Grrr - wonky sticks !

After about 2 hrs playing (most of it practice pad) one of my sets of sticks has gone, for want of a better word, wonky. One of the pair is now about half the weight of the other, and not straight, and has a very noticeably different pitch. Apparently this is just 'one of those things' that sometimes happens with drum sticks. Although at £7+ a pop I'm miffed !

Practice pads : Size matters !

Out - The 6" Billy Hyde pad

As mentioned before I have a Billy Hyde 6" practice pad. It has a mount underneath to put it on a cymbal stand, but not having a spare cymbals stand I've been using it on a desk (actually quite loud when the little one is asleep - clonk clonk clonk) or my knee (nice and quiet)

In - HQ 12" pad

However, when the small pad is on your knee, it's too close and the practice feels cramped. So either a stand or a bigger pad was required. Somehow I ended up doing both - a chap I know was flogging a snare stand for a tenner, so I popped in to one of the local shops and picked up a nice big 12" HQ 'Real Feel' pad. At £29 it's not cheap (and can be had cheaper online but I am not the most patient man in the world) but it is a nicer surface to play on and mounted in the snare stand it's much more of a 'normal' practice experience

Lesson # 4

Another great lesson this week. I had to confess to not having practiced as much during this 2 week period than previously : as I moaned here I hadn't been at home at drum-able hours much. So the 16th note patterns I got last time remained mostly unpracticed. I had been doing some pad practice though - alternating singles doubles and paradiddles and trying to keep them even at low tempos.

So - we pitched in to test me on my un-practiced 16th note patterns - I surprised myself by playing most of them right off the bat from the notation. The instead of playing multiple bars of one pattern I played through all 16 one after the other - again reading - got it first time - <>

Next was some grip tuning as in doing those patterns my poor right hand grip had resurfaced. Martin's 'point your right finger' drill forced me to keep the stick in my other fingers and against my palm, which for now is the aim. I chose to play much of the rest of the lesson like this to drive this home! While doing this initially we worked out some sensible tempos (based on current breakdown tempo) for me to be practicing singles, doubles and paradiddles at (16ths at 80 bpm for all 3 it turned out)

Then came the challenging section of the lesson : "Pick one of your 8th note patterns and one of the 16th notes patterns - make sure they are nice and different" he says. So I did. Right - play the 8th note one on the hihat and the 16th one on the ride and alternate them. Hmm. There followed some swearing and nervous laughing (I must ask him to stop doing that . . . err no ok then that would be me) and it was clear why we were doing this - it's not as simple as it sounds ! I struggled for a while here until I locked the patterns in my head and it started to come together. When I'd got the idea we moved up a notch to 3 bars of one followed by a single stroke roll fill around the snare and toms, then 3 bars of the other with a double stroke roll fill around the toms the other way with the other hand leading. I had to keep at this for a while until I got it remotely consistent - but I kind of got there - one to practice at home :-)

Then his favourite trick : the same thing, but played open-handed. It's like you have to use someone else's brain for this - it takes huge concentration (well it takes me huge concentration) and breaks down easily - again something to work on at home this time.

Along with those 2 excercises I have bpm targets for my 8th and 16th note patterns "...to be played smoothly and evenly at all times!" and my 3 rudiment excercises.

It seemed like a crammed hour and I left with that best of feelings : like I'd cracked something new and improved since last time. Long may it continue.

My Valentine pressies !

It seems Mrs DrummingDad has been picking up on the hints just fine :-)

This morning the postman delivered the Joey Castillo Percussion Pack - a jam block and mounted tambourine that I had expressed an interest in.

On top of that, the cowbell I won on eBay (Latin Percussion 'Rock' model) arrived too. Percussion-tastic.

Lesson # 3

Update to follow when I find my lessons notes !