Parted Ways With Drum Teacher

T

triitone

Junior Member
Showed up at my lesson, exchanged pleasantries, and paid the teacher for the month. He asked what I had been working on and I replied that I had been working on the groove that he showed me last lesson. I started playing the groove. Almost immediately he stopped me saying that the open handed thing was killing me.

A little back ground here. I am an adult and have been playing for about 9 months. I started playing traditional cross hands/sticks which I learned from a DVD. After reading about open handed playing, I made the switch. I don't intend to say that open handed is superior to any other style of playing, it just happens to be what I think works best for me. I told him that before I ever took my first lesson.

Anyway, I asked him to explain how open handed playing was killing me. He said that there is no way I could do a fill an get back to to the crash or hi-hats on 1. I don't think he could grasp the concept that i could lead the fills with my left hand. I took the challenge. I am probably an intermediate level beginner, so the fills were just sixteenth notes across the toms. Every time I got back on the one. I believe this flustered him. He asked me to get up from the kit and he played some fast fills. The fills were faster than I can play. Perhaps faster that I will ever be able to play, but nothing that would get you on the cover of Modern Drummer. He said that there is no open handed drummer in the world that could play those fills that fast. I replied that there are probably no less than 100, twelve year olds playing open handed that could play those fills just as fast or not faster. I believe that was the end. Then I said if you can't help me learn this way, then maybe I should find another teacher. He was definitely agitated at this time and he said let's do it. He refunded my tuition and told me he couldn't have someone like me reflecting poorly on his teaching.

These were my first lessons with a drum teacher. I suppose I expected the experience to be a little different. While I didn't expect him to learn to play open handed so he could play the examples for me in an open handed style, I did expect him to at least accept my playing style and legitimately try to instruct me in that style. Are those unreal expectation on my part? Is such bias typical among drum teachers?

Thanks For Listening.
 
Sorry to hear that. That sounds baffling to me
IMO, anyone who tells anybody else that they should be gripping their sticks only ONE way under any circumstances,
A) dont deserve to teach drums and get paid for
B) should get their ego checked and live in asylum
 
Well. teachers are people with personalities and sometimes it just doesn't work out.. you should have told him to check out some simon phillips videos.. he makes me want to play open.. but it feels so awkward that i'm working on it slowly. My right hand is stupid and can't figure out ghost notes :)
 
triitone said:
Are those unreal expectation on my part? Is such bias typical among drum teachers?
Click to expand...

No, and no. Ask around and keep looking for a better teacher. In the meantime, study Billy Cobham, Lenny White, Rayford Griffin, Simon Phillips and Carter Beauford.
 
Maybe...he was just a jerk...or maybe there is something else going on and this was just an excuse to encourage you to move along?

Either way, unless you are on a remote island chances are you can find a replacement in a few hours who will better accomodate you.

Maybe I should sign up with him....I play open, cross, matched and traditional. Sometimes in the same song!

Lol
 
Sorry to hear that. At least you seemed to have an open conversation, and
he refunded you.

I personally wouldn't allow myself to say things like that to a student. I think
it's perfectly ok for a teacher to have certain strenghts and weaknesses (well,
it's even very normal and human), and sometimes a certain combination of
student and teacher doesn't work out, also common and human, especially
in the case of adults. But I do think he should have taken the challenge and
accept your open handed style - and be "open" to it, LOL :).
 
Teachers, therapists, doctors.... I've experienced some that I should have moved on from sooner. I think a big part of it is connection and chemistry.

As for grips, I went to a Steve Smith clinic 15 years ago. He played an intro piece, and then asked if anyone noticed how many different grips he used. I saw five, so spoke up. He confirmed that he used five, and he did that to make the point that no grip is superior, but some grips might work better for you than others while doing different things.

I think stick grip is a world where people can learn various methods and figure it out for themselves.
 
is something of a "uncommon" way of playing, maybe developed in your first era when you had to be "advised".

Surely playing traditionally can be easier for a lot of fills and so on.
I think your teacher had to aware you that this position may limit your progress and propose you to study both techniques: who use open hand style is surely a beast in the other position too :)
 
Around 5-10 years ago, I took lessons with an instructor who's band had a CD out. I learned all of the songs on the CD and was influenced a lot by his drumming (soul, funk)

During a lesson I brought up one of the grooves he did, it was called "uncle chicken chips" (band: Superhoney). It's sort of a linear type groove, the whole thing is displaced so the two feels like one. The hi-hat opening on the two, but he rested on the hats on 3, where the snare hit is.

Anyway, he demonstrated the groove and it sounded great. But I was a smartazz and said "yeah, well can you play that groove open-handed"? And I could see him thinking for a few seconds, then he proceeded to nail it, and smiled. He did the same pull-off technique with the left hand on the hats, as he did with the right.

That's the type of instructor you are looking for!
 
triitone said:
I am an adult and have been playing for about 9 months. I started playing traditional cross hands/sticks which I learned from a DVD. After reading about open handed playing, I made the switch. I don't intend to say that open handed is superior to any other style of playing, it just happens to be what I think works best for me.
Click to expand...

After 9 months of teaching yourself from videos, you don't know what's going to work best for you long term. I've found most beginners aren't able to tell what works best for them right now.

Anyway, I asked him to explain how open handed playing was killing me. He said that there is no way I could do a fill an get back to to the crash or hi-hats on 1. I don't think he could grasp the concept that i could lead the fills with my left hand. I took the challenge. I am probably an intermediate level beginner, so the fills were just sixteenth notes across the toms. Every time I got back on the one. I believe this flustered him.
Click to expand...

Well, good, you proved him wrong on that one thing, so now you don't have to listen to anything he says about anything. Most teachers don't dedicate a lot of energy to proving their methods to hostile audiences, so you'll probably have a lot of "success" against them with this tactic.

These were my first lessons with a drum teacher. I suppose I expected the experience to be a little different. While I didn't expect him to learn to play open handed so he could play the examples for me in an open handed style, I did expect him to at least accept my playing style and legitimately try to instruct me in that style. Are those unreal expectation on my part? Is such bias typical among drum teachers?
Click to expand...

Again, after 9 months, you don't actually have a "playing style." It is unrealistic for you to expect a teacher to create a curriculum to accommodate what is still a non-standard way of playing-- most good teachers will not do that. Some quasi-ethical teachers will let you pay them to develop a method by trial and error, which is what you're really asking of them.

In similar situations, I take the time to talk to the student about why my method is better than the thing they want me to do, and why learning it is a more economical use of their money and practice time. A lot of good teachers won't bother with that, they'll just pass on teaching you-- so that's not a good indicator of who is/isn't a good teacher.
 
It's messed up, but hardly surprising.

The suckage factor among drum teachers is like any other profession. Actually, given the nature of the beast, it's a lot higher.

Open hand. lol Shouldn't even be an issue.
 
Well you stated in the beginning of your post that you were an adult and IMO you handled it like a good one.

Your former teacher reminds me of a live soundman who knows only one way to get drum tones, port and muffle.

And to make a statement such as his saying that no drummer could play fills that fast openhanded...is ludicrous. Not the kind of mindset you want to pay your money to.

I'm teaching my 11 YO stepson drums and initially he gravitated towards open, so I just went with it. I truly believe that open handed playing is equally effective as "crossed" playing, and maybe even better for certain things. I do see him "crossing" sometimes to see which way feels better to him for certain things. Totally on his own too. It's fun watching a "green" brain tackle drumming logistics. I like letting him try and solve stuff himself first, then I step in and make suggestions. I want him to do it, not me. He came up with his first beat that he made up just the other day. It was good! I like it a lot! It was kind of infectious!

It's great fun. Sometimes I'll start out, Chris, play a 4/4 beat....(while he's playing that) now shuffle it.....now do a 2/4 beat....do the surf beat....now 3/4 time and be as seamless as possible in transition of course. He definitely has a fully functioning musical portion of his brain. He's got the musical memory. He practices without me sometimes, which tells me a lot...that it's really in him.

Everyone is different. A teacher with a "one size fits all" approach...I guess there's some good things to be said for that, but me, I prefer a more tailored approach.

You did good with him. And you got your money back, that was good on his part.
 
triitone said:
Showed up at my lesson, exchanged pleasantries, and paid the teacher for the month....

*snip*

....Thanks For Listening.
Click to expand...

Was your teacher's name Todd?

(Sorry Todd, I just couldn't help myself! Lol)
 
The fact that he told the teacher before his first lesson that that was his intent gave to teacher the right to refuse his money. He accepted it and should have gone on from there. Todd you say you know one person that plays that way so why can't there be a second one. I had too many teachers in my life for a variety of things that weren't flexible, and I didn't continue.
 
Drums are one of the few instruments that you can do the same thing with both hands. In my opinion your teacher was very much in the wrong. You wouldn't tell a piano player to not strengthen his left hand? My approach is each hand is equally important and anything I do with my right I should also be able to do with my left. That helps coordination and strength and also really helps with fills or if you drop a stick or god forbid need to fix a cymbal or something with your right hand mid performance. I also think every technique should be taken into consideration, like French grip, traditional, match, etc. Jojo Mayer came out with a DVD a while back that was really good in showing different finger techniques and stuff. I garuntee he can play open handed.
 
When I started playing three years ago, I pretty much knew the deal. I was left handed. Everyone else is right handed. I went through it with guitar, marksmanship, can-openers, scissors, etc. When I broke my collar bone, I had to learn to throw a baseball right handed.

I guess the point is... I got tired of being odd, so I just sucked it up and dealt with it. Whatever gains I get from leveraging my dominant had pale in comparison the the gains in the resources available to me by simply playing right handed. No teacher drama, no setup drama, no learning-material drama. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it took me a full year to develop brisk 16th notes on the hat. But it's been worth it.

While I would never tell another lefty to simply play righty, I'm happy to make them aware that playing righty is possible and extremely common among left handed players. It greatly simplifies the experience at the cost of requiring a lot more work.

Playing open handed appears to be a compromise that doesn't really solve most of the issues faced by lefties.
 
I'd play him some Simon Phillips and Carter Beauford videos and then let hm go on and on again "bout those fills coming out right". Nuff said and walk out the door. If that don't impress him then try Billy Cobham, Claus Hessler, Dom Famularo, Will Kennedy, and Lenny White too. Yeah you don't want to be "handicapped" by playing open-handed -heaven's sake no.
 
I work mostly with young kids, but one of the first things I do is talk about how things evolved and that today, depending on what you want to do, all sorts of stuff like that is in the end up to them.
 
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