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Hi, I'm Joe Marillo and it's a pleasure to be here with you people.
This is the first of a series of three videos that we're doing.
On this particular video, what we're going to do is talk about a basic good snare drum technique.
The teachers that I've had, I'll give you a little background briefly, is Joe Sefcik in Springfield Mass.
I studied with him for three years and then I went to Lawrence Stone in Boston.
I studied with him for a couple of years and I met Billy Gladstone.
And what I've done is taken the best of these different techniques and put them together, sort of individualized this thing.
Now, they were great drum teachers. If they were still here, I think I'd be still working with them.
So what we're going to do, oh before we start, I can give you a little background.
I played the violin when I was a young boy at five years old and I played until I was about twelve.
And realized that I'd never be a Yasha Heifetz, all right?
So I always had sort of a passion for the drums.
And I started when I was fifteen and things went along pretty good.
I had a good, so far it's been a wonderful career.
I worked with people like Mary McPartland, Tal Farlow, Sal Salvador.
In fact, Sal Salvador was a very influential Negro in New York.
And then anyway, I ended up with, I did the Stan Kenton Big Band and all that nonsense.
But I was with the Brubeck Quartet for twelve and a half years.
And so it's just, if you really want to do this, it takes a lot of practice and discipline.
But you can do it. Anyone can do it. And there's a lot of young talent out there.
So if you're interested in drums, find the best teacher you can find, practice, work at it,
listen to the kind of music you want to play, and you can do it.
Okay, now we're going to move over to the practice pad, because in my travels,
so many people are saying, well, how do you hold the sticks? How do you do this? How do you do that?
So I'm going to just pass on this information that I've accumulated through the years.
Now, this is not the only way to play. This happens to be one technique that I find very successful in my own playing, in my private teaching.
I get very good results with it. So I'd like to share that with you, okay?
Having been around the world a few times, I've met a lot of drummers, and they're all asking these different questions,
and we're going to try to clear it up, and I'll show you the way I do it, if you will, please.
Okay, thank you.
All right, here we are at the practice pad here.
Now, I'd like to try to explain this technique to you.
The first thing I want to say that everything that we're going to talk about, that this whole thing is natural body movement.
In other words, you're not going to do any crazy, nonsensical things. Everything is the way your body works.
For example, if you just brought your hands up from the side, we're going to talk about the hand positions and wrist turns,
and I'm going to give you exercises to do.
So I think it's important when you do a video is to give you something that will help you.
It would be very easy for me to sit there and play for a half hour on the drums and then say thank you and good night,
but my idea is to try to help and educate, okay? And I hope I can get this across.
All right, let's move it along. We'll be playing drums in between. Don't worry about it. We're not going to bore you.
And if we do, you can turn the thing off, all right?
Now, all right, if you just bring your hands up like this, okay?
This is a natural position. Now, the left hand, the motion in the left hand is a rotation, just like that, okay?
The right hand is a waving motion, just like this, you know? Okay?
Now, we'll see how we can put the sticks, how we hold the stick.
The basic way of holding a stick with this rotation, again, bring your hand up.
If we just place a stick in your hand like that, that's as simple as it is.
Now, the motion in the traditional grip we're talking about is this.
It's just going back and forth, back and forth, just like so, a rotation, right?
Now, the right hand would be sort of a waving motion. Here, again, we bring our hand up in a natural position.
We're not doing this, we're not doing that. We're just natural, just like so.
You put the stick in your hand, and this is the way it goes. The motion is this.
Down, up, down, and up.
Now, for those who play matched grip, this would be traditional.
The matched grip, you see how relative this is by just taking that stick and putting it that way.
Now, we're doing the matched grip, all right?
There's your position for matched grip. Going back to traditional grip, here.
If we're a left-handed drummer, we just turn the stick and hold it here, and we can play this way.
Kind of silly, but we can do it that way, for a left-handed drummer. No problem with that.
You see the relationship between this and this.
All right, so these are the hand motions, all right?
Now, I'd like to say this. There's three basic stages of development, the way I teach it.
We'll try to cover them, if we can, here. There's a lot of nuances, a lot to it,
but however, we'll try to cover as much as we can in a short time.
We're going to start off with the full stroke. Three basic stages.
I'm losing myself here. I do this so much that I forget what I'm doing here.
Three basic stages. First, the development of the wrist. This is where the motor is, here, okay?
When we reach a certain proficiency with the wrist, we add the forearms.
The forearms give you, for power, all right?
Then, we coordinate the wrist and forearms, and then we add the fingers.
And the fingers is for, like, the fine polish on a piece of nice furniture, okay?
They're very subtle, for a very subtle, kind of gentle playing.
Then we coordinate all of this, and then the school's out, if you can do it.
You have to work on it. But let me give you some basic exercises.
This is called a full stroke. This is Larry Stone.
This is basically George Lawrence Stone's technique that he showed.
Sticks start in an upright position. We snap the wrist down to the drum,
and allow the stick to come back in a relaxed manner, just like so.
This is a full stroke. Do it very slowly, at first. Very slowly.
Now, this can be worked up faster, you know, a single stroke, this is called.
We can work it up faster, basically with the wrist.
And when you do this, keep your arms all loose.
Now, what this will do for you, it will do three basic things.
It will loosen all the muscles in the forearm and upper arm.
You can see that right off my muscles in my other coat. That's okay.
You can see that. It loosens all these muscles.
Secondly, it develops a reflex action, right? A reflex action.
Because the stick is faster than your hand.
When you're playing drums, if you want to reach for your cymbal, you don't do that.
You know, unless you want to go, you know, that's cute.
This doesn't record well at all, really. I wouldn't waste my time with it.
It's nice. It's one way to get you so fired,
because you're upstage the leader and you're gone, okay?
All right. Secondly, or third, first, loosening the muscles.
Secondly, it develops a reflex action.
And third, it gets you a good sound on the drum, because you're getting off the drum.
Off the drum. You know? Okay.
Now, the exercise I want to give you is this.
We're going to take four quarter notes, and then eighth notes.
I'm going to say one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one.
I suggest you practice this with a metronome.
Nothing wrong with a metronome. It's not going to make you mechanical.
A metronome has no mind of its own.
It can't go to Boston. You have to take it.
You know what I mean? It can't do anything without, and if you get frustrated with it, just pull the plug out.
Turn it off. All right?
But it'll give you even spacing of time.
Okay. So much for the full stroke.
Now we'll go into the half stroke.
This stroke is just what it says.
This is probably about, excuse me, about 18 inches.
We're going down to about here.
Five or six inches off the drum.
And the stick, you'll notice, comes right back from once it starts.
We don't do this because if you do that, that's wasted motion.
If I do this, it's lost motion.
Stick starts here, it comes right back here.
It's like so.
And we'll practice it the same way.
Nice and relaxed.
It's not necessary to tighten and squeeze because when you squeeze the stick, if you can see the arms, if I squeeze the stick, I'm like this.
And if I do this kind of thing, this is comparable to walking down the street like this.
You don't walk down the street like that unless you're strange, all right?
So you walk down in a relaxed way.
So this is your half stroke.
Now the exercise you can do here is in stick control.
That was written by Larry Stone.
You take maybe page five, six, or seven, and you can play with a metronome.
Let's say start off easy by one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Count it in four.
It's written in cut time, but you'll count it in four and play them down.
Five, six, and seven.
Count it in four, four, all right?
Two and three and four and so on, whatever sticking you have down there, all right?
That's the half stroke.
Now what we want to talk about is how do we get...
See, there's different sounds.
This is a full sound here.
This is a softer sound here.
Now how do we get from here to here in vice versa?
These are called control strokes, all right?
Now how is this done?
We'll start with full strokes.
The exercise for this is this.
Full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, and a down stroke,
and we stop right at that level, okay?
Now how do we stop the stick?
Do we grab it like that?
No.
It's ridiculous.
We just close the fingers on the stick, okay?
So full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, down.
Now you'll be able to refer to the booklet that's going to come with this video,
so you'll have all this printed out for you, hopefully, all right?
Full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, down, okay?
Now I'd like to demonstrate that on the drum to give you an idea of what it sounds like.
Here's your half stroke here.
Here's your full stroke.
So if I'm saying full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, full stroke, down, okay?
Same thing with this hand.
Full, full, full, full, down.
Now how do we get back up from there?
A half, let's just call it up stroke, all right, with the wrist.
Let's start here.
Here's your taps.
This is your half stroke here, or tap.
Now what we do, we hit the drum, strike the drum.
We accept the rebound that we get.
However, there's not enough rebound to bring the hand back,
so we assist the hand gently like so.
Once more.
Okay.
Left hand.
Okay.
Okay.
Now how can we employ both of these things?
This is a method of accenting.
That's how we do it.
In other words, if I'm playing, say, a series of eighth notes like so.
And if I want an accent, it's like so.
One, up, and then, there you go, up.
So if I'm playing a paradiddle, for example, which is a...
So on.
Same thing with the triplet action, with the wrist.
Or any pattern that you're accenting, you can do.
Okay.
Enough of that.
I don't want to bore you with this playing here.
Now, I hope you've gotten something from this.
We'll just cover this again.
Full strokes, half strokes, and control strokes.
The control strokes are the up and down strokes.
Okay.
Now, for more power, there's two or three ways of using your forearms.
All right?
This gives us more momentum and more accent power.
One way is this whipping action, which my first teacher, Joe Sufcik,
told me this.
He knew about this.
Everybody knows about this.
Jim Chapin plays with this method quite effectively.
It's basically a whipping action, this kind of thing.
The motion is this.
Slowly it would be that.
Now, some people take it up here.
What I call this aerobics, and if you do aerobics,
I think you should go down with the people, the nice chicks from Spandex,
and the whole thing.
That's what I like, just to do this in my house, it doesn't knock me out at all.
This is a modified motor.
This is your down stroke.
Just like that.
Very slow it would be this.
Elbow goes out, and a whip.
It's a whip.
I always tell the students, think of you as a stagecoach, and you have a whip.
Same thing with the left hand.
If you sort of put your hand in something and found out that there was something
that wasn't desirable, you'd say, oh, man, what a drag that is.
You'd shake the water, like a thermometer.
Think of if you ever had your temperature taken,
they'd shake this thermometer down.
Same thing with this.
Very natural.
This is why everything that you're doing is natural movement of your body.
Now we can take a basic power diddle, like again,
and the up stroke too.
When you do this thing every day, then you start doing it,
there's so much to it, and we're trying to get it all in here.
Here's your down stroke.
Now the up stroke is the same.
Taps like so, and when we make the up, we make our stroke,
and then we move the arm up.
The elbow goes out first, the wrist sags slightly,
and then we pull down and snap.
It's like a whip.
So there's your up stroke.
Tap, tap, tap, up and down.
Up, down, all right?
Up, down, up, down.
I'll try to do it as slow as I can for you, because it's...
Mm-hmm.
Now this leads into a triplets.
You could use it this way,
and I must say this is good for only one accent.
Obviously, if I were playing so...
And if I wanted to play multiple accents, I would be doing this,
and if you do this long enough, you levitate, you know?
It's like yoga, you know?
No, a little joke there, strike that one.
But it's...
It's only good for one accent, all right?
So...
And you can hear it on the drum.
I'll demonstrate that for you.
So you're saying here...
It comes actually from your shoulder right down, see?
All right?
Or with one hand.
So on.
You can work that up fast, but start slow.
This...
Or...
Or here.
If you're playing...
Okay?
That's one way of using the forearms.
Think of the whip,
and you're going to be doing this...
That's one way of using the forearms.
Think of the whip action, okay?
The other way I find very effective
is what we call a straight forearm throw.
Now, that starts from here,
and instead of the elbow going out this way and down,
the elbows sort of come into your body like this.
Not this, or not just natural, into here.
And when you make the stroke, the elbow goes out like so.
All right?
Okay?
Now, this is where you'd start it.
...
And...
Okay?
...
Now, with practice,
you'll be able to play...
For example, we'll take like a triplet thing again.
I'll use both this whip action and the straight forearm.
For the multiple accents, you'll see what's happening.
I'll do it slowly for you, huh?
...
You see what I'm saying here?
...
So if I work that up, I...
...
Good?
All right? That's the straight forearm.
So you should practice both of these techniques.
Okay?
The whip and then this straight forearm for multiple.
You'll get so that you can play very loudly from a low level.
I can be playing like...
...
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...
Okay?
Those are the two basic ways I want you to use your forearms.
Please practice these exercises slowly at first,
and look for the accuracy.
Don't go for the speed.
It results from slow, accurate practice.
And you need... and watch your form, okay?
Everything has to have a form.
In other words, you can't be playing this way and this way.
You have to... the natural form, when your accent...
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All right.
Now, the next thing we want to talk about is the finger control
that has been going around for years.
And some drummers say, well, I play with my wrist,
and some of them say, I don't use fingers,
and I don't play with my arms.
Well, of course, everybody that plays that I know that has any kind of technique
uses their fingers and their wrists and their forearms.
They're there, and you might as well use them.
Everyone does, whether you're realizing it or not.
Now, what I've done in some cases is isolated the fingers,
and so you can...
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