Basic Drum Stick Techniques for Drummers

Video Transcript

Alright, one thing I want to cover right now is stick technique. I've seen a lot of drummers when they're playing, they're just clutching onto their sticks for dear life. And that's going to affect your style of play, it's going to affect, it's going to hurt you over a period of time. It's going to put strain on your forearms and that strain is going to go all the way up and actually could affect every part of your upper body if you think about it. So the proper technique to holding sticks is to be as light as possible. I mean they should be to the point where they could almost fall out of your hand. And the grip really, when you're holding a stick for me, is between these two fingers, your pointer and your thumb. And so you're going to be holding your stick like this. And so when you're playing, basically you take that grip and just put it straight down, and that's the way you're going to play. And see when I do this, the butt of the stick hits against the big part of my thumb. So it's kind of like a it bounces off that and it gives it kind of that kind of support. So it's not just, so I'm not clutching onto it, and playing like a robot. Because that's just going to hurt you over the long run. So when you're playing, play loose. Practice playing as loose as possible. And if you drop a stick in practice, that's actually a good thing because you're playing loose. I'd rather see somebody drop a stick and playing correctly as opposed to someone just clutching these sticks and hurting themselves in the long run. It's going to affect your fills too. Your fills aren't going to be very fluid, everything's going to sound very choppy, very mechanical. So number one thing to do is practice that grip. Practice light, and practice hitting it against the pad of your hand. And so you can get that really quick motion. And so once you get that stick technique down, one thing to try. One thing that I do and this is a little more advanced, a little more in the future, but let's say I'm playing just a regular beat, a straight beat. If I want to go into a rim shot, and this falls under the category of kind of like a stick tricks. You know everybody sees drummers like twirling the sticks , which really if you think about it isn't that practical while playing the drums. But you know it looks cool, so it's something you can learn on your own time. But one thing that I'll do is when I'm playing a beat on the snare, and if I want to go to a rim shot really quick, I'll be playing and then really quick just switch it over during play. And then I can go right into a rim shot. And this is something that one of my idols Carter Beauford from Dave Matthews Band, who I think is an amazing, amazing idol. Someone to really take after when you're playing the drums because he takes so many different styles. Jazz, rock, Latin, all these different things and he just incorporates them into his own style. And he's very clean and is a very good drummer. Someone to emulate. So that's one think I learned from him, so when you're playing just a regular beat on a snare and you want to go to a rim shot, just really quick as opposed to having to stop, twirl the stick and then go down. It's something very quick, just do it right under, go right to a rim shot, and that's something I'll demonstrate for you right now.

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