16th notes on Hi Hat

One of the hardest things for me to do is to get any speed up playing 16th notes with just my right hand on the hi hat. Jeff Porcaro and others do it comfortably at 100 bpm and over. I do it comfortably at 85 bpm and stiffly at 90. I can't seem to get any faster. There's a guy on youtube from Europe who does a Porcaro tribute and looks so damned comfortable playing these suckers at around 100. Any suggestions of what to do to improve?

PRACTICE!!!!!111 one

Just work on your chops and it will come in time. There really isn't any shortcuts to relaxed, clean 16th notes on the hats(or either hand for that matter).

Hi
Practice slowly and stay relaxed. A good song to practice 16th note single hand hi hat work is a Crosby Stills and Nash song called Southern Cross. Check it out. Denis

I would say start developing your moeller stroke. Try to utilize the bounce that you get from the downstroke and just kind of let your hand bounce. It's literally lifting your wrist up while your doing a downstroke. It's really hard to explain in text. Do a google search and watch some moeller youtube videos. Knowing the moeller helps ALOT with fast hi hat patterns.

I'd say play 16th notes to a metronome at your highest comfortable tempo, but practice playing them as loud as you can for like a week. After that you can probably raise the BPM a bit, but play them not as loud for a while till you get comfortable with them at that faster tempo, then after they are comfortable at a medium volume, start practicing them loud, and repeat until you are going as fast as you want. Your muscles need more capacity to hold blood, so you have to work them a little

Try to develop the moeller stroke.Basically all drummers who play 16nth notes on a groove , generate this motion inherently.It's the only natural way to execute this pattern , otherwise it is bound that you will hurt your right hand.You must do the whippinh motion and the pull out stroke , but not pay too much attention to it couse you'll miss the groove.

A first thing to do, is to relax your grip.Don't squeeze the stick and let it bounce and then you'll generate sooner or later this motion.Stay relaxed!

While the Moeller Stroke has many uses. I don't find it that great for 16th note ride patterns in which all note must remain unaccented or at the same dynamic. All Moeller-type strokes (including push-pull) are inconsistent in that every note is not played exactly the same. There are upbeats and downbeats. Only good-old fashioned wrist and fingers sound exactly the same note to note.

Here are some points to consider:

1. Don't hit the hi hat too hard
2. Don't hit the hi hat too hard
3. DON'T HIT THE HI-HAT TOO HARD!!!
4. Use your fulcrum and get those fingers moving. Get the ball bouncing.
5. Be prepared for this to take a couple of years before you can look/sound like that guy in the video. I don't care what "technique" you use. The essential ingredient is dedicated practice.

Jeff Porcaro's technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HB59qH9T-I

wormtownpaul said:

One of the hardest things for me to do is to get any speed up playing 16th notes with just my right hand on the hi hat. Jeff Porcaro and others do it comfortably at 100 bpm and over. I do it comfortably at 85 bpm and stiffly at 90. I can't seem to get any faster. There's a guy on youtube from Europe who does a Porcaro tribute and looks so damned comfortable playing these suckers at around 100. Any suggestions of what to do to improve?

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Wow this is me to a T. Fight of my life trying to play along to "Kissing My Love" at 92bpm.

I've played with hi-hat height recently too. Hoping some real deep work with help me stay loose and get faster?

I started learning Moeller technique a couple weeks ago. The other day when I was on the kit lo and behold I spontaneously started using Moeller on the hats and the ride. So effortless! I sort of get it now. And there's something about the motion that just dials in the groove, like I feel it throughout my body and not just my limbs...difficult to describe. It's like dancing.

denisri said:

Hi
Practice slowly and stay relaxed. A good song to practice 16th note single hand hi hat work is a Crosby Stills and Nash song called Southern Cross. Check it out. Denis

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Good recommendation, that song is relentless in it's 16th's without being exhausting.

I also recommend playing Everlong (Foo Fighters) if you want to see quick improvement. It will destroy you though!

I would approach this problem using two complimentary approaches: A. spend as much time as possible playing 16th note hi hat grooves at a comfortable/slightly uncomfortable tempo and B. work on building necessary strength and endurance in your wrists at uncomfortable tempos.

"A" would include playing songs with the 16th note hi hat groove, improvising in that style, coordination exercises under 16th notes, etc.. It's much easier to accumulate time doing something if you mind is occupied on a higher order task.

For "B", I'd recommend you work on wrist strokes on a low-rebound surface (a towel on a practice pad works well. Fold the towel in half to increase difficulty) for 2-10 minutes at a time using full range of motion.

Best,
Connor

appreciate the tips Connor!

You don't have to get a lot faster. Like, a lot of Brazilian drummers have ridiculously fast right hands, and it's a very cool effect at a certain tempo range, but it doesn't keep getting cooler the faster you go. High 90s is a reasonable real-world ceiling for that kind of thing. Then if you want you can keep refining it into the 100+single digits.

You have to do it a lot. I find it helps at first to lay your index finger on top of the stick-- that controls the rebound and helps you find the right technique. The Brazilian guys use a lot of finger technique.

toddbishop said:

... it's a very cool effect at a certain tempo range, but it doesn't keep getting cooler the faster you go.

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It took me forever to figure out that's true of most techniques.

toddbishop said:

I find it helps at first to lay your index finger on top of the stick-- that controls the rebound and helps you find the right technique.

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That sounds perfect. Gotta try it. I figured there was some technique that I was missing. Just muscling out 16th's at quicker and quicker tempos wasn't working at all. I can get some decent speed, but it sounds stressed. Maybe this will help me get rid of the "Coffee! Coffee! I need another coffee!" sound.

I think piano players refer to that stressed sound as "scratching" at a piano. I sound like I'm "scratching" too much of the time. Even if other people don't hear it, I do, and it's an ugly sound.

Note that this is not directed at any one poster or post but; please stop with the automatic calls for "moeller" whenever someone talks about technique on the forum in any capacity.

It's not an end-all, it's not appropriate for use in quick one handed 16ths, and I think most of the people don't even understand what it really is.

The best approach to the quick one handed work on hats is something called push-pull in most circles. You want one stroke on the downswing and one more on the upswing. It's not Moeller, which is meant to be an arching whip stroke where sometimes a drummer utilizes the momentum of the first stroke to gain a less-effort second stroke. When playing quick notes as described, you'll be much better served by training your wrist in the subtle movements that facilitate what I think of as a quick "tapping" motion. You do utilize a little bit of the bounce from your first note of each set, but because you're playing quick, you can't swing back up to do anything even remotely Moeller.

Remember, Moeller is a whipping motion with a loose grip. Doing that when you're trying to do even sounding hat 16ths above 100 is going to be literally counter-productive and have you working harder.

Back to the actual question, what helped me get into it was to visualize these small stick motions and correlate that with the type of push-pull I want to utilize. My hand needs to come down a bit for the second of each set so that when I get my "pull" stroke, it sounds out nice and clear. It ends up looking like a rocking motion as my wrist facilitates the second stroke, not whip-momentum from a "moeller" stroke, which is also a valid technique but not a good one for what we're talking about.

Honestly, I think it's the name that does this. People get excited about learning a famed name technique and tend to over-apply just like the drummer over-using a new fancy fill they're working on.

I wish people would just call it a whip stroke instead of moeller, which gets attributed to all kinds of things made worse by youtube idiots who also don't know what they're talking about.

Dr_Watso said:

..please stop with the automatic calls for "moeller" whenever someone talks about technique on the forum in any capacity.

It's not an end-all, it's not appropriate for use in quick one handed 16ths, and I think most of the people don't even understand what it really is..

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The name of a technique is the name of a technique, no need to get hyper about such things..

When playing the hi-hat with the neck/shoulder of the stick Moeller makes no sense, because there will be no rebound..But when playing the hi-hat with the tip of the stick Moeller can be applied perfectly for fast 16th patterns if someone mastered the technique..A Moeller stroke can have 1, 2 but also 3 rebounds (playing 4's), then why would Moeller not be appropriate for quick one handed 16th's on the hihat..?

Otherwise, please explain us why Dom Famularo here is wrong and also why he should be forbidden to use the word 'Moeller' from now on..lol..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45NSac-a5ss

oldskoolsoul said:

The name of a technique is the name of a technique, no need to get hyper about such things..

When playing the hi-hat with the neck/shoulder of the stick Moeller makes no sense, because there will be no rebound..But when playing the hi-hat with the tip of the stick Moeller can be applied perfectly for fast 16th patterns if someone mastered the technique..A Moeller stroke can have 1, 2 but also 3 rebounds (playing 4's), then why would Moeller not be appropriate for quick one handed 16th's on the hihat..?

Otherwise, please explain us why Dom Famularo here is wrong and also why he should be forbidden to use the word 'Moeller' from now on..lol..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45NSac-a5ss

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He's demonstrating my points perfectly. He's playing correct moeller in this video raising the stick up, whipping it down and also demonstrating how that whip can generate "free" notes as he says. I'm actually not sure why he keeps using the term "low" but then demonstrating moving his sticks up like 12 inches and whipping down in correct moeller form.

What he's not doing is demonstrating the type of continuous even spaced and volumed strings of 16ths with one hand we are talking about here. You're helping to make my point that the term "moeller stroke" is not only over-used and mis-understood, it's being given as an automatic "solution" to any drum problem when it's really a pretty specific thing. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that rather than describe it with a descriptor "Whip stroke" we use someone's name who helped popularize it and lots of people don't actually get what it is or why it's used.

Shoulder or tip, at high speeds, one handed work makes no sense to use whipping motions for. You're wasting energy, not saving it. Even if you did manage real whip strokes on one had over 100 bpm, it would sound rather un-even unless you really concentrated on making the second bounced note loud, which is even more effort.

Dr_Watso said:

I'm actually not sure why he keeps using the term "low" but then demonstrating moving his sticks up like 12 inches and whipping down in correct moeller form..

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Then why are you presenting yourself here as the 'Moeller-expert' telling everyone why they can and can not use the term 'Moeller' for a certain technique that they want to apply..?

Because if you would have also looked part 2 and 3 of that series, you would have seen that a Moeller stroke can be devided into low-Moeller, half-Moeller and full-Moeller..

If you only refer to a full-Moeller stroke, then yes, playing a fast 16th hi-hat pattern is not what comes to mind first..But when using low-Moeller, that technique can be perfectly applied for that..