Over the years I have collected a number of recurring combinations that I have noticed were universally used by great drummers, and which in my experience both as a performer and as a teacher have proved to be invaluable tools to make hands and feet work perfectly together.
Today we are going to check out a collection of these, in a bunch of pages dedicated to groupings that I have created to ‘empower’ our coordination skills.
When we study stick control with our hands we learn that the difficult part is not playing a specific movement (singles, doubles, paradiddles), but lies in being able to alternate that movement with other things without losing command.
We could think of the following exercises as kind of the ‘stick control’ of coordination.
In fact they use the same principles, combining and developing basic cells that we all have played a million times.
This way we can learn to manage the different layers involved in playing those ideas when they are put one after the other.
Here is the PDF with transcriptions of all 29 exercises:
And here is the link to the YouTube video in which I play the examples shown in the booklet. You can also click on each case in the PDF to access the related video demonstration.
After a page of linear groupings we move on to combinations that include unisons.
Specifically in these studies we focus on the alignment between the right hand and the Bass Drum. This is going to be really helpful in improving our groove and timing.
In fact, as we know, at the root of many problems drummers have with groove there is a fundamental lack of coordination skills.
And even though making the right hand play unisons with the right foot seems so easy that is often taken for granted, that’s exactly where most of the issues begin.
Here we are going to avoid this trap and synchronize these motions once and for all.
One of the positive side effects of this approach, by the way, is the improvement of right foot technique, given the intensive use of the Bass Drum in most examples.
We can include these studies in our daily practice plan (even as a warm up) and quickly see huge improvements in the precision and effortlessness of our coordination skills.
Related resources:
‘Coordination & Independence’ – Altitude Drumming – Volume 4
‘Drum Technique Booster – The Masters’ Approach’
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