First things first - grab your study guide here.
This past month I had one of those “synesthesia” moments you see depicted in movies by the music crescendoing with a wash of disjoined voices and a suspended cymbal roll until everything stops abruptly and there’s just a bright light.
It wasn’t exactly as depicted.
But the realization was around hand technique. And the fact that drum hand technique is not one thing, but two things.
I would see it from both directions:
Player has a speed limit because they can’t activate their fingers, so they “wrist” and “force” everything above a certain tempo.
Player complains of “pinkie out”, and has “mushy” singles or doubles at slower tempos.
We all kind of intuitively know that there are two distinct drum techniques. As a kid, in drum lessons, once I learned you could bounce double-strokes, the teacher would ask me to practice them “slow-fast-slow”, and we could see there was a point they went from “articulated” to “bouncing”.
But I’ve yet to hear anybody really talk about this except in passing. Which is especially interesting, considering that this might be the. single. most. fundamental. property. in. drum. technique.
As in, day one of lessons: “Jimmy, I’m gonna cut through a lot of potential confusion. You need 2 techniques. One for slow, and one for fast. The fast one is harder. Then you’re gonna have to transition seamlessly between them. This is the way.”
Then Jimmy would say some secular equivalent of “amen”.
So - what am I talking about?
I call it “walking” and “running”.
When we move, walking means we keep one foot on the ground all the time, whereas when we run, we’re airborne for brief periods between one foot touching the ground. And similarly-to-drums, if we try to walk too fast, or run too slowly, it’s awkward. We need two techniques for personal locomotion, and we need to transition seamlessly and intuitively, as we break into a jog to catch a bus, or slow to a walk once we’ve missed it.
For drums, “walking” means the stick returning to the heel of the hand after every stroke. That simple.
“Running” means it does not. The strokes are fast enough that it’s more efficient to have the stick “floating” between the energy of the rebound and the fingers returning it. Or loud enough that the stick height is creating the same effect.
This introduces two issues: how do we practice the individual techniques, and how do we transition between them.
The video covers them both.
Hope you enjoy.
P.S. did you know we’re doing a pilot enrollment for my new fledgling membership? It’s called the 8020 Academy, there’s a “new member” deal until Friday, and you can check it out here.