Last week I shared some thoughts about ways to expand our conception of warming up, arguing that we can consider this time essential to our musical and technical growth. This week I'm getting more specific, offering some ideas about my own "routine." I put routine in heavy quotes because these practices are flexible at best, partially-existent at wort. I tend do to the same types of things, but rarely a verbatim repetition—repetition, by the way, tends to subvert deep learning. I hate routines, but these categories help me stay creative and develop as a musician while I practice.

My Warmup “Routine”

Mind, Torso, Shoulder, Arm, Wrist, Finger, et. al. (10-15 minutes)

I start with very very VERY easy exercises, done VERY slowly. My goal is to get my mind in the game, and get my ears attuned. Remember, our goal is developing mental representation, so we need to get our ears open. 8 on a hand, 16th notes or triplets against a metronome: it doesn’t matter (seriously, just pick something!). I do these with my hands together, so I can assess how my physical movement is related to my sound. My hands should look the same, but, more importantly, they should sound the same. Then I split the hands, playing 16th notes where I was playing 8th notes, etc. Here’s an easy one from Scott Johnson and the Blue Devils, courtesy of Matt Keown:

I might hover on the double stops for a while, or play these as alternating 16th notes rather than unison 8th notes. As I get faster, my fingers might take over. I might experiment playing very softly. Maybe I’ll drop the stick rather than throw it. I might use all arms, or mostly fingers. I might introduce accents or inflections, and see what kind of phrases I can make. Maybe I’ll do something like this exercise from Guy LeFevre’s Le Tambour:

Or maybe something like this?

• It doesn’t matter, as long as my hands are moving and I’m thinking about connecting my gestures to my sound.
• I’m lazy, so rather than turning my metronome up, I tend to play different subdivisions of the beat. 3s to 4s to 5s. I don’t always do the same thing, but I always do the same type of thing.
• I always start at the same speed, and track my progress over time (notebook!)

Grouping Notes: Rebounds, Forwards and Backwards (5-10 minutes)

You can’t learn the lines to Hamlet reading a letter at a time. If single strokes are letters, we want to develop words, then sentences, which I do by interspersing double and triple strokes into single hand or alternating textures.

I actually improvise most of these, playing with patterns or melodies that have become caught in my head. But here’s one from Buster Bailey’s Wrist Twisters I might try:

Maybe I’ll hover over the first note, or play the exercise as sextuplets, or do perhaps keep the metronome on and play something something like this

RRLRRLRRLRRLRRLL | RRLRRLRRLL | RRLRRLRRLRR → Repeat starting on the left hand.

Then return to the exercise. My goal is to get better at grouping notes without thinking about it. No diddles allowed!

Inverted Doubles (5-10 minutes)

1. The 2nd note of our double strokes tends to be too soft and too compressed. I like evening this out by isolating my fingers, the same way one might isolate their biceps with the goal of being stronger overall. Here’s one approach from Stone’s Accents and Rebounds (it’s in the title, so it must be good!)

I might “enhance” this by turning the 16th notes into sextuplets, keeping my metronome on the same setting. 6 groups of 4 notes per 4 beats. I go heavy on my fingers, really exaggerating their motion so their motion can be unconscious when I’m playing in general. By the way, those of us who use Stevens grip can find some confluences with this motion: our middle finger has an outsized role in changing intervals…

Bounces (5-10 minutes)

Double, triple strokes, and “multiple bounces” are basically the same to me in practice. Sometimes executed with the wrist, sometimes performed with the arms, sometimes assisted with the fingers, sometimes not. In general, the wrist is more prominent in double strokes and slower, and the arm more prevalent in triple strokes and faster.

Thus, I practice them at the same time, which helps me to juxtapose the different ways in which my hands can impact the density of rolls. In the music I most often play, roll density and pressure are a powerful musical expressive parameters.

Some examples in which moving between doubles and triples and roll density are key. Note, one might not always rock and roll on a salad bowl.

See, Nina Young’s Heart.throb:

Or Thomas’ Kotcheff’s then and then and then this:

There are many charts which demonstrate at which speed to use which muscles, but I prefer to listen to my instrument and adjust by ear. What about another exercise from Guy LeFevre’s Le Tambour:

It’s certainly not boring or overtly repetitive.

I might hover on beat two, I might take a single beat and play just one double or triple stroke within it (a mini grid). I might go back to playing alternating strokes with NO bounces, to see how my sound quality improves. Can I play the diddles such that the sound quality stays the same and doesn’t become pressed? I might experiment with playing the doubles with my fingers only, then supported by my arms. Here, not only am I working on our technique, I’m practicing. What if the doubles were triple strokes? Orchestral players or those using mutes might press more into the head to ensure clarity and focus from afar, while us weirdos might try to keep things loose.

Wait, what about playing the “diddles” as single strokes!? I like to incorporate that as well. Here’s an example of that:

ALMOST Repertoire (10-15 minutes)

Finally, I will work on music that is similar to my repertoire. You don’t want the only work of Bach you know to be the single movement of a single piece. You need a sense of Bach’s style to know what musical parameters are important and which are quotidian. Playing around with the musical atoms of your snare drum music is a greta way to experience a composer’s style and intuition, and to adjust your playing accordingly.

No Grace Notes

I don’t really practice grace notes, because to me they are just regular notes which support other notes. Mentally and physically simple, and graceful.

Next time, I’ll speak to a real world application of this, warming up to learn and refine a Delécluse étude and talking about my practice flow chart.

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