DRUMMER CAFE

Is it fair to say that trad grip playing lends itself to a more legato sound that relies on a lot of relatively "passive" rebound, whereas matched grip lends itself to a more stocatto sound that relies on a lot of fairly snappy finger control?

To clarify, imagine playing a ruff or a five stroke roll.  You can play the double strokes stocatto, using the fingers to pull off each note as a clearly separate entity, or you can play them more legato, allowing the natural bounce to do more of the work and not snapping the fingers so much.

When I watch other players, it seems trad grip players tend to favour a lot of smooth legato rolls if they have a soft touch, and stay away from double strokes almost completely if they're heavy players.  So maybe it's not just me.

I've been working with trad grip for quite a while now, and I'm having great difficulty getting anything like the finger control I have with matched grip.  Is that characteristic of the grip, or do I just need to keep working at it?

I encourage you to get the Jojo Mayer DVD because it has the best explanation I've ever seen on the many techniques of traditional grip. You can do anything in traditional that you can with matched, it's just upside down. I used a variety of finger techniques in traditional -- not just passive bouncing.

For example, turn your left hand palm down in traditional grip and try bouncing the stick with your index and middle finger. If you can get that going, slowly turn your left hand palm up and try to keep the bouncing going -- like a basketball. That's just one of several common finger techniques in traditional grip.

Thanks for the replies.

After watching the Weckl clip, I realized I'm using his technique for the left (trad) hand, but a different technique for the right hand.  And that technique would be... the Gladstone technique.

D'oh!

So I should have asked for advice about developing Gladstone technique for the left (trad) hand.

A little searching on YouTube and I found this video clip showing that yes, in fact, it is possible to develop killer Gladstone technique with the left hand.

Actually, it looks like I'll need to modify my trad grip yet again and go back to square one with the practice pad. 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/_mFVRX08rEc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/_mFVRX08rEc</a>

It's not power I'm looking for, but clear articulation, so the double strokes don't turn to mush.

The Weckl approach (or my lame version of it) works well for playing rolls, but my ruffs and 5-stroke rolls turn to mush because I end up doing a bit of rubbing the head with the sticks.  If I use only finger control, the ruffs and short rolls are crisper.

Not that ruffs and short rolls need to be crisp.  They sound great when other people play them legato.  It's just the way my mind works that I need to hear clearly what I'm doing.  That's why I can only play so fast.  The hands are willing, but the brain is a bit slow.

I agree with this, but I think what the Mayer DVD does best is clear up a lot of mystique about grip techniques. It is comprehensive. It's also holistic, NOT evangelistic, which is how I view many of the famed teachers in the various grip camps. There are a lot of experienced grip/rudimental instructors (such as myself) who are happy to finally have a comprehensive resource and not have to fly to New Jersey or someplace far away for a specialist. Moeller and Gladstone have especially been East Coast phenomenons for many years. Not sure people who live there truly appreciate how hard it has been to come by meme-type information like that before the Internet and the instructional video industry.

You guess correctly.  I've yet to find a teacher who says anything more constructive than "I don't know.  Whatever feels right to you, dude."

I have to agree with Mr A....While in the Army band I had to teach 20 misfits how to play from scratch. This was for a newly formed drum & bugle corp. Many of them had never played drums before so it was a major task when I had to deal with them. Spent many hours teaching the traditional grip methods. Within 6 months I had them sounding like the other experienced drummers. I even amazed myself when I did that. 

East Coast = tradition. West Coast = do it yourself, for the most part. There are lots of great teachers out here -- many of them imported from the midwest and EC -- but not a real fervor for Moeller and Gladstone like the evangelists where you're at. I learned a very loose interpretation of Moeller from my instructor. It's not wrong at all, it's just not as exaggerated as I've seen Chapin demonstrate, for example. Until the Internet came along, I didn't even know it was called Moeller grip.

What I love about Jojo's DVD (and I don't think I explained it well the first time) was showing there are many approaches to striking a drum, and Moeller and Gladstone are just two of them. I much prefer Jojo's own hybrid version of Moeller, and I think his finger techniques are something to envy and pursue.

That's a problem, here in Toronto.  It seems the excellent teachers have more business than they can handle tutoring full-time college students. 

To be fair, though, the teachers I've seen all had good stuff to offer, but none of them were really into the ergonomics of grip and stroke technique and most of them felt trad was not a good grip for playing rock music.

I suppose what I should do is try to score a few "consults" from one of the high-end jazzers, just to work on mechanics.  I can't even listen to the music they're teaching, let alone play it, it's so far over my head, but I'm sure one of them could help me out with trad grip.

If you're willing to travel 30 minutes north, I suggest looking up Ray Reilly through the union. Ray is a former student of George Lawrence Stone AND Billy Gladstone, was a principle percussionist with the TSO for many, many years and has some of the finest rudimental snare drum technique I've ever laid eyes/ears on. Oh, and he's a good laugh, too. He and my father go waaaaaaay back playing in percussion sections together.

Here's a snippet about Ray from a former pupil: http://www.cadre-online.ca/rayreilly.html

The other option is to talk to the percussion teachers at U of T, etc. I.e. not pure drumset teachers. Russ Hartenberger and Bev Johnson are both incredible percussionists, and as Jim said, they might be able to steer you in the right direction if they aren't taking students at the moment. Another option would be to look up the TSO percussionists, and see if any of them are giving lessons on traditional snare drum grip.