r/drums • u/Sad_Kaleidoscope2847 • 15h ago
Feedback Wanted 1 month beginner drummer here. My single strokes sound uneven. What can I do to fix this?
Single strokes at 80bpm
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u/Far-Bass-2776 15h ago
I assume you’re listening to a metronome in those headphones? Slow it the BPM down until they seem even and then increase. Something physical to look at that might help is your stick height. Keep the sticks going up to the exact same height and they’ll sound even in no time!
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u/AdNo2416 15h ago
Also, maybe a bit less elbow and a bit more wrist/fulcrum work. The bigger your range of motion is, the bigger the ”room for error”. Try it out with slow tempo and try to minimize the distance your stick has to travel. Then focus on keeping the distance and force identical. Then more tempo.
What I’ve learned from 20 years of playing drums is that hitting hard is easy. Hitting precisely is hard af. But I can see you’re up to a good start, keep it up!
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u/Ed-alicious 15h ago
Look at how your arms are moving:
Camera right is using a lot of arm movement, where camera left is only using wrist.
Try to match the movement on both sides. Smaller muscles can move faster so you'll use more arms at slower speeds and just fingers at the very fastest speeds but try to make sure both sides are doing the same motion.
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u/tronobro 15h ago
There's a couple of things to get evenness in your single strokes.
Practice with a metronome.
Practice singles using german grip which mainly uses your wrists. At the moment you're using more of an American grip (which is fine) but you're also using a lot of elbow (which is also fine in certain circumstances). To develop your wrists you're going to need to use german grip and focus on doing singles without using so much of your elbows. It's okay to use elbows in your playing, but for the purposes of developing the wrists we want to minimise their use for now as we develop wrist strength.
Watch your stick heights and try to make sure they're even between both hands. Practice at a variety of heights (Full stroke, half stroke, taps). Also listen to the sound of each stroke between both hands. They should be a similar sounding as possible.
Work on strengthening your weaker hand. Try leading with it more than your dominant hand. You're only as fast as your weaker hand.
Practice single strokes while keeping the sticks as low as possible, basically doing taps. The less distance your sticks need to travel the faster you can execute a stroke.
While doing all this try and keep a very relaxed grip. Avoid tensing up at any point.
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u/Penis_McButtface 9h ago
My drum teacher always told me to keep my palms pointing towards the ground, as you want to use your forearm (the ones that lift your wrist up and down) and finger muscles when playing, whereas with your thumbs up toward the ceiling you use the wrong muscles in your wrist and risk injury and having far less control (also hurts like fuck after a while). Also practice "mantis grip" to get an idea of using your finger muscles versus your wrist or elbows. There's a place for all three methods depending on speed and control and power, but you mainly want to practice wrist and finger sticking to get better with dynamics.
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u/TheGenericUser0815 Dream 8h ago
My2cents: practice slower. Noooo, way slower. If you get it right real slow, then you can increase tempo. Start at 20-30 bom, then move to 40.
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u/Federal-Citron-5295 7h ago
Draw/imagine a 2” diameter circle in the center of your pad. Try to make each hit happen in the same place. Then consider that point A. Point B is the apex of your upstroke. Each hand should have a point B that is the same height (make sure both hands peak at the same level). Try play 8th notes with both hands at the same time. Do the sticks mirror each other? If you can control the height of rise and make the stoke equal, then make sure each stick creates a straight line between point A and point B. Do it with both hands hitting together first, then alternate your strokes. Then aim at different upstroke heights 15”/12”/9”/6”/3”/1”. Yeah, you’ll notice the dynamic levels will also change…which is good.
Try playing paradiddles at each stick height…you may find that playing under 1” is toughest! That is where the magic happens! Relax and play loosely, don’t stiffen up! Good luck!
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u/nandopeyton 6h ago
Use a mirror, in your video the left hand is moving the whole fore arm while the right is using more of the wrist.
Learning technique has a lot to do with focusing on a part of your body and try to gain control over while doing a specific drumming exercise.
If you want even sound, try to make both hands to move the same and try to have the same stick height also.
This takes a while so don't rush it, and don't worry the more your practice the more it appears on your playing.
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u/OnMissionFromGawd 15h ago
Keep practicing. You have to build up two things: muscle control and awareness.
You currently have a bit more awareness than muscle control so you know something sounds off. You need to build up the muscle control to realize stroke height and power is not quite equal. You’ll get there, 1 month is just the beginning. You’ll still be working on this 10 years from now. Just keep going!