Right Hand Velocity Stroke on a Marching Snare Drum

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Antonelli on behalf of Expert Village. This video lesson is going to be discussing the right hand stroke on a marching snare drum. We’ve already discussed how to hold the stick in our front fulcrum and our back fulcrum off of our right hand. We’ve also already discussed the stick angle to the drum. Now, let’s talk about how to play this drum. We’re going to use what’s called a velocity stroke. This is done by putting a maximum amount of velocity in the bead of the stick going into the head and coming back up. An exercise I do in order to maximize that I call the velocity stroke. I start, at what we’re going to call 12 inches, that’s going to be discussed later on in our video series. We’re going to start it 12 inches and I’m going to end it 12 inches. I’m just going to play one stroke. The way I think about this is throwing for one third of the stroke and relaxing the rest of the two thirds. It ends up looking something like this. Now, what we’re going to try to do is minimize the amount of time between 12 inches and 12 inches. Anybody can just hold the stick and… in a relaxed manner have the stick rebound out of the head. What we want to do is maximize the amount of velocity so that the stick comes out of the head sooner. This generates more sound and gives us a better sound quality. Please check out our next video where we will be discussing the left hand stroke."