Stroke technique
If you ever want to be the laughing stock of your school or workplace, this lesson could prove invaluable. Try this: The next time somebody asks you how the weekend was, just respond with “Oh, it was alright. I spent most of my time practicing my stroke technique” and just wait for the peals of laughter.
Cheap jokes aside, stroke technique is one of the most basic and essential parts of what a drummer does, regardless of whether they realise it.
How do you play the drums? Stupid question, I know, but it has a pretty simple response – you hit stuff. So how do you hit stuff? Well, sometimes I hit stuff hard, sometimes I don't hit so hard. So I'll play some loud notes somewhere, and maybe play a few quiet ones in-between to make things more interesting. So how do you play loud and quiet notes? Stroke technique!
Have a listen to the following programmed MP3, then tap it out with your hands on something nearby.
Keep it nice and simple, just do it by alternating hands – Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left.
Try to get the loud note on the first note of each group of four louder than the other three. Now watch your right hand. What is it doing? Lifting up higher to hit the first note? Damn straight... How about the left hand? Well, since that's playing just quiet notes it should be staying down low between each stroke, as it doesn't need to go up.
That's stroke technique.
There is, obviously, a bit more to it than that. There are four basic strokes:
The Tap Stroke (Quiet)
This is easy. Start with your hand (or stick) very low down, right next to the surface you're going to hit. As low as you can, without touching it by accident. Now just tap, very gently. Don't lift the hand or anything afterwards, just keep it still. Tap strokes are played in sequence where you want a quiet note with another quiet note to follow.
The Up Stroke (Quiet)
Things get a bit harder here. Start with your hand/stick low, like a tap stroke. Play a tap stroke, but then as part of the same motion, continue to lift your hand/stick after playing the stroke so that you finish in a raised position. Up strokes are played in sequence where you want a quiet note which is to be followed by a loud note.
The Full Stroke (Loud)
Now your hand is up high after playing the up stroke, you're in a position to play some loud notes. The full stroke is like a tap stroke, but loud – you start with your hand high, play the stroke and then let your hand bounce back to the exact same position. Don't lift the stick or stop it at the bottom of the stroke. Imagine throwing a ball at the floor and letting it bounce back to your hands. You don't play basketball by throwing the ball at the floor, stopping it with your foot and then kicking it back to your hands, so don't stop the stick and lift it again. It's a waste of time, which slows you down. Let the stick do what it wants. Full strokes are loud, and they leave your hand in the “Up” position ready to play another loud stroke.
The Down Stroke (Loud)
This should be pretty obvious now. If you want to play a loud stroke to be followed by a quiet stroke with the same hand, you need to start the stick high up, throw it down at the drum head and stop it as soon as it rebounds. Do not stop before hitting the drum. The aim with the down stroke is to finish as low as possible to allow you to do quiet tap/up strokes afterwards.
So, how do I use this to make me better?
Put simply, start thinking about it for five minutes a day. Sit down with a practice pad and play some sequences of strokes. Get a bit of paper and write down some sequences of strokes – give each kind of stroke a letter (D for Down, U for Up, T for Tap, F for Full) and make up some sequences. Obviously these have to go by the rules – a Tap can't come after or before a Full. Some examples might be things like this (loud notes in capitals):
DuFF (LOUD-quiet-LOUD-LOUD)
uFFD (quiet-LOUD-LOUD-LOUD)
Dttu (LOUD-quiet-quiet-quiet)
... and so forth. Then, once you've got the hang of doing any of those you can think up, start just thinking in terms of the LOUD/quiet nature of the note, and using the strokes to move between the positions required to play them. So maybe say “I want to play a hi-hat line that goes LOUD-quiet-LOUD-quiet with my right hand”, then figure out that you need to go down-up-down-up in order to achieve that.
Once you've mastered stroke technique with one hand (ooer, missus), move on to using it with two-handed patterns. Play a single-stroke roll (Right-left-right-left) and then pick out quiet and loud notes within that, using your stroke technique to make sure you don't waste time or effort getting between the hand positions.
If you're doing this right you should find that inside a week or so your playing starts to feel more calm, relaxed and in control. If you're not feeling that, find a teacher and show them what you're doing, they'll be able to fix it.
Is this anything like Moeller strokes?
Yup, but that's a wee bit more complex. Moeller can't really be communicated in writing, but the motion is a bit like throwing a ball – your arm and wrist flicks in a similar manner to you would during a throw. However Moeller does not have a “Full” stroke, as even strokes should be played without any arm movement using purely the wrist and/or fingers. Therefore you should learn to play “straight” strokes using your wrists first before bringing in Moeller motion with the arms. In all honesty, for Moeller you really need a teacher, but I've included a quick video clip here of some Moeller strokes. It is broken down into a few sections:
Moeller up and down strokes with individual hands
A single-stroke roll with accents on the first two hits, using Moeller technique. Played first on the snare and then on the toms and the snare.
Some paradiddle-based fusion nonsense with the snare and ride cymbal, using Moeller strokes to pick out accents. This demonstrates the speed advantages of proper stroke technique, as well as the differences in sound with the different strokes. Even when you're playing very fast, the strokes should still sound distinct to the ear.
A fill using ordinary straight full-strokes between the snare and the first tom-tom. Look at this for contrast – the arm stops moving up and down when I'm playing fast single-stroke roll, all the movement comes from the fingers and the wrist.
