personal drumming habits, etc.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Weeks 3-6

OK, so things got a little out of hand with not practicing. I did good for a few weeks, but disaster hit, namely a gap in my lease. I was up at my parents house and for about 3 weeks did some intensive snare drum practicing since it was all I could do. I ran the first couple of pages of stick control each day, gradually increasing the tempo, and then Brian gave me an exercise for a single stroke roll. You run the first column of SC, each one once. In between you do 4 strokes R followed by 4 strokes L, then the second time 8 and 8 and then 16 and 16. It alternates so that on the even numbered exercises in the column you start with the left hand. Then at the end you do at twice the speed a single stroke roll for 5 measures followed by a measure of rest. It was a great exercise. I did an endurance exercise too and some paradiddle stuff.

Paradiddles really arent for me. I dont like them. Its like you are trying to make a line but you are tied into the paradiddle. The paradiddle is so specific its not really as readily adaptable to other things. Like its a cool feel to base something around, but how do you get to the other stuff? Polyrhythms are much more amorphous i think in that they let you by definition be 2 places (at least in one time) and you can subtractively make a line out of it in so many different ways.

Brian gave me these 8 exercises that are just putting triplets in different places and Im pretty psyched about it because once I get that it will help me with some 2 on 3 and 4 on 3 stuff. I wrote a beat too that I will scan in here in a bit that kind of shows the thought process of what Im trying to do.