struggling with double bounce...

ronyd

Silver Member
Still new at this, and would like to get the technique down properly.

I'm back to doing just a 4-4, alternating single R-L, then double bounce at 130bpm. My grip is nice and relaxed on the singles (for that matter normal stroking), then once the double bounce comes around, I pinch the fulcrum, and my last 2 fingers flare out. Seems like my grip pressure causes tension, and miss the double here and there. Then back to normal on the single.

When I pinch the fulcrum with my index finger, I also use the middle finger to control the stick and bounce, and the other fingers off the stick. Is this proper technique for the bounce?

also,
Is this normal for the last couple of fingers to do this on the roll?

Any tips on keeping grip relaxed all the time?
 
Try going from two controlled hits R R L L not using bounce starting at slow tempos and building up until you can't play any faster without bouncing, then you'll start having your fingers take over from your wrist for the 2nd hit. Then once you can bounce decently, slow that down as far as you can, then up to full speed and back down to slow. Then work on bringing your 2nd hit sound level up to the first by adding extra energy into your rebound stroke.

Yes its normal to use your middle finger, but try and keep all your fingers on the stick to keep control.
 
Check out Jojo Mayer's DVD. It has a very indepth explanation and exercises of this issue and more. Helped me alot.
 
thankx Andy for that tip. Was always trying to understand you could double stick that fast with bounce. The videos talk and show the double hit (w/o bounce) picking up speed, but don't mention that the double bounce takes over. Makes sense now.

I've tried to keep all my fingers on the stick, but seems like the last two get in the way of the bounce sometimes. But, I'll keep at it.

Any also drumphile thankx for reference to JoJo. I've seen his youtube a few times. I'll go back and review yet again. I'm constantly trying to stay with the gladstone, but the double bounce is resisting the techique. .... eek.
 
Still new at this, and would like to get the technique down properly.

I'm back to doing just a 4-4, alternating single R-L, then double bounce at 130bpm. My grip is nice and relaxed on the singles (for that matter normal stroking), then once the double bounce comes around, I pinch the fulcrum, and my last 2 fingers flare out. Seems like my grip pressure causes tension, and miss the double here and there. Then back to normal on the single.

When I pinch the fulcrum with my index finger, I also use the middle finger to control the stick and bounce, and the other fingers off the stick. Is this proper technique for the bounce?

also,
Is this normal for the last couple of fingers to do this on the roll?

Any tips on keeping grip relaxed all the time?

The proper name of this is double stroke, or duple roll. When using fulcrum pressure to achieve the same effect, it's a diddle.

Finger control is one of the most difficult aspects of technique a drummer can try to develop ever, especially when playing diddles. I don't know why, but people want to let their fingers fly off of the stick when playing diddles, which is completely backwards. There are no tricks to this, you have to practice while concentrating on staying relaxed and keeping your fingers in contact with the stick as often as possible if not all the time. The extra finger control will also take tension and pressure off of the fulcrum while playing diddles.

Also, be sure to keep turning your wrists when playing a duple roll!
 
The proper name of this is double stroke, or duple roll. When using fulcrum pressure to achieve the same effect, it's a diddle.

Finger control is one of the most difficult aspects of technique a drummer can try to develop ever, especially when playing diddles. I don't know why, but people want to let their fingers fly off of the stick when playing diddles, which is completely backwards. There are no tricks to this, you have to practice while concentrating on staying relaxed and keeping your fingers in contact with the stick as often as possible if not all the time. The extra finger control will also take tension and pressure off of the fulcrum while playing diddles.

Also, be sure to keep turning your wrists when playing a duple roll!

Can you elaborate what you mean by turning your wrists? Do you mean palms down versus slightly turned in normal stroking (ie barely seeing pinky knuckle)?
 
The proper name of this is double stroke, or duple roll. When using fulcrum pressure to achieve the same effect, it's a diddle.

Finger control is one of the most difficult aspects of technique a drummer can try to develop ever, especially when playing diddles. I don't know why, but people want to let their fingers fly off of the stick when playing diddles, which is completely backwards. There are no tricks to this, you have to practice while concentrating on staying relaxed and keeping your fingers in contact with the stick as often as possible if not all the time. The extra finger control will also take tension and pressure off of the fulcrum while playing diddles.

Also, be sure to keep turning your wrists when playing a duple roll!

Good post Steelie. You say you don't know why peoples fingers fly off. Yes you do. You don't need all your fingers to make a good fulcrum to do doubles. It's easier with just the index and the bird finger, you know that, because they are so strong. And I do use that kind of hand position sometimes. But what is missing by letting the back fingers fly off the stick...the further away from the fulcrum, the more power you generate. Leverage. So a little movement from the pinky is equal to considerably more movement from one the first 2 fingers, where the fulcrum is. Plus the pinky is connected to the strongest muscle in the hand. I'm not saying it's easy to incorporate the back fingers, just that there are a lot of benefits. It takes a lot of fine technique to get the back fingers involved. I'll be working that for quite some time I'm sure. I hope you don't think I'm implying you don't know any of this, I am in agreement with you. I just wanted to expand on why it's so good to get those ring and pinky fingers off the bench and contribute. The back fingers is where real speed comes from. Dynamic control can be accomplished with a 3 point fulcrum but I think sounds more refined when the back fingers get involved.
 
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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 proper name of this is double stroke, or duple roll. When using fulcrum pressure to achieve the same effect, it's a diddle.

Eh? I've never encountered this distinction before. The technique I use to play a double stroke roll is no different from the technique I use to play diddles, drags or any other two note grouping with both notes at roughly the same volume. Fulcrum pressure may or may not be part of playing any of those; It doesn't depend on what rudiment I'm playing, merely on the speed/volume/sound I'm going for.
 
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.
 
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The proper name of this is double stroke, or duple roll. When using fulcrum pressure to achieve the same effect, it's a diddle.

WHAT?!?!?

I have never come across this in all my years of studying/researching. A "diddle" is the name for a double stroke (two strokes) with one hand. Also, fulcrum pressure is used only in orchestral ruffs/drags or multiple bounce rolls...that's why they're called "closed" rolls or closed drags, because the hand closes in on the stick at the fulcrum.
 
Check out Jojo Mayer's DVD. It has a very indepth explanation and exercises of this issue and more. Helped me alot.

I agree. Jojo's video is a great tool for any drummer with questions about hand technique.
 
I'm far from an expert, but it seems to me that you have to be careful with YouTube. No doubt some great videos there, but I've also seen some videos claiming to show "how to" do a double-stroke roll that just atrocious.
 
WHAT?!?!?

I have never come across this in all my years of studying/researching. A "diddle" is the name for a double stroke (two strokes) with one hand. Also, fulcrum pressure is used only in orchestral ruffs/drags or multiple bounce rolls...that's why they're called "closed" rolls or closed drags, because the hand closes in on the stick at the fulcrum.

Except for, you know, marching percussion and battery style technique.

Diddle is a slang term for individual strokes that are doubled. Concert notation often represents rolls with longer note values that do not relate the hand motion to the performer, implying it instead based on pulse and all that. This isn't the case in battery notation, in which case you'll just as easily find a nine-stroke roll notated as four sixteenth notes each notated as having a diddle one each stroke with a downbeat, or a five-stroke roll being three eighth notes with the first two notated as having diddles on them. I understand terminology relating to different styles of concert rolls.

It is a false assumption that fulcrum pressure is used only for ruffs, and drags. Effectively, there is no difference between a drag and a diddle, but some instructors will differentiate between the two based on the context relative to the downbeat.

I can't believe you've never heard 'Don't crush those diddles' before.
 
Except for, you know, marching percussion and battery style technique.

Diddle is a slang term for individual strokes that are doubled. Concert notation often represents rolls with longer note values that do not relate the hand motion to the performer, implying it instead based on pulse and all that. This isn't the case in battery notation, in which case you'll just as easily find a nine-stroke roll notated as four sixteenth notes each notated as having a diddle one each stroke with a downbeat, or a five-stroke roll being three eighth notes with the first two notated as having diddles on them. I understand terminology relating to different styles of concert rolls.

It is a false assumption that fulcrum pressure is used only for ruffs, and drags. Effectively, there is no difference between a drag and a diddle, but some instructors will differentiate between the two based on the context relative to the downbeat.

I can't believe you've never heard 'Don't crush those diddles' before.

Except that, you know, fulcrum pressure is only used on ORCHESTRAL-style ruffs/drags and closed rolls. When you play rudimental drags, they are "open" (played as two quick strokes), and of course double-stroke rolls are just that...a long continuous roll of alternating diddles, which are double strokes, which are two strokes in a row with the same hand.

And, yes, I've heard "don't crush those diddles" before many times. I have been in, instructed, AND judged drum lines as well as rudimental solo competitions. The one thing that I see over and over again is that the snare line instructors (and private instructors) teach the kids to bounce their doubles, if only to get quick results. The way it USED to be was that you would only play in the snare line if you could play the music (ie: had the technical skill to actually play the music and not "fake" it). If you couldn't handle playing double strokes at 140 bpm as actual double strokes, you marched bass drum or cymbals or played in the pit until you worked your chops up the following year or the year after that even...
 
Just a thought ... seems to me that each of your instructors has told something a little different. Could there be a touch of the blind men and the elephant here?
 
Except that, you know, fulcrum pressure is only used on ORCHESTRAL-style ruffs/drags and closed rolls. When you play rudimental drags, they are "open" (played as two quick strokes), and of course double-stroke rolls are just that...a long continuous roll of alternating diddles, which are double strokes, which are two strokes in a row with the same hand.

And, yes, I've heard "don't crush those diddles" before many times. I have been in, instructed, AND judged drum lines as well as rudimental solo competitions. The one thing that I see over and over again is that the snare line instructors (and private instructors) teach the kids to bounce their doubles, if only to get quick results. The way it USED to be was that you would only play in the snare line if you could play the music (ie: had the technical skill to actually play the music and not "fake" it). If you couldn't handle playing double strokes at 140 bpm as actual double strokes, you marched bass drum or cymbals or played in the pit until you worked your chops up the following year or the year after that even...

Oh, so it has to be the way it used to be, okay.

I don't think anyone can play a triplet roll at 190 with full strokes.

At least, not nowadays when talent has obviously become weaker, or instruction has gotten lazier.
 
Oh, so it has to be the way it used to be, okay.

Not necessarily. If we don't innovate, there will be no advancement. However, if somebody is asking about doing a double stroke roll, or how to get their closed rolls clean, or how to even out their paradiddles, I'm ASSUMING they're talking about rudiments, which comes from the tradition of rudimental drumming. The rudimental way of doing double strokes allows for better control of the sticks and more musical consistency. With control comes the ability to express. Being able to play a clean double stroke roll at 16 from ppp to fff is hard to do, but diligent work and perseverance can make it happen. Plus, with the ability to do this, it will give your technique some "headroom" over what you actually need to play in any given real-life musical situation.

Throwing a stick down at a drum once with pressure on the fulcrum in order to force a second stroke out of it will never sound even--the second stroke will always sound quieter. That's just physics. Some of the energy of the stroke is absorbed by the impact, and the second "bounce" won't achieve the same velocity, deliver the same force at impact, and move the membrane the same amount. You need to add more force to the stick during the second stroke to reach the same volume as the first. You can test this in a digital studio where you can see the wave forms. Or, you can just hone in and listen, intently, to a double stroke roll played in this fashion and hear the inconsistency

Now, people can play whatever they want--this is their art. But, if they're going to invoke the common techniques and tools of the past to improve their craft today, they might as well learn it correctly, or they will be doing themselves a disservice. If they want to get better, and think that working on the control of their sticks via rudiments will help, they shouldn't be cheated by being taught "shortcut" techniques that don't really take their playing and control up to a higher level...
 
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