Drum Lesson #7
This music lesson is brought to you by :Carpentry Services
1-207-480-0187
_______________________________________
Lesson by Doug Papa
If you play your bass drum with your heel flat on the pedal you may get away with this if you don't play daily for hours on end and the music isn't fast. However, a lot of classic rock has fancy bass drum beats that are quick and also using sound dynamics. To maximize this your heel should be lifted a little off the pedal. If your heel is really high off the pedal you can feel the ankle muscles your suppose to use. It's not the front muscles like lifting up your foot. It is the muscles by your inner bone that sticks out from your ankle. Now you have helped prevent tendentious on your ankle. If you rally want to be careful say away from Sugars, coffee and cigarettes as these things can increase the likelihood of tendentious. You want to consider muscles stretches. I had a drum instructor at Centre Music House in Framingham Massachusetts show me a muscle stretch just for this problem area. You hand off of your toes while holding onto a wall or rail so your balance is kept. then you stand on your toes so they are raised up real high. You Then lower them below the stair that the toes are resting on. Hence they dip down. Do this a few times before you practicing.
Next is the wrist stretches. Take two drum sticks and have them together but they are facing opposite directions. Now hold them like your a movie extra in a college film and your stabbing someone in a dramatic way. You don't want your hand to be on the total end of the stick give it an inch or so. No with the opposite hand have it come behind the bottom of the sticks facing the ground. Have your palm facing way from you. So if you were in a club your thumb would be pointing straight to the ground. Your open palm would be facing the audience. So the flat end of your hand is facing your face. Wrap your fingers around the drum stick. Hold and stretch. Flip the stick by bringing your hand on the bottom up to your chin without letting go of your grip. Your hands switch positions. Stretch that out. Now bring your hand into your body so your arms are outstretched in front of your chest and both palms are facing up towards the sky.
When you are off the drum set you want to do drum stick flips to build up your wrists. You also want to do this so you can hit your snare drum with one hand and do a multi spin stick flip with the other hand and catch it with an open palm. That's pretty cool to do after your stretches and you want to signal to the band your ready. You balance the drum stick off your finger and thumb. Your thumb is place as far down the stick as possible. your palm is facing up. push your thumb down so the top of the stick flips and lands in your open palm. Once you get good, go for a whole flip, so the stick's tip doesn't land in you palm but in it's starting position. Work the flips higher and your ready for that circus trick at open mike night.
Now when your practicing on your own and one wrist, arm or shoulder is hurting, stop using it. If your playing an exercise like 16th notes in a normal RL single stroke pattern:
RLRL RLRL RLRL RLRL. Count each one in the manor of 1e+a 2e+a 3e+a 4e+a. So if your right side is hurting to play count and play only the lefts. So when you say a number or an "and" written as "+" just say it out loud without playing the right. Believe it or this also helps cuts down on your practice time by making you faster. Substitute your bass drum if you have to but don't give up on practicing all together if one arm gets sore. After a while it will be able to do the same thing the other arm was doing so it can rest. Just count that's the key to keeping the beat with only one hand practicing while the other rests.