On March 27, 2010, the Northern California Band Association (NCBA) held championships at Foothill High School in Pleasanton, CA.

And I was pissed for much of the day.

I always let my drumlines know that, at least for me, drumline isn’t just about drumming. It’s about class and responsibility, amongst other things. If a drumline has no class, if they act like rude, obnoxious idiots, I pretty much refuse to watch them. This falls in line with a philosophy I spout to every group–drumline or otherwise–I teach:

Make people want to watch you without playing a single note.

I think this is incredibly important. A musician should prove to be reliable, professional, and courteous when dealing with other musicians and his or her audience. Those traits can go a long way in both getting work and gaining a bigger audience. Acting rudely is not impressive, whereas acting with grace is impressive. Why? The former leaves a bad impression while the latter leaves a good impression. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately, at the Foothill show (no fault of Foothill, mind you), I contended with rude instructors and drumlines for much of the day.

Let’s take the parking lot, for example. If there’s plenty of room in the parking lot, don’t set up a mere yard or two away from another drumline if they were in that spot first! I cannot tell you how many times that has happened to my group this season, and from the same drumline, too. Yes, parking lot space can be tight, but unless you absolutely have to, you should set up in as isolated a spot as possible. As space gets tighter, then I understand a close setup, but in my experience space rarely gets so tight that extremely close proximity is necessary. Parking lots are already plenty loud without having an ensemble within arm’s reach playing right next to another. It’s rude. And rude instructors are responsible for this.

If you’re a drumline member, don’t walk around wearing group apparel or uniform, or handling your equipment, screaming and shouting like a two-year-old, and don’t cuss. Save that for the bus. Save that for the after party. Just don’t do it smack dab in the middle of the parking lot where everyone else can see you. Don’t do it when walking from one place to another: the lot to the competition area; the bus to the warm-up area. It shows a lack of class and disrespect for both the group and the people involved in helping the group operate. In the case of a school, it’s also disrespectful to the school.

Don’t walk through another drumline’s equipment or rehearsal area, especially when things are clearly sectioned off. For instance, if a drumline has laid out their floor (large tarp used for performing indoor shows), don’t walk on it! This has happened to my drumlines as well as others. It’s happened to colorguards. I heard that, during the Foothill show, even though the announcer asked the audience not to walk across the floor of the colorguard setting up for their performance, people did anyway, including a performing member from another group who allegedly ran across the floor to get to the other side of the gym. This is extremely disrespectful. It shows a lack of acknowledgment of another group’s space and the fact that they are working. In addition, walking through someone else’s equipment is cause for accidental damage.

It is the instructors that let this happen, either by allowing it, causing it, or not instilling in their members a sense of class and respect. Sometimes–maybe more often than not–it’s all three. And this is sad because these are the instructors that set the bad example for their members, members who may want to go on to become instructors themselves someday. It is these instructors that teach their members how to lead by their disrespectful example. It is these instructors that cause future instructors to teach others how to act in the same manner.

Everyone makes mistakes. I have made mistakes. In fact, at Foothill, the rudeness got to me and I vocalized my discontent to no one in particular (let’s leave it at that). I have apologized for that. But when instructors and drumlines make the same mistakes over and over, they can no longer be labeled mistakes. At that point, it’s just habit. I can forgive mistakes. I cannot forgive bad habits.

It makes me sad that my group, and a few others, are subjected to rudeness and a lack of class and respect because other drumlines care more about the drumming aspect of the activity and not the other aspects. This activity is more than that, and the lessons learned in this activity carry over to other aspects of life. For example, we often hear testimony of drum corps alumni that say they learned to work hard because of drum corps. But there are other lessons to be taught by instructors and learned by members. Working hard is a great trait, but I’m not sure many people want a hard working ass unless they need one to pull a carriage.

I’ve been teaching quite a few younger students lately. Anyone with experience teaching younger drum students has run into the problem of mashing the sticks into the pad or drum. It’s a natural problem for young students; it’s natural for someone to pick up drum sticks for the first time and then bang and mash the sticks into the surface because, for all they know, drumming is just about hitting stuff.

Even older, more experienced drummers also suffer from this problem, mostly drum set players. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a drum set player “deadstick” his or her stick against the snare while playing backbeats. I’m not sure why. Is it because they’re trying to hit really hard? Is it plain lack of stick control? Or perhaps they just never learned and don’t really care all that much about how physically detrimental deadsticking is (can’t they feel the shock being absorbed by their hands and arms?) and how bad it sounds.

Of course, with technology, you can get a good sound out of bad playing, but that’s another post.

One method I use to solve the problem of mashing the sticks into the head is to use a basketball analogy. When a person dribbles a basketball, he or she pushes the ball towards the ground with a downward gesture of the hand. As the ball leaves the hand and hits the ground, it comes back up and meets the hand again. The hand allows the ball to bounce to a certain height before repeating the dribbling process.

No one ever dribbled a basketball successfully by mashing the ball into the ground, right?

It’s the same with a drumstick. As the stick hits the head, the stick will want to bounce back up. Keeping the basketball analogy in mind, I encourage my mashing students to get the stick off of the head right after impact. And it works.

The only problem with this method is that, in marching percussion, we freeze sticks in playing position. For my lines, this means that the bead rests one inch above the surface. This height will differ depending on the instructor. I, personally, also teach the concept of playing position to my drum set students because it promotes downstroke-oriented playing, it’s comfortable, and it readies them for marching percussion should they choose to go that path.

So, when students attempt to follow the basketball analogy, they often pull their sticks up higher than playing position. This is fine for playing consecutive notes like a string of 8th notes on a single hand or hand-to-hand 16th notes where the hands play continuously, but not for releases or tap-to-accent patterns where stopping the stick in playing position is the desired result.

Despite this problem, I consider this to be an acceptable way to begin teaching mashing students how not to mash. Once the student gets rid of the habit of mashing their sticks into the head, I can then concentrate on getting them to freeze their sticks in playing position. The more important thing with mashing students is to achieve a single sound from their attacks instead of the buzz that results from mashing.

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Has it really been that long since I posted last? Shame.

As Obi Wan Kenobi told Luke in Return of the Jedi, “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”

An educated drummer will probably know what is meant when a drum teacher says, “Let the bounce do the work,” or, “Let the rebound do the work.” I know I do. However, as much as I hate to say “never”, I’m pretty sure that I will never say either one of these phrases.

(Time will tell if that declaration will come back to haunt me)

I really don’t like the notion that the bounce does the work, because it implies that the sticks will deliver the rhythms we want to play simply by letting it bounce on the drum head. Now, I know, and the educated drummer will know, that isn’t the case – that we actually control the bounce so that the rhythms we want to play are properly executed.

So, why don’t we say that?

In sticking with my philosophy of speaking universal truths, and having worked with plenty of young drummers, I know the importance of saying what I mean. We do not let the bounce do the work.

I tell my students that we allow the rebound to assist us. We, the drummer, do the work, but on a bouncy surface we allow the rebound to alleviate some of the work we do and that we are always playing every beat. Explaining the concept of bounce to the young drummer in this manner lets them know that they are in control of their sticks and how they react to the drumming surface. This way, as they learn how to play different things, breaking them down so they learn to place every beat, they learn how to control the bounce. As they get faster, build dexterity, and build muscle, they will increase their control of the rebound provided they also continue to focus on relaxing and staying loose while they play.

Additionally, as they play on different surfaces, they will learn how to adapt to the type of rebound. Many drummers have played on various surfaces, from loosely tuned heads with very little response to Kevlar heads that are very, very bouncy. Each type of surface will respond differently, so being able to precisely articulate rhythms depends on the amount of control we have over our sticks. If we’re not able to play rhythms on an ill-responsive head with the same kind of accuracy as a bouncy head, then what is the point of relying on bounce, letting it “do the work”? Not to mention the fact that drummers will play on all sorts of percussion instruments: there are snares and toms and their respective heads, as well as cymbals and percussion toys, each having their own surface qualities and response types. We need to be able to articulate accurately on all of those surfaces.

I demonstrate this concept by playing clear double-stroke rolls on curtains or my lap, both of which have little to no rebound (my lap, having muscles, have a little bit of response, you know). I then qualify this statement by letting my students know that they will probably never have to perform on a curtain or their laps, but that’s the type of control they need to have over their sticks. That way, when they play on drum, they can adapt, loosen up, and let the rebound assist them so they don’t have to do as much work.

Many young drummers that try to bounce everything out let their sticks flop onto the head as they play diddles, flams, etc. This always results in badly played rhythms because what they’re doing is trying to play the sticking patterns, the rudiments, instead of playing the actual rhythms.

It is very important to have a relaxed grip on the stick. This way, when playing on a bouncy surface, we can guide the stick at any speed, utilizing whatever the amount of response the surface gives us. Conversely, if we are relaxed, we can learn to manipulate the stick on a less bouncy surface by using more muscle but still with a relaxed grip. We can let our hands adapt to the rebound, or lack thereof, by using more or less muscle as necessary while being relaxed at any speed.

This is the manner in which I teach my drummers stick control. We do not rely on the bounce. We do not let the rebound do the work for us. We are always in control, doing the work but allowing the rebound to assist us. If our sticks and the rebound could talk, they would be calling us “Master”.

And that, young Jedi, is my point of view.

I’ve tried writing something about this topic 4 or 5 times by now. It’s a tricky subject and one I think about a lot. After all, the goal is to pass on knowledge and wisdom to the students, right? As an added bonus, teaching helps one to understand and perform his or her craft better. I’m constantly analyzing my craft(s) and the ways I can convey concepts to my students. I want them to understand what I’m talking about, and that means I have to understand various teaching methods as well as the nuances of the craft itself.

Now, think about the above generalization. Think about that and then ask yourself, “If I call myself a teacher, am I really teaching?”

Allow me to be cut and dry here.

There’s teaching, teching, and instructing. Which one do you do by default?

Instructing is the base of all three categories. Quite simply, an instructor tells someone what to do. Since this is a drum blog, after all, I’ll “Play that again.” “Go hold a roll.” “Clean up the flams.” This, of course, is drum-related (it’s a drum blog, you know), but you’ve seen the stereotype of a bad teacher on TV: “Open your books to page 94 and start reading to the end of the chapter. Do the questionnaire at the end.” In basic, basic instruction, you can certainly show someone how to do something. Demonstration, for example, is a form of instructing; by demonstrating a method and giving a play-by-play of what you’re doing is basic instruction. Instruction, however, doesn’t always have to contain information other than instructions of what needs to be done.

Teching is the step up. It includes instruction but also offers a bit more information. For me, teching deals with the issues and problems at hand. Techs address these issues, offering both instruction and advice, but generally the lessons given are not global. That is, the lessons aren’t related to other, similar topics both inside and outside of the craft. For example, a tech will help the student fix an accented passage in a piece of music by may not generalize the concepts of playing accents so that the fix can be applied to other, similar situations.

Now, instructing and teching aren’t bad things. In fact, in the medium of competitive drumline, you get a lot of instruction and teching that are very narrow in focus, and depending on the time restraints, sometimes you just have to give instruction and hope that the students trust you know what you’re doing.

The problem is, I often see instructors and techs that default to these methods and still call themselves teachers.

Teaching is the final step up. It includes both teching and instructing, but whenever possible the lessons pertain to both the immediate issue and is also relatable on a global scale. Teachers will take narrowly focused information and offer to their students a way to apply it to other, similar situations. Fixing an accented roll in a passage of music can also have general drumming applications. There are analogous situations, too. I can’t count the number of times I’ve related the discipline of being in a drumline to becoming a disciplined student in school, or how respectful presentation learned in drumline is related to showing up to a job interview.

Global lessons lead to this point: a teacher should be imparting wisdom to the student, and that includes giving the tools to the student so that they will eventually be able to go out and teach themselves different things.

Having said all this, ask yourself again, “Am I a teacher?” If you call yourself a teacher, but the answer, according to what I’ve laid out here, is, “no,” then perhaps you should re-evaluate how you approach your students.

Last year, after a drumline rehearsal, one of the students was sitting on the floor practicing a piece of music. She wanted to audition for a snare spot pretty badly and her chances were incredibly slim. My friend, the caption head of this particular drumline, told her she basically had one chance to show him that she was worth giving a spot.

She’d asked me if I could help her after rehearsal sometime, so there I sat, watching her, knowing that I would soon interject with my brand of help.

She played through the piece, blundering rhythms and phrases here, there, and almost everywhere, got to the end, looked at the music, and before she could start again, I pounced.

I said something to the effect of, “I’m willing to bet that you’re going to start the piece over, right?”

She affirmed my suspicions.

I then asked, “I’m also willing to bet that that’s how you practice at home, too, right? You play through something and then, instead of working on the things you had trouble with, you play through the piece again, right?”

Another affirmation.

Not everyone practices this way, but I know that not all students have good practice habits. I very often tell drumlines that I work with to ask me or one of the other instructors if they have any questions about how to practice, and very rarely do I get asked. And then, when I see them at the next rehearsal without any sign of significant improvement, I have to wonder how these people are practicing.

Expanding on my last post, 5-Minute Hands, I figured it’d be a good idea to break down how someone might want to go about practicing so that those precious five minutes don’t go to waste.

First off, if you’re playing something and you don’t like it, take a mental note. If you want to finish what you’re playing, fine. If you want to stop and work on the thing you just took mental note of, fine. As long as you come back to your mental note, you’ve accomplished the first step:

1. Go back and fix the thing you don’t like!

If you’ve got a 16-bar passage that you’re trying to learn and you’re having trouble with bars 7 and 8, playing the entire piece over and over and over won’t help you iron out the difficulties with efficiency. Sure, with enough repetition, you may smooth out some of the kinks and be able to get through those difficult bars, but it will take a lot longer and your hands and head probably won’t understand them or play them as well as if you took the time to break them down. Figure out what it is you need to fix; Is your coordination wrong or off? Are you having trouble with the rhythms? Having trouble playing it up to tempo? Can’t play the rudiments required to play the phrase? Sound quality bad? If you have a problem to focus on, then you can attack it. This leads up to the second step:

2. Break it down!

After going back to your trouble spot, don’t just ram through the pattern. Once identifying what it is within the pattern or phrase you’re having trouble with, start by playing the passage slowly until you’re comfortable playing it, concentrating on fixing the problem(s) you’ve pinpointed. Once you’re comfortable, speed up the tempo.

3. Push it!

When speeding up the tempo of the pattern you’re breaking down, make sure to go past your comfort zone. Make sure when you speed it up, you utilize the correct techniques! Faster doesn’t mean get lazy. During faster tempos you will still want to use the same basic techniques as at the slower tempos, but perhaps with some adaptations (another article). In any case, everyone has a comfortable tempo they can play things at and pushing the tempo past that comfort zone makes you practice applying the things you’ve just worked on at a tempo you can’t play. If you’re working on a piece that needs to be played at a specified tempo, you will also want to speed up past that tempo. In either case, this will help you to eventually be able to play the pattern at faster tempos, which will benefit you in the long run. It also lets your body know what it’s like to play the pattern at this faster tempo with your current skills and what you might have to do to get the pattern playable at this speed – loosen up, put more or less pressure on the fulcrum, figure out how to make the basic techniques more comfortable to use when playing faster, etc. Plus, when you…

4. Slow it back down!

…to your comfort zone (or to the tempo at which the pattern or phrase is supposed to be played, depending on what you’re working on), you should notice how much easier it feels to play compared to the faster tempo. This is a great psychological and physical psyche-out. By comparison, things that are difficult suddenly don’t seem as hard, right? This also gives you a chance to relax your hands again after “stressing out” during the faster tempo (though you should have been attempting to relax as you increased the speed!).

5. It’s all about context!

Once you’ve become comfortable with the pattern or phrase you’ve just worked on, then you have to put it back into context. Take the measure or phrase before it to make sure you can make the transition. After a few reps, take the phrase before, the pattern or phrase you’ve just practiced, and the phrase after, making sure you can transition out of it. Not being able to make the transition means that you can play the pattern or phrase but only by itself, which is only half the battle as it is part of a larger whole. Do a few reps of this before going on to the next problem.

You might find that you have multiple problems with a single pattern or phrase, and that’s fine. You can choose to tackle all of the problems at once, if you’re experienced enough and can focus on several things at the same time, or you can tackle one at a time. The choice is yours, of course, as long as you find a way to actually focus on the problems and figure out a way to solve them. The method outlined here is a simple offering, and applies to most everything you learn how to play. If you find that taking extra steps or less steps works better for you, then great. Whatever will make you efficient. And yes, this method can be done in five minutes if you just pick one problem area to focus on.

The great thing about this method is that it’s applicable to anything you need to practice, whether it’s a four-bar phrase, two counts, or just a simple two-note coordination problem. For example, if you’re having trouble with single measure and, while breaking it down, find that you’re having trouble with a specific part of that measure, you can start the process over to work out the specifics of the problem within the larger passage. Have a paradiddle into two left one-handed flam accents into a flammed tap-seven? Is it the flam accents that are giving you trouble? Break down the left one-handed flam accents first, making sure you can play them comfortable, before taking the whole measure.

The method can be applied to matter how small or how great the problem. It can apply to a simple rudiment, an exercise, or a piece of music. It can apply to technique or musicality. It’s a universal method. And sticking to the method will help increase the efficiency in your practicing. As you get better and better as a drummer, you may find that each step takes less and less time because your experience and skill are lending a hand to your learning and working out new things.

Coming full circle, I remember trying to impress upon her the importance of good practicing. Since she was learning the music to audition for my friend, I thought it important to ask her: “Do you think he would rather see that you can get through the whole piece, mistakes and all, or do you think he wants to see that you’ve worked on the piece by playing what you can play well?”