GOING BACK TO BASICS

Throughout this week, I’ve wanted to look at dynamics on the kit. And since the last diary post, I’ve taken my snare back home, and just gone back to basics – snare pad and metronome; looking over dynamics in rudiments. This allows me to spend more time on it, being so close to home – and hopefully, I’ll be able to take from what I’ve developed on the snare to the full sized kit; toms and all. This has been developing since Tuesday, I believe. But of course, I have done as much as I would of like to…

PARADIDDLE FILLS

In today’s practice session, I also looked at dynamic placement in paradiddle fills. Where the single right hand – (R)LRRL(R)LL is placed around the kit, and the remaining ghost notes are kept on the snare. This creates a really cool fill – sooo going from six stroke fills to paradiddle fills, to get me creative juices flowing for my fills, as they seem a bit lacklustre at the moment.

It’s a good job that both of them are my favourite rudiment, eh?

HAND TECHNIQUE RE-LOOK

Going back to basics also allowed me to focus moreso on my hand technique again, really getting to grips as to why my left hand is so much weaker than my right hand. Of course, my right hand is the dominant hand so will always be stronger, but the margin is significantly wider than normal.

And yes, continual practice over the summer has definitely improved it, but not enough. It seems to be never enough. But hey, I’ll stick at it!

That’s all from me for now, see you on the next one.

Alex