Pitfalls of the 12-3 Bucks Drum Exercise on a Marching Snare Drum

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Antonelli on behalf of Expert Village. In the previous lesson, we discussed how to construct an exercise I call 12_3 bucks. In this lesson, we’ll discuss the pitfalls of 12_3 bucks. Very first pitfall is making sure the accent stuff that we talked about long time ago, in eight on a hand is not present in our very first bar or second bar or our third bar. The next thing is making sure the transitions from bar to bar are 100% solid. Generally, students will make either a decrescendo like so into the second bar, or the over squeeze. Thus being late on the very first low stroke and having an accent. We don’t want either. Remember, what we’re trying to achieve is a cushion stroke straight to 3 inches so we can play that very first stroke at 3 inches with quality and good timing…versus…or…making a decrescendo. These are things we do not want to have happen. We want to make sure it’s cushioned straight to 3 inches and plays from 3 inches. The next pitfall is making sure between stroke 8 here and stroke 1 there is good timing. We’ve got to make sure that we’re playing with a good amount of velocity at 3 inches and we’re not just ghosting. We want to make sure that we’re playing with the same kind of velocity and same kind of intensity we are at 12 inches only down at 3 inches. We’re just going to not allow our wrist to balance back out until stroke 8. Make sense? Another thing is making sure that you don’t change the stroke on stroke 8 on the way back out thus getting it accent more velocity on stroke 8 to get the stroke back out. It just needs to be 100% consistent all the time. Stroke 8, all we’re just doing is allowing the stick to come back out of the head to be ready for the 8 note bucks. Thank you for watching our video series on some basic marching snare drum techniques. Please look out for in the near future our continuing videos on more advanced snare drumming techniques. "