— the instrument for which it was developed.

Believe it or not, technique is not a primary issue in drumming. Most of the time, drummers learn a basic grip, a basic stroke, and then get to work learning music, acquiring and refining technique as it becomes necessary.


All these things you think are choices are not choices
Right handed or left handed? French grip or German grip? Open handed or “crossed” handed? Should we do double bass from the beginning, or hold off until the second month? Maybe they should use a “symmetrical” set up!

Seriously, forget it all. Even teaching left handed vs. right handed, regardless of which hand the student writes with, is virtually arbitrary as far as their development is concerned. I encourage all students to play right handed, on a “standard” set up.


The Hippocratic Oath says to first, do no harm
The drumocratic[???] oath should go do not teach things the next guy is going to have to unteach.

Ask yourself what your best local players and teachers will think when they take up working with the kid after you're done with him. Are they going be happy you have him playing open handed, so they have to devise a whole curriculum to accommodate that, or will they be unhappy? Will they be impressed that your 8 year old former student knows a lot of useless crap about stick bounce, but has no idea how to read simple rhythms?


This is all baseline stuff for teachers having clearly no idea of what they're supposed to be doing— basic guidelines for becoming a mainstream-of-drumming hack. Which would be a major improvement vs. the kind of candyland teaching I'm ranting about. Becoming better than a hack teacher requires living a full, music-centered drumming life.