My back fingers always fly off the stick when practicing doubles, perhaps that's why my doubles are extremely slow?(I can only go up to about 110bpm) How do you get you back fingers involved? Do I just continue practicing the way I've been practicing or do i start even slower and try incorporating the back fingers?
I keep hearing of people saying to do double strokes individually at first until you can't go faster then go to bounce. Will your hands just automatically ease into it when you're practicing this way or do you have to specifically switch to bounce? And if the latter, then what's the point of doing them individually in the first place? It's never really been explained, even by my former teacher....
The missing link is to start using the back fingers when playing them individually, in my opinion.
One method I use to get my students using their back fingers is to start by playing the second note louder than the first at a very slow tempo; slow enough that you need to use a wrist stroke for the second note. Somewhere around 8th-notes to a 1/4-note click at 52 BPM seems to work. However, when playing the second note, I have them use their trigger finger (the middle finger) and their back fingers to help get some torque on the stick and help create the accent. Imagine/allow the rebound of the first stroke pushing your fingers open, then close them for the second stroke, pulling the butt of the stick up against your palm. Work to snap the stick toward the head along with the wrist and then release the tension in them immediately on impact so their not driving the stick into the head or holding unnecessary tension in their hands. Remember, you don't need to slam the stick into the head for either stroke, a maximum of 6 inches will do. Slowly work up the tempo to capacity, really concentrating on letting your back fingers help. In the end, your greeting finger is the the real mover and shaker in a double stroke.
Once your comfortable with that, then you can try putting your hands together using the "Double Stroke Cleaner Upper" - i.e. RlLr RlLr RlLr RlLr which is just inverted doubles with an accent on the second stroke. Doing them inverted allows you to put the accent on the beat. If you think of them as 16ths, you'll be accenting 1 & 2 &, and playing the e's and a's as unnaccented notes.
Once you can comfortably do that try dropping the height and volume of the initial stroke and using the fingers to aid the bounce of the stick at a higher tempo. The trick, I think, is to work on one hand at a time. Just drop the stick from a low height and pick it up with the fingers. Then drop it again and pick it up again, one hand at a time. Don't worry about rhythm at first. Just get the motions down. Ultimately, the whole thing needs to become one motion from the initial movement of the wrist for the first stroke all the way to the end of the second not played with the fingers. One impulse. Opening and closing the hand.
Once you can manage that, we need to start putting things into time. Try playing the first two 16th notes of every beat to a quarter-note click/metronome with your lead hand. Around 80 BPM is a pretty good place to start. At that tempo, you can use the bounce of the stick a little bit to help get your second stroke. Too slow and you'll be below the "switchover point' from wrist/wrist to wrists/fingers. Just practice getting an even subdivision and even sound with one hand, trying to feel the back fingers doing the work on the second stroke. Then do the other hand playing just the last two 16ths of each beat.
Once you can make a steady, even double with either hand, try putting the two together. If it gets uneven when you add the hands together, go back to working on one hand at a time at that tempo for awhile. And if it does, make sure you're not slamming the stick in on the first stroke to get enough bounce for the second one. You're only making your life harder by making it more difficult to control the second bounce and propel the stick back toward the head because of all the force of the stick rebounding from such a strong stroke. Give it some time - i.e. weeks - before you start to really push the tempo. Anytime you catch your fingers sticking out at the back, STOP. Slow down, release the tension in the front of your hand and start again.
Breaking a habit like flying fingers is about getting into control. It's about learning to focus on what you're doing and really get inside your hands. They don't belong to anyone else. There is no mystery when they do stuff we don't want them to - under normal circumstances. What's missing is conscious control. Slow down, and work your doubles from the ground up. Don't throw your hands/sticks at the drum head and hope for the best.