Extended Techniques - Playing with your hands

[Stephenjwright]

Hi All,

First post here! I've been searching around the forum to try and find any articles related to extended techniques, in particular ways of playing with your hands.

I've been experimenting a lot recently, with fair amounts of success, but wanted to find out if anyone knew of any cool techniques/ways of playing with your hands that gets really interesting new sounds?

Obvious ways of playing them are like you might play hand percussion (congas, bongos etc), and there is playing with your finger tips - this works really nicely if you have well tuned really resonant drums, as you can use the palm/wrist of your other hand to pitch bend (a great example of this is Jeff Hamilton playing A Night In Tunisia from his album Live!. You can also see him doing similar things here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3u_QUwoeAI


Any other techniques that anyone has seen/done themselves?

Thanks!

[Pollyanna]

Nice link, Stephen. Thanks!

The first time I saw this was a Bernard Purdie vid about his ghost notes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGXGpa458Ig. He is one seriously funky man.

[intheruff]

In the late sixties (early seventies?) Lee Michaels (keyboards) had a two piece band. He and Frosty. Frosty could whip his drums into a froth using only his hands during his noted extended solos, it was a total mind blower and always mysterious to me as to why he didn't break those hands. The drums sounded more like he was playing with broomsticks rather than a few pinkies. I have no idea what his 'technique' was about, but maybe your quest could be enlightened by learning more about Frosty and his unique style.