How Do I Hold the Drumstick

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Frank, in this clip we’re going to look at gripping the stick. There are two main ways to grip the stick, and what we’re going to talk about is one of them, specifically traditionally grip. The other way is matched grip; we’ll talk about that in another clip. But for now traditional grip, the right hand holds it just like match grip; the left hand holds it differently, it’s called traditional grip. I love the history on this—and just a nutshell on the history of traditional grip, if you go back to military drumming, you know when all the troops had to march and keep a steady rhythm just to keep everybody motivated, moving at the same time, you probably can imagine… and then an enemy hears all this coming over the mountain, coming around the bend, and just they’re curious they’re kind of fearful how many men are there, because I hear this thunderous drums. And as coordinated as they look, that must be how they fight, so it was very important for those drummers to be able to be heard. Unfortunately for them, those drums, number one, didn’t project very well, and number two, weren’t able to be held flat. They wore the drums on slings; you may even see those in some older traditional military marching bands today—there are not very many around. But those slings made the drums—because of course the drummers had to march—they made those drums have to go on the side of their bodies, and as they moved, the drums would move too. Which means the angle of the drumhead wouldn’t be flat, it would be on its angle like this, and as they marched it would move with their bodies. And at that kind of an angle, matched grip, I would get incredibly tired, as would you. So what they worked out was a way… this doesn’t work; there most be a way to get louder sounds, and even get some more complicated rhythms to help out… and this is the grip that they developed. It was very functional, and they would just use their arm and come down, and some wrist… and over the years they started developing better technique, and they even put snares, what was cat gut or goat gut or whatever animal happened to be for dinner, they would take that gut and they would stretch it along the bottom of the drum, and it’ll actually have a rat-a-tat-tat sound, thus the snare drum—those are snares. The history of it is actually… the snares they would use to go snare rabbits for dinner, they would use those too, so they called them snares. Anyway, with the grip, now that we have the snares on the bottom and this kind of power that we can get on an angle that’s really bizarre, well that’s functional; now all the troops can hear."