The Cushion Stroke on a Marching Snare Drum

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Antonelli with Expert Village. This video lesson is going to be discussing the cushion stroke. The cushion stroke can be broken up into two levels; one basic level and one advanced level. Now, what we’re going to do is play exactly the same exact stroke that we just played for seven previous strokes. Stroke 8, the only difference is we’re going to stop our wrist. We’re going to now allow the wrist to kick back out of the drum. We’re just going to stop it. Now, you’ll notice if you watch the tip of my stick that it wiggles a little bit as it gets cushioned in my palm. The reason we do this is to get the same exact sound quality from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 solid strokes. Same sound through 8 strokes. Nothing sounds any different. Hopefully, it will sound something like this. Same sound with just a little wiggle at the bottom. The more advanced level is taking our back fulcrum and stopping the stick just after it strikes the head, not before it strikes the head. If we use our back fulcrum before it strikes the head, it will come out as an accent versus…just stop the beat after the stroke. That is our cushion stroke. In our left hand, what we’re going to do is cushion in between the index finger and our ring finger tips to where it’s going to wiggle in there or just after the stroke using our back fulcrum to stop the stick versus before to get a squeeze. You don’t want that we want towards the same sound. Please check out our next video where we will be discussing stick heights."