Lesson Overview: Practice Tips and Concepts
Mark explains lays down some fundamentals on how to get the most out of your practice time.
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Exercise #1: Rebound 8's
Learn to make the drum work FOR you instead of AGAINST you with the rebound stroke! Mark demonstrates this essential stroke style and gives tips for working on using the fingers to increase your speed. |
Exercise #2: Stick Control
Stone's Stick Control for the Snare Drummer has been around forever - and for good reason! It's simply the most effective way of gaining control over the sticks. In this exercise, Mark discusses the fundamentals of achieving a consistent sound from hand to hand. |
Exercise #3: Double Strokes
Developing a quick, relaxed double stroke technique with the wrists is essential for playing double stroke rolls with a quality sound. Learn the basics playing a double wrist motion with this simple exercise – then expand it by learning to use the fingers! |
Exercise #4: Extended Doubles
Taking Exercise #3 further, Mark shows you a few more techniques which increase your wrist and finger strength and flexibility. |
Exercise #5: Mr. Freeze
The "controlled stroke" is one of the most important strokes to master when playing the rudiments – but, many have failed because they've learned it improperly. Mark demonstrates how fulcrum pressure can be adjusted to your particular style, whether it's marching drumline or jazz drumset. |
Exercise #6: Duple/Triple Bucks
Expanding on the controlled stroke concept. For the intermediate player, Mark touches on how the Moeller stroke can be employed to add speed to basic accent/tap exercises. |
Exercise #7: 16th Note Timing
Learn 4 common 16th note rhythm patterns, as well as the "right hand lead" system of sticking with this exercise. For intermediate–advanced players, take it "off the left" or alternate it! Mark explains... |
Exercise #8: 1&1/2&2 Rolls
After you've built relaxed double stroke at a pretty fast tempo, there becomes a point where the stick actually begins to BOUNCE instead of continuing to play two distinct strokes. Mark explains how to use the wrist and fingers in this roll exercise to increase the QUALITY of your roll sound. |
Exercise #9: Accented 16ths
An intermediate step between playing the duple bucks (as in exercise #6) and Alternating Accents (as in exercise #8). Great for the beginner to learn to gain consistency over the sound of the inner beats. |
Exercise #10: Alternating Accents
Now you can apply the two height concept to accent patterns that move from hand to hand. This is an especially good exercise for players who have not developed control over accented triplet patterns. |
Exercise #11: Flam Prep
A great exercise for isolating the grace note height on flams. If you've never mastered the art of playing a good sounding flam, then this exercise is for you! |
Exercise #12: Flam Control
If playing alternating flams makes you look like a chicken trying to fly, then this exercise will help. Using the duple bucks exercise you've learned earlier, Mark explains how to control the placement of the grace note and primary stroke on the alternating flam rudiment. |
Exercise #13: Diddle Isolation
Get control over isolated diddle (or "drag") patterns in duple time. Great for learning to play difficult drag and roll patterns. |
Exercise #14: Triplet Diddle
Now applying the diddle isolation concept to triple time. This is much more difficult and will really test your ability to control single and double diddle combinations. |
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