How NOT to Hold Your Drum Sticks...

we all have a pretty good idea of how not to hold our sticks the real question is how do we know if we're actually holding our sticks the best way possible today we're gonna examine some common not so noticeable grip mistakes and we'll wrap up with what I believe to be the most overlooked issue with grip hey everybody welcome to the non-glamorous drummer if you're new to the channel be sure to hit the subscribe button below now let's jump down to the kick so I know that yes it's easier to show you one right way to hold sticks and a dozen wrong ways but there are certain pitfalls that a lot of drummers Rumbles there are a lot of pitfalls that a lot of drummers will run into and certain things that I think many of us have been guilty of at some point or another the trick with some of these is that you might not actually notice them and so that's where it does kind of make sense to cover some of these wrong ways because you might think that you've got everything right but maybe you're not getting the results you want to get so the first one is the classic pinkie sticking out this was one I was really guilty of when I first started playing and I've noticed that even today I'll have a tendency as I'm playing just start to stick out my right pinky but it only happens when I'm playing thumbs up more of like a French grip with my right hand I think it's okay if I know I'm kind of making excuses here for myself but with your right hand if you're playing more of a thumbs up technically all your fingers are gonna be sticking out anyways right depending on how you're doing it depending on how closed or open it is and so I don't think it matters if a pinkie starting to stick out because really all your fingers are sticking out very loosely but I think that's why it feels natural to me to do that now if I were playing this way I'm playing more of a palms down to my pinkie sticking out well that's weird that's a problem that's something to think about if you're playing more French what's okay if fingers are kind of sticking out but as soon as you're German Oliver or Americans somewhere in between those fingers need to be wrapped around and the reason why is because the pinkie is a lot more powerful than you think it is really this is a topic for another video but you want to be able to use that pinky as you're playing especially if you're playing doubles because that's really the key to strong doubles there's a lot of muscles here in your forearm controlling your pinkie so wrap it in make sure you're using it and here's a big one squeezing too tight had the fulcrum squeezing right here between thumb and first finger rather than letting the stick rest here and that's the kind of thing where really the big symptom I guess of that is that your sticks probably are going to be rebounding naturally and so that's something to watch out for if you realize you're having to move your hand too much or the sticks just aren't bouncing things aren't smooth and natural the way they should be it could very well be that you're just pinching a little too tight but this third thing and this is a big one that I think tends to disguise itself because we know that we want to wrap our fingers around the sticks and you know look right as we're playing we don't want any finger sticking out but sometimes we wrap them too tightly and the stick isn't able to move enough within our hand that's something else that I would consider a wrong way to hold your sticks where it might look correct it might look right and look fine but when you realize you're not getting the results you want and you're having to move your hands too much or your wrist too much the cause of that could very well just be that the stick isn't moving enough within your hand because if the sticks moving within your hand then that means that your hand doesn't have to move as much which means your wrist doesn't have to move as much which means there's less stress on this joint and less potential for any kind of pain or arthritis in your wrist because that's the goal with drumming we want to move as little as possible it's okay to move you know move with the music and groove and everything but we don't want excessive motion we don't want to be a slave to extra wrist motion that isn't needed so make sure you're keeping your hands loose sticks moving within your hands so now let's talk about how do you know if you're holding your sticks right how do you know if one of these things is happening so at this point I'm just gonna do some playing here on the snare I've got the snares turn off we're just gonna look at okay here's what happens if we're squeezing too tight here's what happens if we're loose and just show you a little bit of what can go on with each one of these possible pitfalls now the pinky thing is harder to demonstrate because it is kind of a feel thing your other fingers can learn to compensate for the fact that maybe the pinky isn't working the way supposed to if you're playing doubles so you're not going to tell a difference if I try to demonstrate this I'm not let that in mind that if you're trying to play strong doubles like most of that energy probably will come from your ring finger I notice that's the case with mine but you definitely want to keep the pinky in there to kind of like if you're practicing this that's just my pinkie propelling that there's a lot of power there so it's definitely a very useful finger make sure you're using it but these big ones where you can tell an obvious problem if I'm squeezing too tight right here here's what this looks like so no matter if I have these fingers loosely out here if I'm squeezing here it's no good but as soon as I open up the space between my thumb and my first finger it's like magic make sure that you don't have your thumb pressed up against that knuckle there we don't want this we do want that and as for that hand looseness we'll okay we could have you know the right amount of space here loose fulcrum but if the fingers were too tight and ends up looking like this where I'm manually having to create the rebound I mean the stick is kind of bouncing but I'm controlling it too much and my hands having to move too much so here it is squeezing too tight then I'm going to loosen up and you can see there how my hand didn't have to move as much once I was looser plus the stick was moving more naturally which resulted in a better and more consistent sound so now that you've really seen this illustrated pretty well as far as diagnosing any of these potential problems yourself one of the big things to look out for is are your sticks rebounding so when you hit the drum and I should put my leg where it's supposed to be is a stick bouncing or is it going and are you having to manually create that rebound because if you're holding the stick correctly the sticks gonna do what it wants to do and so it's honestly that simple if the sticks are able to move loosely and you're able to play consistently smoothly without pain and you're able to play whatever you want to play there's probably not an issue but if you find that okay I'm only able to play so fast or my sticks aren't loosely bouncing or I'm struggling with doubles that's where you might want to evaluate this and just check those two points the fulcrum and fingers and see if there's something there that you could improve so I said at the beginning I was gonna wrap up with what I think is the single most overlooked technique pitfall and that's one of the things we've been talking about I think it's the finger squeeze thing whereas young students were taught to wrap our fingers around the sticks and make sure things aren't sticking out and make sure you've got control over the sticks because if there's no control if you're holding like this playing doubles this way then you're probably gonna lose control your sticks who knows what's going to happen so you're told to wrap your fingers around and that's fine that's great but a lot of times we just squeeze too tight and the reason I think this is very overlooked and it's very dangerous towards you know achieving the good technique is because it looks right it looks fine if you've got your fingers wrapped around everything looks normal and looks natural if you were to see a picture of yourself playing but when the sticks aren't rebounding the way they're supposed to well there's an issue and we know that if we can lose some things up more it'll be better you know watching from this camera up here as I'm playing it almost looks kind of exaggerated it looked kind of crazy how open my hand is getting but this is one of those things that just works and it makes sense and it's more natural and so whether or not you're developing your technique into something that looks like this or maybe something a little bit differently just make sure that whatever you're doing you're getting that looseness because that's the key we've got to have the open hand looseness I hope this video helped you out and provided you with something valuable to incorporate into your practicing today if so be sure to share the video and subscribe if you have yet the common fellow non-glamorous subscribers and before you go check out these 16 essential drumming tips PDF that is totally free the link is below in the description there's just a whole bunch of really good essential drumming tips from I think six different categories just boiling down some of the basics and absolute things that you need to know as a drummer if you're a beginner this is really great stuff even if you're intermediate or advanced you might be able to pick up some additional cool tips from this I love learning and so I love things like this and so this is just me wanting to present to you a lot of knowledge I've gathered over the years so go check that out it is absolutely free thanks guys I will see you on the next video

Channel: Stephen Clark

Views: 105,129

Keywords: drums, drumming, drummer, drum, music, play, learn, practice, lessons, videos, how to, better, stephen clark, stephen, steven, the non glamorous drummer, non, glamorous, set, kit, drum set, drum kit, drumsticks, drum sticks, sticks, how to hold drum sticks, grip, drum stick grip, fulcrum, pivot point, tightness, tight, loose, fingers, squeezing, left, right, hand, hands, technique, speed, rebound, stability, control, tips, problems, issues, how to play fast, better time, time, fluidity, pinkies, thumb

Id: Iutq_OT-T7U

Length: 8min 14sec (494 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2019