How to Hold Drumsticks

Series Summary

The drum is the oldest known musical instrument in the history of man, and its basic design has not changed in thousands of years. Far from today’s uses as a percussive foundation for pop music or for fueling marching band excitement, drumming has a more profound history as a method of communication, and as an implement of religious symbolism. The drum was perhaps first created from the primal idea of mimicking the human heartbeat, yet today its music has developed into a technical, complex arrangement of beats and grooves. In this free music lesson video series, the professional drummer from award-winning band Blessed Union of Souls, demonstrates drumming techniques with a variety of drumsticks. Learn to drum with basic drumsticks, drum brushes, hot rod drumsticks and timpani mallets. Get tips on playing cymbals with each type of drumstick and learn about natural stroke drumming and side stick drumming. Every drummer should learn the basics of drumming and using drumsticks with tips from a professional drummer in this free video series.

Video Transcript

"In this step, before we get started with the playing, we're going to take a look at how to hold the different types of sticks we have with us today. So first off is the regular drumstick. You take it, act like you're going to shake someone's hand with your left hand--just take the stick, drop it in the palm of your hand, like an inch of the butt hanging down. And then wrap your fingers around, and the stick does not go on top or below, it goes on the side. Okay, as you can see, I've got a little bit hanging out in the back. I leave a little bit of a gap because I like to play it loose, and I like to be able to just--my stick just comes in and out. You don't want to hold too tight. So that's -- and you do the same thing with the right hand. And that's how you hold a regular set of drumsticks. Now, there's also the traditional way, which is your right hand is exactly the same, take your left hand, act like you're going to shake someone's hand, place the stick in there, and instead of an inch of the butt hanging out, you want maybe, what is that, three inches or so. You want just below, if this is the middle of the stick, you want it to be a little lower than that. So, thumb, forefinger, wrap your finger around. Let the middle of the stick rest on the edge of your fingernail and your first knuckle. Tuck the pinkie in, wrap the forefinger on, and you want to actually touch your thumb and your forefinger. And you just put your middle finger on there. So this is what traditional would look like. You've got your right hand doing the exact same thing as the match grip, and then this would be traditional. Now, if we take a look at our hot rods, yes you could play traditionally, like that. That would be a traditional look. But you hold these exactly the same way as you hold regular drumsticks. Now one problem is these are like really a lot thicker than regular drumsticks, so it does feel a little bit different in your hand, because it is so much bigger. But primarily, you hold these, the match grip, the same way. Now if we take a look at some brushes. These are kind of different because they're so light and they're thinner, and there's just up here, there's just not much going on. And so, you would hold these--this would be a match grip, the same way--and just, you know, like that. But you're not going to have quite as much hanging down. You want to just basically this ring hanging down, or hanging out, because you can't hold them up here. So, hold them back here. That would be the match grip. And then with this, since brushes are primarily used, or most typically used in jazz music and a lot of jazz players, most jazz drummers, play traditional, you would hold the stick like this--with traditional. And as you can see, there's not much going on back here, because just the brushes are so small. If you set them side by side, you can see how much bigger a regular drumstick is than a brush, and that's a lot. That's a big change to have to overcome, when you're talking about the brushes. And our last thing, our Timpani mallets, and you've got your match grip. But typically with Timpani mallets, because you play Timpani kind of with your wrists, normally the back of your hand is parallel with the floor or the ceiling--well, with Timpani, typically you flip your hands over like this--as opposed to. And you can play it that way. It's not wrong. But typically when you're playing a Timpani--well let's move to the rack tom since that sounds more like a--okay, real loose, your thumbs are pointed to the ceiling, if you can see mine. That's typically how you would hold Timpani mallets to play Timpani. But we're playing drum set, and we're in a rock hand, so we don't necessarily have to play it this way, so you can play it however you want. So that is how you hold the different types of sticks and mallets and brushes that we are going to use today."