Practicing Sticking for Steel Drums

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Alan Lightner, and I'm here with Expert Village, and we're taking about the art of playing steel pans. We've talked a lot about sticking, and practicing stick control, and doing exercises; like single strokes, and double strokes, and even paradiddles; right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left to develop stick control, and to develop an independence in your mind; where you can be free. Steel drummers don't like to reach over this far, and play this note. If I want to play this note; over here; twice I'd rather not play it with two hands, because I've got to move my whole body over here to get there. This shoulder has to reach way over here. By the same token, if I don't have to, I'd rather not reach all the way over here with my left hand and play that. If I can, I'd much prefer to play that with one hand, and play this one with one hand for about two notes; or even three. This is where that stick control practice will really come in handy. Any time you're playing music, you don't really want to be thinking about the mechanics when you get there. You don't want to be thinking, oh, I'm going to play in right hand, right hand, right, right, left, left, right, left, right, left. You want to practice that stuff so much that you internalize it; that you don't have to think about it. All you want to think about is I want to hit this B three times, and I'm just going to naturally do that with that hand, and if I want to go back and forth, there's my single strokes. If I want two hits on those, I'm going to play it like that, instead of...which I can't even do well, and it looks very ridiculous, right? Obviously, if you're at a higher tempo I could never accomplish that, so this makes a lot more sense. It's much more musical, and your body is then ready for any note that you think of. For instance, if my body is way over here, and the next note that I think I want to play is way over there, it's too far to get to. If you're in this position, all the notes are easily accessible to you, so that's why we practice that stick control. Those are paradiddles; musical. That's an example of mixing it up; playing singles, doubles, paradiddles, triples. Just thinking about music, and letting the mechanics flow, but that takes a lot of practice."