House of Drumming.com

In general, is it a good idea to control your stick heights? Like using all short distances and only coming away a little when making an accent?thanks

Depends a lot on the tempo and feel you're going for. Long distances can help with a certain tempo, but when playing fast you need to keep distances short.

Whatever make sense and feels good and natural.

There's a good discussion in the introduction to David Garibaldi's Future Sounds. He recommends very short distances (like 1/2") for ghost notes and longer ones (he may say 6" or more) for accents. Honestly, I could never consistently get to 1/2" inch for ghost notes but it''s a great exercise.

gretsch-o-rama wrote:In general, is it a good idea to control your stick heights? Like using all short distances and only coming away a little when making an accent?thanks

Sure. If you are playing acoustic music, it's a good way to play. Keep the dynamic levels down, and you can listen and talk while playing.

Imo, (which means basically nada), regarding ghostnotes, I got totally into DG
for a time and became too conscience of stick height once I got the "law" into
my head about the 1/2"...then I looked back at a lot of Porcaro stuff and decided
it was all about what sound came from this style, so I recorded myself and in the
end, it came down to feel and playing very relaxed. At times, I wanted the GN's to
be more pronounced, and at other times almost silent.

Couldn't one argue that GN's are a natural part of any groove even if the stick doesn't
hit a sound source...it is a part of keeping time?

You fix the distances, but the louder you want to play, the higher you want your stick. It's that simple. From there it's just a matter of controlling them for dynamics and accents.

I wouldn't get hung up on exact distances. But:

Once you can play a pattern in time, in order to make it pop you need consistent dynamic contrast. For consistent dynamic contrast, you need touch. For touch, you need control. Paying attention to relative stick heights is part of achieving control.

For consistent dynamic contrast, you need touch. For touch, you need control.
Paying attention to relative stick heights is part of achieving control.

exactly...yet, once you get it in your head "law" that control, it can be hard to let it go
and just "play"...then again, maybe this is just me. What makes the great ones great imo,
is to go through the process and make it look so relaxed and natural...or better yet,
make it sound that way.

Was talking to an ex-corp player...this was his precise problem shifting from college
to the kit full time. He couldn't let go of all the "disciplines" he committed to for so
long. Corp guys have it harder than most who focus on a particular, but principle is
the same.

keep groovin'

gretsch-o-rama wrote:In general, is it a good idea to control your stick heights? Like using all short distances and only coming away a little when making an accent?thanks

Yes. Of course. You can't break the rules without knowing the rules.

Control is Control. Period. Play a FFF note or play a ppp note. If you can't do either, at whim, you certainly can't control anything in between.

The basic strokes -

Legato
Double/Triple
Taps
Accents
Flams
Buzz/Crush


You then should be able to play each, at tempo, in the varying dynamic range, the 6 levels (or 8) commonly used today, standardized by our friend Mozart are:

ppp (softest possible)
pp
p
mp
mf
f
ff
fff (loudest possible)


Equally important is your consistency of sound. It's not necessary that your rim shot be FFF, but that it be consistent to itself. That is that is what creates "groove" a balance of and consistency of sound.

With drums 2 & 4 get's you paid, and often need to be extremely loud in comparison with other notes you play. Not only does this push your head room, but it gives you a greater dynamic range to become musically interesting with.