How To Hold A Drumstick

The most important thing when you’re figuring out how to hold a drumstick is deciding where to hold it. Generally about a third of a way up the stick is the best place. That’s often called the fulcrum point, it’s actually the balance point where the stick will achieve the largest amount of rebound and you’ll be able to get the most speed and relaxed motion off it. If you hold the stick too far back you kill all the rebound and if you hold the stick too far forward, the weight falls to the back of the stick. So it’s really important to figure out where your fulcrum point is. There are different approaches to this, some people hold it right up with the first two fingers and some people hold it back on the second finger, which is becoming more popular these days. Either way, the rest of the finger should wrap around the drum stick, so that each crease falls around the stick. The most important thing is to get a sense of rebound from your stick, so one of the best things you can work on is actually what is known as a full stroke or a free stroke. Hold it lightly and maintain a bit of openness, you don’t want to clamp down, let the stick come back up and let nature take its course. Obviously we have two hands so you want to spend some time working on the other hand as well with the same principle. I tend to hold it with the first three fingers, with it balanced slightly on the second one with the rest of my fingers wrapped around, and that’s your fulcrum point.

There are a few different types of strokes we can use. One would be the full stroke, there’s also a down stroke where we start from higher and let the stick hit the drum and don’t let it rebound. You only let it come up maybe about an inch. So you’ve got your free stroke, then your full stroke and then your down stroke. If you play these in succession you’ll get two different volumes. A tap stroke is when you start from a low height and bring it back to the same height again. So here we have the three different strokes again. We have the full stroke, the down stroke and the tap stroke. Which leaves us with one more which is an up stroke. So we’re starting at a low height and bringing the stick back up. By doing this we achieve three different dynamic levels; by dynamic levels I mean different volumes. Right so, here we have this. There are of course different approaches and there are different ways to do it, this is just what works for me. So how do we put this into the context of playing on a drum kit. I’ll start off on the hi hat, a lot of the time I would use full strokes on the hi hat. The most important thing is that we have a free range of motion and that you remain relaxed. By squeezing the stick too tight and sometimes you will see that you clamp the stick too tight up here, you’re actually getting really tense and the stick won’t move freely if you do that. Which makes it harder to play faster and quieter.