Technique (in bite-sized chunks)

No, this isn't where I describe the various strokes, active posture, concepts of physics, sound production, grip, angle of attack, physiology, coordination, yadda yadda. This is all about getting better chops. My students often hear me speak of having more "headroom" with their technique. That means having more technique than is necessary to play the piece at hand, which is preferable to performing at the very edge of their capabilities.

This article deals with the specific devices I use for practicing the technique exercises provided in other texts, so I have used only a few examples. I'll divide this into two subcategories: exercise drill, and applied technique.

Exercise Drill

Hard to believe that many players don't consider this an integral part of their work, but I hear it all the time: "exercises are mindless repetitions of meaningless shooting at notes." Here's another: "you should be able to get all the technique you need from the repertoire you are preparing." If that mentality applied to sports there would be no weight rooms in the gym, no driving ranges for golfers, and no pitching machines for baseball players. Football players would only scrimmage, swimmers would never practice the turn, and basketball players would not stand at the free throw line for hours.

I can tell how much time a student has put into this kind of work by how their hands move. Not to mention whether they can execute with fluidity and precision, or with control over the sound. If they have trouble with dynamic control, rhythm, speed, or even the prime concepts of stroke and rebound, it’s a direct result of a lack of concentrated and mindful drill. We can fix most of those problems in just a few minutes during a lesson. If it isn't cleared up in a short time it's because it will take a lot more work on their part and there are other things left to discuss during the lesson. I assign technical work, but seldom inspect it. Its results show up readily enough in the etudes and pieces they have prepared.

I have learned more about the strokes, active posture, concepts of physics, sound production, grip, angle of attack, physiology, and coordination from practicing exercises than anything else. I've also changed my ideas about all those concepts by continuing to do this same work. It doesn't matter how much you think about proper technique if you don't work on it. And all of your thinking (even if you stumble across the right thought) will never stand up against another person's argument if they can play and you can't. All is not lost however. I have had my own opinions challenged by better players and then used that as an opportunity to test my theories with extra practicing. So if you have a better idea, practice it until you can execute as well as someone with a different approach.

The only way this kind of work is going to be productive is if you have a positive attitude about it's benefits. Concentrate on producing progressive results.

I save this part of the practice session for after I am completely warmed up. Since it is intended to increase my physical abilities, failing to have all the muscles sufficiently stretched and flexible could lead to injury. Let's face it: fluidity, speed, and power require a certain amount of tension. Even though I am trying to stay loose, there is no denying the fact that the strokes themselves need groups of muscles to contract. The key is to remember that as soon as one group has done their job, they have to relax in order for the other group to do their job. (Gravity and inertia have a job to do as well). On keyboard instruments there is a downstroke component followed by an upstroke. Each motion uses a different group of muscles. On snare drum and timpani, you have the instrument to aid in the rebound, meaning that there is a little less work in the upstroke. But those downstroke muscles have to "get out of the way" in order for the instrument to do its part.

How many different strokes can you identify on any particular instrument? Opinions vary, but in my technique there are four types of strokes in keyboard applications. On the snare drum I think I have three. I'd say the same for timpani, but in practice I really only use one. Pick any other instrument and I would identify one or several stroke types. In any case, those different strokes are the point of departure. I usually work on them one at a time. (Combinations of different strokes in quick succession are more difficult for me to systematically progress through). For the keyboard instruments I have a book of exercises that concentrates on each of the four basic strokes. For both snare and timpani I use Stone Stick Control, Accents and Rebounds, or Peters Developing Dexterity. There are plenty of timpani methods that are more instrument-specific. For hand drums I plug in the various stroke types to snare technique books. There is no end of drum set method books for developing technique.

The point is to get more. Although there is a myriad of definitions of what means "more technique," it mostly means faster. But I also explore the entire spectrum of dynamics. More speed with more dynamic control equals more expressive technique, more fluidity. The faster you play, the less stroke height is available. That often translates into less volume, although it isn't necessarily the only equation. There are three variables that seem to be mutually dependent: rhythmic speed, stick velocity (volume), and stroke height. A good way to increase control over stroke height is to maintain a static tempo and cover as much dynamic range as you can, allowing the stroke height to dictate the volume. Next, try to maintain the same volume and allow speed to ditate the entire range of stroke height. Now choose one of the other variables to keep static, say stroke height. The ranges of the other two variables (speed and volume) are the ones to explore.

Constant	Variable
Speed	Volume, Stroke Height
Volume	Stroke Height, Speed
Stroke Height	Speed, Volume
Speed, Volume	Stroke Height
Volume, Stroke Height	Speed
Stroke Height, Speed	Volume

As you can well imagine, this kind of work is almost futile without a metronome. If you are trying to build facility, control, stamina, fluidity, economy of motion, or whatever, you need to be able to chart your progress. It's even worth keeping a log that includes what exercise, what tempo, and which of the formulas in the chart you got to. Without a metronome there is no way to tell if your tempo is erratic, or if your rhythm is inaccurate. Most people assume that when they get louder their tempo will increase. That's not necessarily the case, but either way the use of a metronome will correct the problem.

Types of Drills

Let's identify three distinct types of drills: rhythmic grouping, accent permutation, and additive process.

Rhythmic Grouping

Rhythmic grouping is particularly useful for practicing sticking patterns that have a static rhythm: all eighth notes, or eighth-note triplets, etc. Grouping several of the notes into rhythmically faster note values while leaving the others intact makes part of the sticking more difficult and the other part easier. Now you can concentrate on smaller components of each pattern. This is also an example of "chunking." Those smaller components are bite-able chunks- parts of a larger exercise that is just too large to chew all at once.

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Technique question- what do your hands do on the longer notes? You have two choices: one is to leave the sticks at home, as though you are playing muted strokes on the conga. The other choice is to allow the sticks to float, not artificially, but so that you will not have to force the next stroke from a low stick height. Either way is fine as long as you do it with purpose. The second method allows you to take advantage of the rhythmic space to relax the downstroke muscle group, and to allow gravity to be a bigger factor in the subsequent stroke.

Accent Permutation

Accent permutation is a way to "strengthen each link in the chain." These exercises also present an opportunity to watch how you create accents. Do you maintain the same stick height or do you use extra stick height for the accents? Do you keep your arms quiet or do you add arm motion? Each of these methods isolates specific motions that are useful.

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Same as before, click this link.

Both the rhythmic grouping device and the accent permutations have more than one benefit. Your eyes (and your brain) like to "chunk" things together. When your eyes have targets every three or four notes along the way, you don't have to try to parse each and every single note. Instead, you can look for groups of notes. Your hands begin to feel rhythmic patterns and you begin to strengthen your kinesthetic motor memory. The larger the chunk becomes, the fewer processes your brain has to go through.

Additive Process

The additive process is a method of increasing the size of those "bite-able" chunks we looked at earlier. If you can play the first two notes of an exercise really fast, how much more difficult is it to add the third note? Or then the fourth? I have heard this referred to as the "short burst" approach.

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To summarize, use these drill devices: rhythmic grouping, accent permutation, and the additive process to work on any of the exercises found in all your technique books. And make sure to incorporate the full range of dynamics. The purpose of technique is to add expressivity to your performance. Remember to use your metronome, and chart your progress in a log. These devices have more applications than you can imagine, which takes us to the next subject:

Applied Technique

This is where scales in all their applications, arpeggios, chord progressions, snare drum rudiments, drum set patterns, conga rhythms, timpani cross-sticking exercises, pandeiro rhythms... you name it, it fits in here. These are the things that you have to practice just as a matter of increasing your vocabulary and fluency. I've already showed how plugging in the drill devices as you perfect the double stroke roll, the paradiddle, and the flam paradiddle. How about tumbao?

Right here.

OK. Here's one place I'll go into more detail: SCALES!

You can spend a lot of time just running your scales up and down an octave or two and never play them any better. Not to mention boring yourself and the neighbors to death. Let's run an Eb scale through some paces:

You could try a high speed connection. Or click here.

This is not a comprehensive drill- I've only included a few of the possible ways to work on this scale. I did not intend to write another parking lot drill. But there's rhythmic grouping, accent permutation, and some that fit those categories as well as the additive process. You could write as many exercises as you have time for.

As I noted earlier, these drill devices are simple to implement when you are working on static rhythms: repeating single note values or repeated stickings. Broken rhythms (figures with differing note values) take a little imagination when trying to apply these drills. Some of the snare drum rudiments have such rhythms.

Scales, rudiments, stickings, hand drumming rhythms, etc., are the simplest building blocks of the music. But very few pieces of music contain two octaves of a major scale, or four measures of paradiddles, or any of the other exercises you could spend a lifetime perfecting. These vocabulary exercises are the easiest things to learn how to apply these drill devices to. But if that's where all of this ends... To me that's like track and field events. It may be amazing to watch sprinters, but I can't watch them for several hours on a Sunday afternoon like I can with a football game. High jumpers, long jumpers, distance runners... give me basketball any day.

So as you are preparing your etudes or your recital repertoire, instead of just running it front to back, over and over, forgetting the mistakes you made, or stopping every two bars to correct a wrong note and then making the same mistake on the next run through, try applying these devices to the difficult passages. You could apply these devices to entire pieces of music. This is applied technique.

Here are two examples of familiar pieces with some practice suggestions. The first is the first four measures of Kleine Studie from Album fur die Jugend by Robert Schumann. Since the entire piece consists of a repeated rhythmic figure of broken triads, let's see what it would look like using rhythmic grouping:

Kleine Studie

Everyone has had the experience of the "one really hard lick" that seems to interrupt an otherwise easy section of music. While I wouldn't characterize Andrew Thomas' Merlin as an easy piece of music, I'm sure you've stumbled over measures 53-56 in the second movement. (I sure have). This passage is conveniently written with twelve notes in each measure, providing several ways to divide into groupings. Here are a few accent permutations to apply to these measures:

Merlin, hard lick.

The accents also delineate convenient sets of notes to apply rhythmic grouping to. Try that device on this passage too.

One more example of how to apply the "chunking" aspect of rhythmic grouping: rolled four-voice chords. First, take each cycle of the double vertical roll and play the hands simultaneously as a block chord. Then combine these block chords with the additive process in reverse. (I didn't want to call it the subtractive process, because I have fewer applications for it). Essentially, you slow down the tempo of the piece without slowing down the hand speed. To increase the tempo, simply play fewer cycles of block chords. To illustrate this procedure, I have chosen the first two measures of a chorale setting of J.S. Bach.

Bach chorale.

There is a mechanical/technical cause for every musical effect. The sticks don't just arrive at the instrument and produce the music by some telepathic force of your will. It takes mechanical control to produce artistic freedom. Even if you stumble over some musical magic, if you want to reproduce it there is no incantation you can recite, only careful analysis and practice.

We have all lost sense of the immediacy and intimacy of musical expression as a result of mindless deconstruction of a piece into its smallest bites, endlessly drilling, forever dissecting... But that is because our efforts were not mindful. Maybe we were just going through the motions, maybe we were not listening. I often subject pieces to all the rigors I have described in order to further implant them into my memory, or to allow my hands to work while I listen. And that is the key: I want to be able to execute without the thought of "how?" And I want to experience those ephemeral moments when somehow, quite by accident, I play something that takes me by surprise, and know that I can play it that same way again. I might not be surprised the second time, but someone else will be.