First things first - grab your free transcription here.
I’m actually pretty excited to present today’s video. It represents the culmination of at least a few months’ experimentation, not-to-mention working around an injury. It took a bit of time until I felt I had things comfortable enough to show to the public in a video.
But here goes - I made one change in my left hand that, I believe, brought it much more in line with what I’ve been doing naturally with my right. It’s probably fine to have slightly different techniques between the two hands up to a point - i.e. if you’re not trying to chop, but unfortunately I was, and that exposed a limitation.
I realized I’ve been doing something very “against the conventional wisdom” with my right hand for at least the last year: moving almost totally away from the “pinch and fold” fulcrum everybody shows to beginners, and approaching something much more dynamic, with the hand kind of dyamically resisting the rebound force from the drum or cymbal, with a bunch of input from the middle finger.
“Against conventional wisdom”, unless you listen to teachers like Gordy Knudtson or Murray Spivack, or watch the hands of - to name just a few - Thomas Pridgen, Giancarlo Pellerito, JP Bouvet, or Chad Wackerman. Two key details differ from “basic technique”: first, the stick is linear with the forearm, instead of “out in the fingers”. Next, you’re utilizing that entire range-of-motion with the fingers.
Great! So now all that was necessary was applying it to the left hand. Which, as you’ll see, is a work in progress. Anyway, I hope this will be helpful for anybody trying to break the “speed limit” with their weak hand.
Hope you enjoy!