I need help with my left hand! I'm studyin some paradiddles and rolls recently to improve it.. but it's gonna drive me mad! I feel my left just like a disabled! Comments please.. about how quickest I can get rid of this problem! remember I donot have a drum pad.. or a drum.. nothing! just pillows you know...








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this is a 1-year-drummer who seeks for his potential teachers:D

Good thats all you want. Practice taking your stick up as high as you can and bringing it down hard! As fast as you can. After its starts to burn count singles out until you get to 2 or 300. Do that once in the morning afternoon and night. Its tough but thats what i did and youll notice differences in about a week probably sooner. Its hard but remember after its already burning. Practice ghost notes alot to man that helps out so much to make it sound smooth.

Try these exercises:
http://www.billrotelladrumbeatings.com/Lefthand.htm
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Beat/8374/lefthand.htm

The key is persistence and patience. There's no instant or quick fix for left hand problems. Essentially you're trying to get your weak hand to a point that your right hand has been at for many years (since you were born)!

Also, do non-drum stuff with your left hand that you would normally do with your right - carry things, open doors, whatever you can think of to get some strength and dexterity into your left hand.








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Yamaha drums :: Meinl cymbals :: Pro-Mark drumsticks :: Aquarian heads

http://www.myspace.com/funkengrooven

This is a problem that almost all drummers have with their off hand. It's just not up to snuff with the dominant hand. With practice, it can be overcome. It takes patience. I agree with all said techniques above, and will add my own.

You have pillows. Great, nothing like a chop builder than no bounce. The first step is to make it your dominant hand for a while. for about a week or so, try to practice every you normally would, like a warm up or some technique drills, but start with Left hand lead. Make double sure that the correct grip is being used on your hands.

Alternate between double-stops (hitting both sticks at same time) and singles. Do 8 double-stops in 8th notes, then a measure of 16th notes, first starting on right, then starting on left. This is to develop a sense of comfort with both hands. You want to achieve no breaks in sound, and even notes all the way through. Vary the speeds and dynamics.

Invest in some stick weights. They do wonders to improve chops on any hand.

Enjoy the chop building.

Homki890








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Sway wrote:

Good thats all you want. Practice taking your stick up as high as you can and bringing it down hard! As fast as you can. After its starts to burn count singles out until you get to 2 or 300. Do that once in the morning afternoon and night. Its tough but thats what i did and youll notice differences in about a week probably sooner. Its hard but remember after its already burning. Practice ghost notes alot to man that helps out so much to make it sound smooth.

I did that and it works well. I do a 50 count (1 & 2 & 3 - R L R L R) 5 times a day. And its been about a week and a half, I've noticed a different. Not a Huge differnce. But band members and I are notcing a speed pick-up.








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When You're Left With Nothing, You Become Nothing.

just be a lefty for a while. dont go so far as to move your hi-hat to the left handed side but, start with ur left and focus on your left hand while you are doing fill ands exersises. also, to gain control with your hand use a surface that doesn't allow your sticks to bounce for example a pillow, it will help you go faster and gain control of you stick








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Black pearl 5 piece

Zildjian 14" Hi-Hat
Zildjain 16" Crash
Zildjian 18" Crash
Zildjian 20 " Ride

All of the above are great. I'll add one more. Play two measures of eighth notes with each hand alternating in turn. Start with the right hand and play...1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &|1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &| The key to this exercise is to not play faster with one hand than the other. If your non-dominate hand can only go so fast, then play that same speed with your dominate hand until the slower hand gets up to speed. When you get nice even strokes from both hands with no deviation, then add accents to help with deliberate hits & stick control. In the first measure, play accents on the down beats and the second measure play the accents on the &'s of the measure. Accented notes are in bold: |1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &|1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &| Remember, do this alternating hands. This is a great way to gage the two hands on speed, accuracy and endurance. Good luck!!!

One more thing I'll post that I always teach my students as well as less experienced drummers. When you do these exercises, make sure you give your hands/wrists/arms recovery time in between! Do not play for hours on end on all these exercises and not allow for your muscles any downtime. I understand wanting to get better quickly and applaud all musicians for their dedication to their craft. But if you want to be playing for a long time to come, give yourself proper technique and downtime. For instance, if you practice the exercise I gave earlier, play it for 5 minutes starting out and then give yourself a 5 minute break to recover from the rigorous exercise. As you get more experienced the longer endurance you'll have. The point is, do not play so much that you can't play anything the next day. If thats the way it is...back off the amount of time some. Also, while you are having your downtime, a great thing to do while you're resting is gently stretch your hands, wrists and arms. This will decrease any cramping or soreness from playing hard long hours. I emphatically give this advice out to everyone after I saw a fellow instructor's guitar student practice his fretting hand out of commission. He had serious hand & wrist issues and his parents ended up taking him to numerous doctors until they found someone who was oriented in music medicine to get him back on track. He wasn't able to touch his guitar for months. When he was finally cleared to play, he could only play for about 5 minutes each day to ease his hand back into action. Again, be careful to not overdo it!

Work on stick control exercies and also try this

RRRR LLLL , RRRR RRRR LLLL LLLL RRRR RRRR RRRR LLLL LLLL LLLL
RRRR RRRR RRRR RRRR LLLL LLLL. tHIS IS FROM JOE MORELLO IT'S CALLED THE sTONE KILLER FOCUS ON FINGERS AND PLAYING EVEN WITH A GOOD BOUNCE

My other suggestions is hit a real drum and get a qualified drum teacher....DT41

i good thing i try to do is play all the grooves u might practice both open handed and cross handed. so say your playing a funk groove keep the 8th notes with your right like normal but go slower than u kno you can go than transfer to open handed (left hand on hi hat right hand on snare) if youve only did cross itll feel wierd but once you master it your coordination and evenness will go up about 5000% at least from what ive seen








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SET - Tama rockstar
Cymbals
Sabian AA rock ride 21" medium crash 14 and 16 inchs rock hi hats 14 inchs
Sabian B8 crash ride 18 inchs
Hardware
Iron Cobra power glide twin pedal ( My Baby)
Iron Cobra Lever Glide Hi Hat stand (my adopted son)

Great alot very well informed info.I agree with all.Play open handed/Gary Chester.Also Joe Morello has great exercises to build left side chops.Think open handed.Learn grooves from both sides.

I need help. I can play with the German grip (palms down) very efficiently on both hands. However, over the years i have found that i can play much faster with my right hand using the French grip. Unfortunetly, my left hand cannot grasp the French grip concept. I compare the two hands, I see how my left hand fails, yet it feels as if it has a mind of its own. This is very fustrating.
Can someone please shoot me some advice on how to ease my left hand into using the french grip.

just change ur kit around and play left handed for a month or 2 and then go back to right and u should have improved out of site... just make sure ur goin just as hard as u would normally with ur left hand so u build the stregnth...it takes abit to get used to but its worth it








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pearl EX 6 peice - full black machine head setup
14 planet Z hats
15 stagg DH crash
16 stagg SH crash
12 wuhan china
8 sabian X8 splash
20 sabian ride
20 paiste 302 ride

check out my band - www.myspace.com/makeshiftPLAGUE

Ill post one of my favorite exersises.

1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
R L R R L L R R R L L L R R R R L L L L R R R L L L R R L L R L

Start slow and repeat it a couple times then spead it up to a point where you mess up. Then bring it back down and play till you got it. Then speed back up till you mess up and repeat till youre good.

-mike

First off don't do anything until it burns...if it burns stop for 5 or 10 minutes, if it continues to burn slow down your exercise.
Secondly, to get you left hand where you want it to be you have to find the right exercises which will enhance your goals.
If one of your goals is to develop more strength single stroke exercises as well as paradiddles work well, start a slow tempo and slowly increase it. A few excellent well-written books are Stick Control and Accent & Rebounds by Geo. Lawrence Stone.
If another goal is to develop better comping abilities for say jazz, then by all means just stick to Syncopation by Ted Reed, and get with a qualified instructor, because you can and will injure yourself by picking up bad habits.[/b]