Jim’s critique of Kevin’s drumming technique video

Thanks Kevin for showing me your video and asking for feedback. Even though it’s taken on a slight angle it’s still easy for me to see what’s going on because you have taken care to show a good range of things at various speeds. As a general comment, it’s easy to see that you have spent plenty of time with a drumstick in your hands and your technique is essentially relaxed and tension free – it looks comfortable. This is one of the most important things to accomplish as a drummer.

Here are the good comments first

Your stroke heights are very even between the two hands, resulting in virtually no volume difference. The hands do sound quite different, but this is not a technique issue, just a case of badly matched sticks I suspect. Given that one stick sounds quite a bit higher in pitch than the other, it was the correct choice to place that in the left hand as this tends to give the subjective illusion of compensating for any potential weakness in the left hand.

The really fantastic thing, is that you have a great ability to allow the sticks to rebound properly. This is probably the single most important aspect of technique that you can develop, and it is the one I most often see missing. You are getting rebound 100% correct from both wrists and the fingers – both are timing the impulse and release in such a way that there is no resistance from the hands on the rebound. This is particularly evident from your singles and doubles and maintaining this rebound quality at the faster tempos shows me that you have clearly developed considerable ability in that area – something which can only be the result of much practice!

Now for the observations on things that might be improved:

Grip & general observations

Both hands tend to bend up a little at the wrist. It is only very slight most of the time, but in general it is better to hold the hands up a little higher and bend down at the wrist to make these strokes. This avoids tension in the tendons on top of the wrist joint and also allows the fingers to be more passive in the downwards part of the motion. This will help the evenness of your double strokes which were great, but faded slightly as you went faster. At the faster tempos we rely on the fingers only to produce the second note which means we don’t really want them to be part of the first note as well. Wrist plus fingers will always be louder than fingers alone so if the first note can be more wrist ONLY the result will be more even. All of this is only a SLIGHT criticism – in general this aspect is pretty good. About the wrist bend though – it seems from what I can see that the left hand always has more upwards bend from the wrist than the right.

Your right hand is held in a good position – basically in line with your shoulder. The left hand however is being held a little too far inside the line of your shoulder – more in front of your stomach. This is the most likely cause of two key problems. One: There is a slight sideways kink at the wrist which is stretching the ligaments on the inner edge of the wrist joint over the bone. Two: There is a significant anticlockwise turn of the left forearm meaning the back of the hand is not facing straight up, but also a bit to your left. This is most likely also the cause of the extra wrist bend mentioned above. More importantly, it is causing the fingers of the left hand to work at less than optimum efficiency – they are actually pulling the stick slightly sideways rather than straight up and down. So most likely a simple repositioning of the left hand to a wider point will make a whole lot of these little points much better for you.

The pad seems a little low to me, but it’s tricky to tell from the camera angle. I recommend the playing surface be just a fraction below the lower part of the elbow when your arm is hanging loosely.

With both hands your fingers are working pretty well, but the power they are delivering is not balanced between those fingers. The left hand in particular uses very little of the second finger which seems to me to be angled too far across the stick and not enough along the stick. The right hand tends to use virtually none of the tip of the index finger when you get to faster tempos. It’s difficult to see because of the speed blur in the video, but it seems that the fulcrum on the right hand slips down to the knuckle or even past it at faster speeds. This makes using the tip of the index finger impossible as the fulcrum is now in front of the main bending knuckle of the finger. I personally endeavor to keep my fulcrum BEHIND the middle knuckle of the index finger at all times.

The tip of the thumb on your right hand is often pushed down past the stick too far opening up a “hole” between finger and thumb above the fulcrum. Try to keep the thumb basically on the side of the stick – or if anything slightly on top rather than under. It also seems that the contact area of your right thumb is too far back rather than at the thumb tip, and more on the corner edge rather than the bigger flat pad opposite the nail. The thumb position was pretty much perfect when you did the paradiddles and Swiss triplets. Your left thumb position is pretty good, but be careful that when you correct the forearm rotation mentioned above, you take a fresh look at the thumb. Rotation of the forearm also places the thumb more on top of the stick.

Paradiddles

I would like to see the un-accented notes softer. In general when practicing rudiments you want to use the extremes of your dynamic range – particularly the soft end. So unaccented notes at 1/10 and accents at least at 7/10 or more. If during an actual performance the overall dynamic level was stronger, then obviously the non-accents can be more, but when working on the rudiment for its own sake you will get more benefit from working towards extreme dynamic contrast.

At these slower tempos you are not really using any rebound from the accent so there should be no movement at all through the fulcrum — i.e. no fingers. Essentially you are in fact trying to kill the rebound in order to keep the non-accents lower, so try holding the little finger right around the stick and absorbing the impact by holding the stick softly with your whole hand. Imagine your hand is like a bean-bag. When the rebounding stick hits it, it just folds around it. Interestingly enough – even though your left hand little finger is not around the stick you are not letting any rebound through the fulcrum occur on your left hand, just the right.

I would also like to see less upwards bending of the wrist to achieve the stick height for the accents. Try to use a pivot from the elbow instead – ie. lifting of the arm – to achieve the stick height. This will make controlling the rebound easier and is especially important at faster tempos where you want to isolate the muscles used for the big stroke movement, from those used to control the rebound from that stroke which we use to execute the double stroke.

At the moment you are starting the upwards motion of the stick for the accent very late – it’s coming up as the 4th note travels downwards. This presents no problems at these slower tempos, but will limit your overall top speed for paradiddles considerably. The upwards movement takes the most effort and will take the most time so you need to get into the habit of starting the lift as early as possible. Even when practicing slowly. Remember everything you repeat slowly becomes habit forming and will continue through as you play faster. The upwards motion should begin immediately after the contact point of the second note – effectively turning this note into an “up stroke”.

Swiss army triplets

At the moment I’m hearing the most common problem there is with the Swiss triplet. Only the first note should be accented, not the first two. I’m hearing the second note quite loudly. Once again here, all the unaccented notes seem way too loud – especially the left hand which should remain low throughout. In fact even when performing at loud overall dynamics, the grace note for the flam should always be at minimum level. Once the left hand is kept really low, the challenge becomes to make the second RH note as low as the left hand tap. Once again this means holding the fingers in throughout the double stroke and killing most of the rebound. The really good thing about your performance of this rudiment is that you are using lift of the forearm quite well to achieve the stroke height for the accent. If you use less (or no) finger extension on the rebound then you will get the second note much lower.

So hopefully this is helpful advice for you. The great news is that your basic technique is pretty sound and the majority of those slight issues will most likely be fixed by keeping that left hand a little wider. If you want to develop the speed of your rudiments and expand your dynamic range and control at faster tempos, then a systematic approach to optimizing your stroke efficiency is probably in order.

Jim McCarthy