What does it do? Right up front: in playing the drums, the left foot is basically subservient. A lot of people vaguely suspect they’re not doing enough with it. Some go on to become fixated […]
Category: technique
Hand dominance: still bull
Advertising a belief. Yes, hand dominance is still bull. At least with regard to drumming. It happened again this week: a new student, right handed, who had never hit a drum before, automatically led everything […]
Very occasional quote of the day: sound and touch
“I’m not happy with my sound at all. I wish I sounded like Art Blakey or Elvin Jones. You have to be born with a certain feel or touch. Blakey had that African sound. It […]
Brute force freedom
Not Mickey Roker, never will be In the Josef Hoffman piano technique post I said: We read this now and put an emphasis on the freedom part, but he’s talking about freedom through massive technical abilities— […]
Carl Friedberg on touch and technique on the piano
More from Piano Mastery by Harriette Brower— some words on sound and technique at the piano from Carl Friedberg (1872-1955). He was the principal piano instructor at Juilliard in the mid 20th century— Nina Simone […]
Touch and grace
Combining two different posts I was working on, because they overlap, and are fairly inextricable: developing good touch on the drums, and developing some physical grace in playing. Sounding and looking like a musician and […]
Rimshots vs. no rimshots
Here’s a little video of me stunningly adorned in lush Irish wool, playing some crap for a second in response to a drum forum question, about technique for low-volume rimshots. You’ll notice there’s very little […]
Very occasional quote of the day: a lot of technique
“I could be playing for a month and never run into anything that requires a lot of technique. It might require that I play very simply. If you’ve got a lot of chops and you […]
Accents in Reed
TOTAL nerd stuff here. I use the accent pages in Progressive Steps to Syncopation (pp. 47-49) with my students for convenience, but I find them be a pain. They’re thorough, but poorly balanced— so if […]
A little technique video
Let’s talk more about me. I just posted a little technique video in response to a forum conversation. Someone was confused about the meanings of the stroke types, and wanted evidence of my competency to […]
Three bloggers: technique
“Technique we always think of as being a thing having to do with fastness, [but] technique is, in its highest sense, is the ability to handle musical materials.” “You could get to a point where […]
Backsticking drill for switching grips
I use matched grip virtually all the time in playing, but about every 5-7 years since ~1986, I make a serious effort at getting my traditional grip happening. When I have it conditioned, I can […]