Alright, you’ve had a week to work on your speed on a single surface. Now it’s time to start applying that speed to all of your drums.
Speed on one surface is all about the 3 Rules of Efficiency of Motion. Speed around multiple drums uses the same rules and adds another muscle group: your arms. Your arms are used to take your hands from drum to drum (Duh!). That sounds ridiculously obvious, but it’s something I really want you to think about. Your hands move the sticks up and down – only! Your arms transport that up and down motion to different surfaces of your drum kit. Let that sink in.
One application of that concept is that failure to reach a drum in rhythm is not a failure of speed from your hands. It’s a failure of speed from your arms (i.e. your arms didn’t get your hands to the next drum fast enough).
With that thought in mind, let’s look at today’s exercise. You’ll notice that it’s basically the same as one of the exercises from last week. Now we’re just voicing the exercise over our snare and three toms. This exercise work on the single direction motion – all the way up and all the way down your drums. Note: For larger or smaller drum kits, you can take this same idea and just change the pattern to fit your kit.
Remember: make sure your hands are using the same techniques we talked about last week. And let your arms transport your hands from drum to drum.
Next week we’ll mix up the pattern to develop your speed in other patterns around the drums.
