Excellent exercise for fingers

[Jesvin]

There is a really really good exercise for all those who are hoping to improve their finger control and speed.

Hold your arms parallel to the ground. Then place the sticks in your hands the other way round. Hold the stick 2 inches away from the tip. Now using the fingers play rudiments on your forearm. The same exercise can be done keeping your arms vertical to the ground.

I have provided 4 pics of each( parallel and vertical)

jesvin

- "Practising right makes you perfect"-Jared Falk(Rock Drumming System)

[DrumGod]

I am having a hard time trying to picture what you mean by doing rudiments with your forearm! is there any way you can upload a video????

[Drumms]

I've seen a very similar technique on www.onlinedrummer.com, but why do you hold the stick near the tip? I'd hold the stick by the other side. Nevertheless it'a nice exercise for the wrists.

[vadrum]

I've seen a very similar technique on www.onlinedrummer.com, but why do you hold the stick near the tip? I'd hold the stick by the other side. Nevertheless it'a nice exercise for the wrists.

here you have 3 forces working against you -

youre working against gravity to move the stick (resistance)
your playin on flesh, no rebound (resistance)
holding the sticks at the tip, drops the weight of the stick towards the butt of the stick (the side youre moving) and therefore provides more resistance.

[vadrum]

I am having a hard time trying to picture what you mean by doing rudiments with your forearm! is there any way you can upload a video????

use your fingers to move the stick back towards the arm, this is how you play a stroke. then just apply that motion to playing the rudiments.

[Jesvin]

I've seen a very similar technique on www.onlinedrummer.com, but why do you hold the stick near the tip? I'd hold the stick by the other side. Nevertheless it'a nice exercise for the wrists.

I hold the stick near the tip because the other side is the heaviest which means you will have to use more force to play the stroke

[Class A Drummer]

This seems like a cool thing to do. Ive done it from time to time ever since i started drumming, but ive never thought of it as practicing (thats why I would only do it for like 8 seconds then stop) but now im going to try this for a couple mins at a time and see what happens. Cool trick.

[jazzsnob]

Alright gang, I gotta let you know, watch the hell out with this exercise, it can be pretty bad for you, especially for extended periods of time. I know to kids who've injured themselves because they thought that kind of practice was really "working" but the "burn" they felts was really just their tendons screaming.


Here's an alternative for finger technique-write a 4 bar funk pattern with offbeat bass and snare, and play it with your right hand on the ride playing with only fingers. 1 inch hits, NO WRIST and make it perfectly consistent. Amazing finger exercise for your leading hand, pretty underapreciated.

[jazzin']

Yeah, I gotta agree with jazzsnob here. I played around with this for a bit after reading it in modern drummer or some other publication/article. I found it to be about as helpful as ... well ... I don't know, maybe I didn't do it enough.

Now, this may work brilliantly for other people such as Jesvin and probably many others but I found the tried and true method of playing 3 rights, 3 lefts for a couple of minutes then moving onto 6 rights, 6 lefts, couple of minutes, then 9 each hand, then 12 each hand. Then back down to 4 right, 4 left, 8 right, 8 left, 12, 16. Then onto 5's in the same pattern etc etc etc up to 8. (simply double the initial number 4 times)

The thing is you must isolate the fingers completely, no wrist movement. It may also help to do a small pre-exercise of isolating each finger individually, from middle, ring to pinky just doing a series of 16 or more on each finger then moving directly to the next until finished.

Now please try both methods to see which one feels better. I'm just commenting on my experience with this sort of work and found the second version to be much more practical and applicable.

[sloppyn9ne]

o i do that when im sitting in band class when im bored. but never for extended periods of time.

[Scatman]

This kind of practice is silly
Stay on the pad or drum and forget this nonsense

[photon]

I think there is some vidication for Jesvin in order here as it is an exercise that JoJo Mayer demonstrates on his recent DVD. Well I should clarify that rather then playing rudiments he recommends it as an exercise to isolate the individual fingers....

[Eric]

I just got the jojo mayer video and watched this excercise yesterday. It is an excercise to isolate the fingers, as jazzin' and jazzsnob said. First he demonstrated the finger isolation on the pad in french grip, but for german grip he started with this excercise first before moving to the pad. I'm not sure why he did this, I'll go watch it again more closely. It's an excellent dvd, by the way, go get it. p.s. I recomend keeping your wrist straighter than it shows in the pictures.

[photon]

Eric...

I just watched it last night and as I recall JoJo used it as a way to demonstarte how to start learning to employ the fingers in german grip. Then he suggested doing exercises in the fashion, utlizing individual fingers...index, middle, ring, pinkie....