One hand is better than two...

(cheat code below)

I’ve barely hit a drum in over a month; I’m incredibly rusty. There have been a few times over the last few years where this has happened, purely because of travel and other things keeping me away from any proper time at the studio, but this time my hands & feet are really feeling it.

Often after these layoffs I’ll be quite enthused to play and will therefore end up just noodling in order to scratch that itch after not playing for a while, but also in an effort to blow off the rust & get my hands back. It’s common to actually ‘play’ quite well after a mental break…ideas-wise. The problem is my hands and feet feeling so incredibly out of shape and this noodling approach is almost completely useless as a way to try to get things going quickly and back to how I felt before.

If you ever experience this rusty feeling when you sit down at the drums after a break then these tips will definitely help. I have known all this info for decades but I have to remind myself just how effective it is by forcing myself to go back to these exercises, which really are like shortcuts/cheat codes.

Virgil Donati and Thomas Lang were the first people to tell me to ditch the rubber pads and start playing one-handed exercises. So many drummers waste hours noodling on pads with way too much bounce (far more than any surface we play on the kit) and don’t spend any time working on individual hand exercises. I cannot tell you how effective this is and how much practice time it cuts down. Stop playing double stroke rolls and just play one side - just the left hand, for example. Try to make it sound like those two 16th notes are being played with two hands. Aim for a nice big stick arc (range of motion) and a very strong and clear sound. I guarantee you could play a double-stroke roll at 85bpm for ten minutes, easily & without any stress. But if you do just one side, you’ll be struggling to keep up after 60 seconds.

Between the exercises that they showed me and the ones I’ve created, I have a whole host of one-handed routines that, if done on a pad/surface with very little rebound, are absolute killers. Switching between singles & doubles (still just one hand at a time), varying the lengths of each pattern, exhausting one hand and then switching to the other - this is the stuff that really gets your hands (back) into shape.

There are tons of these exercises at playbetterdrums.com, as well as detailed info on how to use them, what pads to buy etc. I’m diving right back into these as I type this, trying to get back into shape as quickly as possible, without spending hours at the drums.

Another incredibly effective thing to practice is unison strokes, another thing I never hear or see anyone do much (Tony Williams talked about this a lot and used this extensively in his playing), but that’s a story for another day.

Here’s one exercise to try; see how you get on. Make sure to use a pad with little/no rebound, or get a towel, fold it a couple of times & put it on top of your rubber pad.

Have fun,

Louie