Elbow, Wrist, Hand & Stick Angle Positions on a Marching Snare Drum

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Antonelli on behalf of Expert Village. This video lesson is going to be about our playing position on a marching snare drum. Very important part on playing positions on a marching snare drum is our elbows. We want to be as relaxed and lazy as possible while still being intense. We don’t want an overly extended elbow off of our right hand because that’s going to cause tension up here, and honestly it’s going to slow us down. We want to be relaxed as possible. The best way I’ve heard this explained is to feel like you have got a coke can lengthwise in between your side and your elbow on your right hand. Your left hand, same issue; we don’t want to be too far out. We also don’t want to be glued to our side, because that’s also going to cause tension and just slow us down. The best way I’ve heard this explained is having a coke can width case between your side in your elbow. Those are our elbow angles that we’re going to use on a marching snare drum. The next thing we’re going to talk about is our stick angle to the drum. It’s very important to have an angle to the drum and not be flat to the drum. If we’re flat to the drum, we’re not going to play too many notes on the head. We want to have a slight angle to the drum. I think of it as two finger widths angle above the drum. This allows me to play with quite a bit of velocity into the head while still maintaining a good relaxed posture. The next thing we’re going to talk about is our wrist angles. It’s very important in our left hand to not be under the stick and potentially say catch rain. If you can catch rain in your palm you need it turn over more on top of the stick and more in control of the stick. The right hand’s tendencies are either to be too far over and tense up the backside of the wrist, or to be underneath the stick and play more of a French grip style tympany on the snare drum. What we want to have is more like a 45-degree angle in the crease off of our right hand so that our sticks can travel in a nice straight path. However, still do it with a nice relaxed technique. Please check out our next video where we will be talking about the right hand stroke. "