Most of us live as a right-handed person. The right hand is usually the stronger one, as in the case with many drummers.
We lead and start almost everything in our game flow with the right. Therefore, many drummers need to balance up when it comes to playing with their left hand. The left hand is usually a weaker side. It is often not the focus of everyday right-hand drums.
Furthermore, the standard drum set of the snare drum size increases respectively. The left side has smaller drums, and the right has bigger drums. This is designed for right-handed people. Besides, the hi-hat and the ride cymbal in their essential function in grooves are also played by the right hand. The main playing zone for the left hand is the snare drum. Check this out Best Drum Movies.
In this article, we show you how to train your left hand for playing the snare drum. We start here with a few basics for better control and coordination. Incidentally, I do not use tempo information this time for all exercises. Please decide this yourself according to your personal “feel-good pace”. The Electronic Drums serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit.
The first thing you should do is find your ideal position behind the drum. For this, you must remain comfortable for a long period. All parts must be positioned so that they are easy to reach. Find a great collection with the Best Cheap Electric Guitar.
Then, you take a drumstick with each hand. There are two possible ways to grab the drumsticks with your left hand. The first is the traditional way, which you may have seen in Jazz drummers. Here the drumstick rests loosely in the flexion of the thumb, the middle finger presses down, and the index finger stabilizes the support.
This way, the drumstick can react elastically on the patch while controlling with the finger.
As examples, I would like to use the most famous stickings: singles, doubles and paradiddle. All stickings are the same on the right and left. The number of strokes of both hands is always the same, regardless of the rhythmic values.
For a good overview and a simple notation, I chose the stroke handwriting. The right hand is noted above the line, the left hand below the line. The following exercises are also very suitable as a warm-up with a practice pad, but can also be transferred to a drum set with a snare drum, bass drum or hi-hat.
As already mentioned in the first part, as right-handed people, we start warm-ups on the pad with the right hand. We also know this phenomenon from countless rudiment books, in which stickings are indicated that very often start on the right.
The purpose of my exercises is to start with the right one but to rethink your head and put the “1” on the left. The best discipline would be to start with the left directly on the “1”. But what if it’s a strange feeling and you can’t really get into the exercise? What if the right-hand twitches even though it cannot start? What if our head automatically thinks the right hand as “1” or even counts?
I want to recommend the following exercise, which leads to success in three simple steps.
You should always play alternately with both hands and consider a rhythmic division. Here, as an example, I use eighth notes and eighth triplets. Apply the scheme explained below:
Wipe Out Groove Original tempo: quarter = approx. 154 bpm The well-known song by The Surfaris from 1963 was covered countless times by many surf and instrumental bands – a classic for all drummers.
The speed of the different cover versions fluctuates between 150 and 156 bpm. One of the best known is that from the film “Dirty Dancing” (1987), but it was “pitched” and is around 172 bpm/quarter – actually too fast to play live! Every drummer would automatically perform this groove on the tom and the accents with his right hand but try it “with the left”. In combination with bass drum and hi-hat, this can be a challenge. Incidentally, the accents are not always the same and often vary in the different cover versions.
Lefthand starts fill-in tempo: quarter = 120 bpm. This is an example where the left hand starts the fill-in. Due to the usual drum set structure, the right hand moves from left to right over the toms, but the left hand begins at beat “1”.
The toms sounds are now all in the sixteenth offbeat. Pay attention to the dynamic difference between the accents and the ghostings in the left hand. A stop follows the counting time “4”. So you have a little break and can start the groove in the second bar with the right on the crash. To do this, choose any but simple groove and concentrate on the transitions.
Lefthand Hi-Hat Groove Tempo: Quarter = 100 bpm Swap the usual groove phenomenon of the crossed hands (right over left) and play here “open-handed”! The hi-hat is performed with the left hand and the snare drum with the right hand.
In addition to an excellent endurance and leadership exercise for the left, you now have the opportunity to involve your right hand more in the groove. The two-bar example is also designed with a few tom accents; the groove is identical in both bars, the right hand complements the toms in the second bar as a variation. If you enjoy making beats on keyboards, we have provided you with the very Best Keyboard Workstations.