DRUMMER CAFE

HA HA!  Yesterday during my lunch-time practice, I did the same thing.  Only, I haven't touched that book in quite some time so I did quite a bit of fumbling.  Initially, I thought I could handle 120 bpm,  I soon found out that just wasn't going to happen.  SO, i went down to 100, and still struggled on a few of 'em w/my left hand.  This is a great workout, i plan on doing it again tonight!

Just a quick question on the speed . At 100 beats per minite on 1\2 note setting in 1\16 notes , would that be
800 strokes a minite ?

  I was just checking for my self . 400 is more like it .
If you were playing that page thru at 800 with all the different sticking , I was going to  sign you guys up for the WFD contest next year. J/king . Let's not even go there .

   

Reading it again, you're right. Sorry about that. Wasn't really trying to say anything, I guess, other than I'm trying to be much nicer to my wrists these days. :-/

Oh okay.

Well, I don't play that way, I just like to work on different things and on that particular day I decided to play through with just wrists, no fingers. Not allowing the stick to move around (by keeping the fingers little pressed against the stick) really stretches out the wrist muscles. It felt good to do that as I was feeling stiff the past couple of days.

On a side note, Joe Morello teaches a similar work-out method in which he has you point the stick straight up and the ceiling, throw the stick down and snap it back up as quickly as possible. It works out the wrists, and helps develop the concept of pulling the sound out of the drum.

It's all just for practice and building muscle strength, nothing else. I would never play that way and the sticks are never gripped tightly, even when I leave my fingers on there. I don't want to ever play that way, even when practicing. The fingers are left in contact with the stick, just enough to work the wrist and not allow the stick to move (pivot) in the hand.

I always play with a loose, relaxed grip.

 Well I'm glad you guys cleared that up !  
I was about ready to start burning drum sticks after the " 200 bpm remark " . I'm thinking , he must mean just doing one exercise at a time at that rate . I can do 1 at  200 bpm for 40 bars , that's only about a 10 second burst.   But  there is no way he could be talking about running thru the whole page repeating each 2 bar exercise  20 times . With 24 exercises we're talking 960 beats or about 5 minites of that speed , never mind all the pattern changes .

  Anyway , speaking of cool drum corp exercises , have you ever played any of the Blue Devils workout stuff.
 I have the Ditty '97 - -60 second warm up that is pretty
wild in 4\4 and 7\8.   It has some cool sounding 3 tuned  bass lines with 32nd singles that I love. "THEY" run thru that at about 140 .

Here's a couple of things to remember:

• As you get more and more experienced in your playing, the improvements become smaller in comparison. I think this applies to all walks of life.
• Any time spent working on even the most complex things will at LEAST make what you've already been doing a lot easier ... even if you never use the complexities.

Felix, I totally understand you when you say that things you've worked on "go right out the window". You're not alone here.

I structure my practice time in such a way that when I work on technique (ie. grip, stroke, motion) I do just that. I spend time watching myself in the mirror or video taping myself ... trying to get a sense of where I'm at and visually see what I'm doing.  Along with this phase of my practice, I'm usually working on sticking exercises, etc.

Once I get all of that "out of the way" ... believe me, I know it can be laborious and boring ... I move on to other things such as grooves and coordination studies. My hope is that all of my effort and work on my technique will stick with me (no pun intended). I work on playing fills, solos, playing along with recorded music ... and leave time at the end for some "fun" jamming or doing whatever I want. If I practice more later in the day, I may or may not start the practice cycle over again. I try to give equal time to these different areas ... and any extra time can be spent on what I want to work on at the time.

I don't just work out on the practice pad ... but I do use the pad to work the basic hand techniques and watch what I'm doing at the time. After that it's time to get on the kit and focus on feel, sound, groove, etc.

You know, a lot of this is like driving a car. Once you've driven for a few years, your mind basically goes on autopilot. You stop signaling BEFORE you change lanes or make a turn; you stop paying attention to the speed limits; your mind is basically all over the place. That's why ... when you get a ticket for a Moving Traffic Viloation, you either pay the fine or take Defensive Driving ... which gets you back to basics.

As time goes by in playing our music, I think it's easy to go on autopilot and begin to develop bad habits. That's why I think it's always wise to devote just a little bit of time during our warm-ups to focus on basic techniques. This can be anything from: stroke types, grip, how the sticks rebound off the drum, stick heights, vertical motion, relaxation and so on. Devoting just a little time on these things every day can really make a difference in what you already CAN do ... and what you WILL do in the future.

When I stop doing these things is when I slowly realize that I'm not where I used to be. It's such a slow decline that I think most players don't even realize it.

So don't just focus on warming-up ... use that time to work on things that you normally can't give attention to when you are really MAKING MUSIC. The pad can assist you in this ... that way you are not worried out sound production, etc. ... just the basics.  You can do this on the actual kit if you want to ... you don't HAVE to use a practice pad.

:DBartman, here are some variations on pages 5/6/7 in S.C. that Joe Morello gives his students.

1.Each RH = 2 8th notes and  LH = an 8th note triplet. Play these with a swing feel. The sticking in each exercise no longer represents the hand to be used but the grouping of notes to be played.
2.Each RH = 4 16th notes and each LH = a 16th septuplet
The sticking in each exercise no longer represents the hand to be used but the grouping of notes to be played.
3.Each RH = a paradiddle and each LH = a double-paradiddle. The sticking in each exercise no longer represents the hand to be used but the grouping of notes to be played.

You can also take variations 1 and 2 and play open and closed rolls for each stroke played instead of just playing singles!