How to Hold the Drum Stick in the Right Hand on a Marching Snare Drum

Series Summary

The snare drum is an essential percussive component in any marching band. The sharp snap produced by the reverberating snares stretched across the bottom skin, or head, is what gives the drum its unique sound. The snare drum has been used in military bands in Europe since the 15th and 16th century, and today it can be heard in virtually every genre of western music. Whether you want to learn how to play snare for your school band’s high-stepping competition, to march in a local parade, or just for fun, these free video music lessons are a great place to get started.

In this series of free video clips expert percussion instructor John Antonelli demonstrates how to play the snare drum for a marching band. You’ll learn tips on finding the correct posture, how to properly hold the drumsticks, and variety of strokes and basic drumming techniques. John also helps you fine-tune your playing with exercises to help you control accents and start tapping like a drum-line veteran.

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Antonelli on behalf of Expert Village. Today’s lesson is going to be on the marching snare drum. First off, we have got to discuss how to hold the stick in our right hand. The most important two parts of how to hold the stick are fulcrums. We’re going to have a front fulcrum and a back fulcrum. First, let’s discuss how the stick lays in our hand. First, you want to look at your finger. There are three main points in our finger. There’s knuckle one, knuckle two, and knuckle three. The stick is going to rest in between knuckle one and knuckle two, like so, halfway in between. The next point is going to complete our first fulcrum, our front fulcrum. It’s going to be the joint, the putting together, of our right thumb straight across from halfway in between our first two knuckles, like so. We don’t want the thumb too low and roll down, because that will open up space and allow for less control. We also don’t want it too high up and being all the way against this knuckle, that’s going to cause pain and also a loss of control, so straight across from in between these two knuckles. The next part is gracefully wrapping around the bottom three fingers around the stick. The bottom fulcrum is going to be your pinky finger as it wraps around the stick. This is going to hold and direct the stick into the head at a consistent path. So that is how we hold the right hand stick. Check out in the next video when we discuss how to hold our left hand stick."