instant improvement with hands. I've been working on stick control for over a 2 months now. The minute i limited the stick movement with one stick over the other... Boom! It started to make sense and sounds 10X better.
I'm glad I only saw this in my fifties after I've quit drumming. If I saw it in my twenties then I would have ignored it, then by now I would feel guilt as well as regret for not being better.
This is one of your best videos thus far, Dimitri. So much practical wisdom contained within. I will definitely be revisiting this periodically as a self-check.
Wow...what a great, extremely informative video.. im hooked now on your lessons...you're a great teacher...thank you very much for sharing your knowledge..i wish i had your lessons decades ago!!
During the entire video I've just had flashbacks of my confusion and struggle as to why some of playing was either sloppy or sometimes clean sometimes bit off. I felt called out on every part. Thank you for the video, appreciated.
@@DimitriFantini I prefer it that way. This way I won't forget and I'll know what to do. Will be rewatching the video from now on. Once again, great work.
I'm a complete and absolute 43 years old drumming beginner and I've had the privilege to spend 4 days with Kai Hahto, took some fundamentals lessons from him: body position, kit set-up, hands and feet motion, joints, stick travel and many many more. He even taught me how to read sheet notations. Watching these vids feels like going through some of his classes all over again. Great stuff!
The - syllables, words, grammar - analogy is a spot on nod to how singers have to manage diction before we can even start changing technique, even with songs in English! 👍 love it - but the '99% of drummers skip these 20 minutes' is a great sell for Tai Chi speed is my fav fortune cookie wisdom in a video full of great insights.
One thing I have changed is the 90* degrees setup with my feet. Now, I sit down on my throne and let my legs dictate where I should put my bass drum. I now have the BD on kind of a 45 angle and then use the Tom mounts to build around me.
Really great video, just goes to show why the fundamentals are so, so important. One more thing I would add is to focus on your balance. It wasn't until I've been playing drums for more than 10 years that I realized how much I was leaning over and that affects a huge amount of stuff, especially your fluidity and coordination between the limbs.
ha! Last weekend Alex and I (one of our drum hub instructors) were testing our speed limit and at 16ths at 150 (one handed) we could do it for about 9 notes in a row before it fell apart… but just barely 😂
Thanks so much for letting us see this outside of a paywall. Genuinely have left shoulder pain from bad technique and I'm on the road to fixing it. These videos are such a helpful resource.
Hey Dimitri! Fan of your videos and fellow drum teacher here, wanted to say thanks for all your insight and content. I just had a quick question about your technique when playing (most noticeably) double or rebound strokes. I noticed that you tend to hold the stick in the air above the pad or drum when it's inactive (so, for example when the right stick takes a break and the left stick plays its rebound strokes), and when it's time to play, it drops from that position rather than having an upstroke beforehand. I wanted to ask if there's an advantage to this that I'm not seeing, as I always teach my students (and adopt in my own playing) that the way we deliver the upstroke is arguably more crucial in clean, loose playing than the downstroke, especially in that initial moment in a grouping of notes. I can see that it maybe encourages you to really get the most out of the stick's response off the drum, but surely it's advantageous to provide a bit of kinetic energy to the stick before hand? And I find that holding the sticks in the air requires much more tension in the arm and elbow to keep it static, rather than drop it to a point just above the drum (the ground floor of the hotel, as I call it!) Would be really grateful for your response if you have the time! Many thanks, take good care Michael
hey! great questions and observations! so first thing, you're always holding the stick up in the air a little bit no? Otherwise you're touching the drum and mucking things up, making extra noises, muting the sound unintentionally... you want to be as relaxed as possible when in a "resting but holding the sticks in the air" position. There are very good reasons why you want to move the sticks down and not lift them up first and that's explained here: ruclips.net/video/kRxx_0a50dk/видео.html - there are LOADS of exceptions to this, and especially when actually performing you'll be lifting the sticks to various heights all the time to get the dynamics and phrases you want. But watch that video and it'll explain the "down only" movement and it's use as a practice tool. It will get your dynamics and accents 10x more consistent and intentional!
I've been playing and practicing for 20 years, I graduated from a BA in drums performance and I've been constantly looking to get better and this lessons are extremely useful for every level, to have a solid and professional foundation, correct some gaps on your playing, teaching this to students or someone who's been in a Drumming hiatus looking to get back on the drums 👌🏻👏🏻
Bro your videos are so goooooood, can I ask u do you edit them yourself? If so have you ever done a video on your process? Killer stuff man, so top notch
@@DimitriFantini Hey no problem at all, I know its hard to get a second response but who do u use for editing, I'd love to know. Thanks soooo much for your content, you are one of the real ones for sure dude.
In Drum Corp we called it the ballerina attack. Start the note from near the drum head an eight note before the down stroke. Same start, in tempo, gives you the same motion and the same motion gives you the same sound.
I like your video and we should all think about how we can play a little more efficiently but fundamentally, I have to disagree with some of your content. Drumming isn’t a science, there are no rules…if you want to hit different parts of a drum, do it. If you want to drum in certain style, do it. You don’t have to be OCD when hitting a drum - as long as you play with groove and where necessary ‘in time’, just have fun. If drums were intended to sound the same each hit, everyone would be playing e-kits. Drums are organic, natural, the oldest instrument known to man. Don’t get drawn into uber-efficient, robotic drumming….you’re a human, play with a smile, hit each drum anywhere you want where it calls for it…experiment with different sounds, tune up with different tensions, try different sticks, hit the rims, stands and anything else you wouldn’t normally, be your own drummer and don’t get too bogged down into what’s right and wrong,,,,,, That said, if you’re a pro (which most of us aren’t), you might want to consider some of these techniques….now then - 1,2,3,4………
I agree with you, and I’m not sure I said to play like a robot! I teach my students to develop total control and accuracy (being able to get the same sound every time) in order to be expressive with INTENTION. If you watch me perform you’ll see I play all over the snare and rims all the time - shallow rimshots are my favorite thing! If you want to be deeply expressive you first should get to know every possible articulation deeply, only then can you choose your articulation on command, subconsciously, instantaneously, with accuracy and feeling.
Playing closed handed but positioning your hands so they don't cross over is also a mistake. It's ignoring a branch in the tech tree that improves your hand dexterity and coordination generally, and once you've mastered it, has zero drawbacks. There's something similar with setting your surfaces up in a way where everything is a bit *too* ergonomic and you don't need to work very hard. First, that's rarely without drawbacks (eg. an elevated rack tom might be harder to reach from the snare, but also facilitates crossovers to the floor tom), but more importantly, it's building a reliance so you will not become efficient at making very large movements between surfaces. Lastly, I disagree somewhere around the middle, where paradiddlediddles are being used as an example of needing to "stick with it and not immediately move on after you reach a tempo for the first time." That's partially correct, but can be interpreted in a bad way. Single mindedly throwing yourself at one thing until it is "mastered" is surefire way to run into roadblocks. For the things advanced players are practicing, a straight line is rarely the shortest path. Rather, you should keep coming back to the thing while interleaving it with a lot of other things. And you shouldn't just be pushing speed 100% of the time either. You should practice at a wide range of tempos, and sometimes deliberately slowly. Those points aside, this was a really good video.
Mistake 2 fix is really strange and inefficient. If it helps people, great…but to accomplish the same thing much faster you can simply play single stroke roll, watch where the tips of sticks are at the crest of the strokes and make them match. Also…you could just…yknow…use your ears and listen 😂
Sometimes people need to train their ears first, in order to use their ears as the measurement. This exercise makes a HUGE difference in consistency for every student I’ve ever shared it with. but if you’re already where you want to be it won’t do much more for you 👊
These refer to the angle of the hand in Matched Grip. French grip puts the thumbs on top of the stick (as you would see a timpani player) and is particularly effective for finger control. German grip has the palm facing down and is the most natural position for playing with your wrist. American grip is in the middle of the other two. There’s a lot of info on these all over the internet but if you want a very deep dive on hand technique Jojo Mayer’s “Secret weapons for the modern drummer” is still the most in detail video I have seen to date. Have fun and keep on drumming! 👋
How do you have a name with snare drum in it and you don't know this? Is this a joke? Don't you Google things before you make comments? Thank you Dimitri for your excellent video.
Nope, there is German, American, and French grip. Those three are basically types of match grips. With German, the wrists are completely turned over. It's most commonly used to play snare drum, and when used, the arms are pushed out very wide to accommodate for the angle. This grip generates the most power compared to the others but it kind of restricts finger movement. For French Grip the thumb is on top, and most commonly used to play the timpani or the ride cymbal especially for jazz. It has the most finger movement for more delicate hits like ghost notes but not super powerful. American Grip sits at an angle between the two so it fuses both
instant improvement with hands. I've been working on stick control for over a 2 months now. The minute i limited the stick movement with one stick over the other... Boom! It started to make sense and sounds 10X better.
You got this!
This is a MASTERCLASS! So much information packed in a well constructed and entertaining video. Incredible work
Thank you so much for your kind words!!! ♥️
Why did it feel like you were talking specifically to me the entire video? It's like you can see into my soul and hear my innermost pain… 😂
Haha glad it hit home 😂
He knows.
He speaks to all of us who have this problem too
I'm glad I only saw this in my fifties after I've quit drumming. If I saw it in my twenties then I would have ignored it, then by now I would feel guilt as well as regret for not being better.
Excellent information. Great presentation. Thanks!
ah I really appreciate that, thank you!
This is one of your best videos thus far, Dimitri. So much practical wisdom contained within. I will definitely be revisiting this periodically as a self-check.
Ah thank you so much for saying so!!
Wow...what a great, extremely informative video..
im hooked now on your lessons...you're a great teacher...thank you very much for sharing your knowledge..i
wish i had your lessons decades ago!!
glad to have you here Darrell!
Thanks!
Thank you friend!! 🙏
During the entire video I've just had flashbacks of my confusion and struggle as to why some of playing was either sloppy or sometimes clean sometimes bit off. I felt called out on every part.
Thank you for the video, appreciated.
hope I wasn't too harsh on ya! haha
@@DimitriFantini I prefer it that way. This way I won't forget and I'll know what to do.
Will be rewatching the video from now on.
Once again, great work.
Carry on!! 👊
the best drum lesson i ever watched, thank you.
Bedankt
thank you!
I'm a complete and absolute 43 years old drumming beginner and I've had the privilege to spend 4 days with Kai Hahto, took some fundamentals lessons from him: body position, kit set-up, hands and feet motion, joints, stick travel and many many more. He even taught me how to read sheet notations. Watching these vids feels like going through some of his classes all over again. Great stuff!
I'm really glad to hear they are helping, thanks!
I started at 43 as well! I'm three years deep and I've gotten so much from Dimitri as a coach. Good luck dude!
@@MrIlikecarrots hi!!!!
@@DimitriFantini haha hey it's me your gator buddy lol
Hey! 42 year old complete beginner here! Totally overwhelmed! 😅😂
The - syllables, words, grammar - analogy is a spot on nod to how singers have to manage diction before we can even start changing technique, even with songs in English! 👍 love it - but the '99% of drummers skip these 20 minutes' is a great sell for Tai Chi speed is my fav fortune cookie wisdom in a video full of great insights.
One thing I have changed is the 90* degrees setup with my feet. Now, I sit down on my throne and let my legs dictate where I should put my bass drum. I now have the BD on kind of a 45 angle and then use the Tom mounts to build around me.
Wow, its like im getting a free $500 berkleys lesson. Thks. The last two lessons really nafe me think and sound fantastic !
thanks a lot!
Really great video, just goes to show why the fundamentals are so, so important. One more thing I would add is to focus on your balance. It wasn't until I've been playing drums for more than 10 years that I realized how much I was leaning over and that affects a huge amount of stuff, especially your fluidity and coordination between the limbs.
yes absolutely!
At 2:06 you are ripping at 200bpm! I max out at 180bpm. You got my full attention! Whew... Will provide update in a month from now.
ha! Last weekend Alex and I (one of our drum hub instructors) were testing our speed limit and at 16ths at 150 (one handed) we could do it for about 9 notes in a row before it fell apart… but just barely 😂
I enjoy your teaching style. Just subscribed, thanks!
Thanks a lot 🙏 and welcome aboard!
Yup same here
Great info, you could apply these ideas to most any instrument I think. Great work.
Thanks so much for letting us see this outside of a paywall.
Genuinely have left shoulder pain from bad technique and I'm on the road to fixing it. These videos are such a helpful resource.
Really good video, i appreciate it a lot ❤❤❤
Thanks a lot!! 🙏🙏
Thanks for sharing this! Exactly what I needed!
You got it!
very good video
Appreciate it!
This is a really good video
thank you so so much!
Hey Dimitri!
Fan of your videos and fellow drum teacher here, wanted to say thanks for all your insight and content. I just had a quick question about your technique when playing (most noticeably) double or rebound strokes. I noticed that you tend to hold the stick in the air above the pad or drum when it's inactive (so, for example when the right stick takes a break and the left stick plays its rebound strokes), and when it's time to play, it drops from that position rather than having an upstroke beforehand.
I wanted to ask if there's an advantage to this that I'm not seeing, as I always teach my students (and adopt in my own playing) that the way we deliver the upstroke is arguably more crucial in clean, loose playing than the downstroke, especially in that initial moment in a grouping of notes. I can see that it maybe encourages you to really get the most out of the stick's response off the drum, but surely it's advantageous to provide a bit of kinetic energy to the stick before hand? And I find that holding the sticks in the air requires much more tension in the arm and elbow to keep it static, rather than drop it to a point just above the drum (the ground floor of the hotel, as I call it!)
Would be really grateful for your response if you have the time! Many thanks, take good care
Michael
hey! great questions and observations!
so first thing, you're always holding the stick up in the air a little bit no? Otherwise you're touching the drum and mucking things up, making extra noises, muting the sound unintentionally... you want to be as relaxed as possible when in a "resting but holding the sticks in the air" position.
There are very good reasons why you want to move the sticks down and not lift them up first and that's explained here: ruclips.net/video/kRxx_0a50dk/видео.html - there are LOADS of exceptions to this, and especially when actually performing you'll be lifting the sticks to various heights all the time to get the dynamics and phrases you want. But watch that video and it'll explain the "down only" movement and it's use as a practice tool. It will get your dynamics and accents 10x more consistent and intentional!
very cool thanks a lot for all the advise and perspective! :)
Glad it was helpful!
I've been playing and practicing for 20 years, I graduated from a BA in drums performance and I've been constantly looking to get better and this lessons are extremely useful for every level, to have a solid and professional foundation, correct some gaps on your playing, teaching this to students or someone who's been in a Drumming hiatus looking to get back on the drums 👌🏻👏🏻
Thank you so much! Really appreciate the kind words!
Bro your videos are so goooooood, can I ask u do you edit them yourself? If so have you ever done a video on your process? Killer stuff man, so top notch
thank you! I used to edit myself but I have editors helping me now!
@@DimitriFantini Hey no problem at all, I know its hard to get a second response but who do u use for editing, I'd love to know. Thanks soooo much for your content, you are one of the real ones for sure dude.
shoot me an email and I'll connect you
@@DimitriFantini sick man, I really appreciate it my friend.
In Drum Corp we called it the ballerina attack. Start the note from near the drum head an eight note before the down stroke. Same start, in tempo, gives you the same motion and the same motion gives you the same sound.
consistent motions = consistent sound
yea exactly what I teach! Good stuff 👊
Hey mam what are you using to muffle your snare drum?
This is gold
i like to windmill from the shoulder like Travis barker XD
That MGS referrence killed me!
haha thank you!
4:58 NGL that evokes early psychedelic pop and could be a style choice.
Your edits are sick and fun to watch.
thank you!!!
Chapters please
i wish i would have seen this 15 years ago
💯🎶🥁🤘
Yeah revolver paradiddle
COOL😃
Thank you!!
Can you also film yourself slowmo with smart phone, playing at normal speed to see your mistakes
Yes, highly recommend you try it!
Metal Gear😊😊
This vid is packed with amazing advice! essential to get the bare bones of every single thing we do. Just subscribed 🫡
Awesome! Thank you!
I like your video and we should all think about how we can play a little more efficiently but fundamentally, I have to disagree with some of your content. Drumming isn’t a science, there are no rules…if you want to hit different parts of a drum, do it. If you want to drum in certain style, do it. You don’t have to be OCD when hitting a drum - as long as you play with groove and where necessary ‘in time’, just have fun. If drums were intended to sound the same each hit, everyone would be playing e-kits. Drums are organic, natural, the oldest instrument known to man. Don’t get drawn into uber-efficient, robotic drumming….you’re a human, play with a smile, hit each drum anywhere you want where it calls for it…experiment with different sounds, tune up with different tensions, try different sticks, hit the rims, stands and anything else you wouldn’t normally, be your own drummer and don’t get too bogged down into what’s right and wrong,,,,,,
That said, if you’re a pro (which most of us aren’t), you might want to consider some of these techniques….now then - 1,2,3,4………
I agree with you, and I’m not sure I said to play like a robot!
I teach my students to develop total control and accuracy (being able to get the same sound every time) in order to be expressive with INTENTION. If you watch me perform you’ll see I play all over the snare and rims all the time - shallow rimshots are my favorite thing!
If you want to be deeply expressive you first should get to know every possible articulation deeply, only then can you choose your articulation on command, subconsciously, instantaneously, with accuracy and feeling.
bro is Gabe Helguera
I feel like even after 10 years of drumming, my sticks slowly slide away from my while I play
Totally get it. Been there!
Playing closed handed but positioning your hands so they don't cross over is also a mistake. It's ignoring a branch in the tech tree that improves your hand dexterity and coordination generally, and once you've mastered it, has zero drawbacks. There's something similar with setting your surfaces up in a way where everything is a bit *too* ergonomic and you don't need to work very hard. First, that's rarely without drawbacks (eg. an elevated rack tom might be harder to reach from the snare, but also facilitates crossovers to the floor tom), but more importantly, it's building a reliance so you will not become efficient at making very large movements between surfaces.
Lastly, I disagree somewhere around the middle, where paradiddlediddles are being used as an example of needing to "stick with it and not immediately move on after you reach a tempo for the first time." That's partially correct, but can be interpreted in a bad way. Single mindedly throwing yourself at one thing until it is "mastered" is surefire way to run into roadblocks. For the things advanced players are practicing, a straight line is rarely the shortest path. Rather, you should keep coming back to the thing while interleaving it with a lot of other things. And you shouldn't just be pushing speed 100% of the time either. You should practice at a wide range of tempos, and sometimes deliberately slowly.
Those points aside, this was a really good video.
Mistake 2 fix is really strange and inefficient. If it helps people, great…but to accomplish the same thing much faster you can simply play single stroke roll, watch where the tips of sticks are at the crest of the strokes and make them match.
Also…you could just…yknow…use your ears and listen 😂
Sometimes people need to train their ears first, in order to use their ears as the measurement. This exercise makes a HUGE difference in consistency for every student I’ve ever shared it with.
but if you’re already where you want to be it won’t do much more for you 👊
There's only matched or traditional grip.. what are you on about German/American?? 😂
These refer to the angle of the hand in Matched Grip. French grip puts the thumbs on top of the stick (as you would see a timpani player) and is particularly effective for finger control. German grip has the palm facing down and is the most natural position for playing with your wrist. American grip is in the middle of the other two. There’s a lot of info on these all over the internet but if you want a very deep dive on hand technique Jojo Mayer’s “Secret weapons for the modern drummer” is still the most in detail video I have seen to date. Have fun and keep on drumming! 👋
How do you have a name with snare drum in it and you don't know this? Is this a joke? Don't you Google things before you make comments?
Thank you Dimitri for your excellent video.
Nope, there is German, American, and French grip. Those three are basically types of match grips. With German, the wrists are completely turned over. It's most commonly used to play snare drum, and when used, the arms are pushed out very wide to accommodate for the angle. This grip generates the most power compared to the others but it kind of restricts finger movement. For French Grip the thumb is on top, and most commonly used to play the timpani or the ride cymbal especially for jazz. It has the most finger movement for more delicate hits like ghost notes but not super powerful. American Grip sits at an angle between the two so it fuses both
LOL
Fibessnare, google b4 u comment
when you are talking you should mute the drums