Special technique for backbeats?

CYP

Senior Member
Hey ya'll, I've been checking out a lot of gospel and hip hop drummers as of late, and noticed that many seem to leave the stick on the snare drum after playing the back beat- which seems to give a fat, crisper sound. Experimenting with this, it's tough to instantly release tension- does anyone have experience or thoughts on this?
 
Re: Special technique for backbeats??

From my experience, the leaving it there is just decoration (basically). In the marimba world, we call it a downstroke (at least, my studio does).

The sound is likely more a result of 1) doing a rimshot, 2) tuning, and 3) processing, in order of importance.
 
I agree that they're almost certainly playing rimshots. In my opinion, that's the technique you really want to be looking into and experimenting with if you want to replicate the gospel chops backbeat sound.

Fairly well cranked snare might help, too...
 
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