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It's not Friday, but I write with ideas on a topic so turgid it will take me 2 posts to unfurl: stickings.

For many years, I disliked the notion of a uniform system for stickings, preferring to move idiosyncratically. But, after years of students looking at me with confusion, I thought I could stand to think just a little think more systematically about what I was doing.

What makes a “good” sticking? SO MUCH! Taking on a mindset that stickings are deeply personal and should be individually determined does seem to stop us from evaluating our own biases and mindsets. I don’t want my students to blindly follow my stickings. I do want them to be able to change their approach to a passage on the fly—it’s a key tenet of being a capable musician—but I also would hate to see them live with the anxiety of never organizing their thoughts. Is there a way to organize taxonomies of stickings without rigid dogma, and incorporating what we’ve learned about how we learn? Maybe!

If me, Dr. “crazy stickings” is thinking about this, it must be a hot button issue.

TL:DR:

Conclusions:

1️⃣ Stickings should support music-making. Take time to analyze how your sticking help or hinder your phrasing and inflection.

2️⃣ Try out many stickings and be able to change them at will. This practice unlocks interpretive flexibility while reducing performance anxiety.

Attributes of a great sticking:

1️⃣ Uses physical tendencies to accentuate and highlight phrases; does the phrasing without extra work. Bonus points if it takes into account the way our different muscles impact our sound. I suppose this is called “idiomatic?”

2️⃣ Easy to do: fits on the instrument, fits in the hands, hews to conventions around how you have learned and how you remember.

3️⃣ Easy to remember

4️⃣ Easy to change

TL: Still reading!

I started with a 2D axis. At one end is the “caveman” sticking: easy to remember, perhaps difficult to execute because of its lack of regard for the passage. All right hand perhaps, or alternating. At the other hand is what I call a “Method of Movement” sticking: it might be easy to play but could be hard to remember: (1423123234123 or something like that). I’d shoot for the upper right, and definitely avoid the bottom left.

My friend and colleague Ian Rosenbaum (hi Ian!) pointed out that paradigm is missing the most important factor of a technical approach to a passage: does the sticking do the phrasing? I give you, a three-dimensional model for sticking.

Once again, Attributes of a good-to-great sticking:

1️⃣ Uses physical tendencies to accentuate and highlight phrases; does the phrasing without extra work. Bonus points if it takes into account the way our different muscles impact our sound. I suppose this is called “idiomatic?”

2️⃣ Easy to do: fits on the instrument, fits in the hands, hews to conventions around how you have learned and how you remember.

3️⃣ Easy to remember

4️⃣ Easy to change

Let’s look at some examples:

Yasuo Sueyoshi: Mirage

As a young, technically self-conscious percussionist, I clutched my pearls as a my teacher Robert van Sice suggested alternating here.

Yes, 42412432 roll works, but can be hard to do LOUD and when nervous. RLRLRLRL roll = loud, and allows the player to articulate those off-kilter accents more with more facility.

Jacob Druckman: Reflections on the Nature of Water: 1. Crystalline

Here, maintain fairly wide intervals between mallets for each hand:for most marimbists, changing intervals mid-passage causes more mistakes than anything else, and here the wider spread lets us cleanly (some might say, crystallinely?) articulate the notes. Moreover, here we can keep one hand on the accidentals and the other on the naturals.

Jacques Délecluse: Douze Études pour Caisse Claire: No. 9

Here, my goal is to play with fluidity, energy, dynamism, verve, confidence, cockiness, and flexibility. I double the 32nd notes in mm 1-4: rrllR. I like the lilt it creates (lilt > all else) and the natural inflection towards the 3rd 8th note. At the same time, I find doubling easier to execute at a soft dynamic, leaving more mental space to think about phrasing. I believe that soft should not be the first thing someone notices about your playing! One can only imagine what happens to the rest of the etude in my rendition…

Minoru Miki: Time for Marimba: bottom of p.4

Here, I like to use the same sticking for almost each of the variations, even though it’s a bit harder to play as the intervals widen—a rare Caveman sticking from me! At the end of this line, I double the 2 adjacent accents (F#-F) to avoid hearing only one of the accents.

Time for Marimba: 2nd page

In this first bar, I play RLL instead of alternating. It helps highlight the syncopation and allows me to play the downbeat in one part of the bar and the other notes in a different beating spot to highlight emphasize the articulation and duration. On the rolls, I typically play 4 notes (rlrl rlrl lrl) with a “short-short-long” feel.

Anthony Cirone: Portraits in Rhythm: No. 2

In this case, playing the ostinato notes on the 3rd line with one hand allows the accents to be approached more melodically, which is the goal of music-making, right? This mindset allows me to play the accents with a more resonant and rich beating spot. (Starting in the 3rd line of this example, I play the unaccented notes in the center and the accented notes halfway between the center and edge, allowing me to create timbral contrast and weight without too jarring a tone. Doubling the 2nd and 3rd notes after the fp may seem strange, but it keeps the accent isolated and allows the other hand to stay close to the head. WEIRDO ALERT: I do the accents with my left hand, since my stronger right hand is better equipped to play the 32nd notes.

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There exist countless other examples in this vein.

In conclusion:

1. Think about stickings, and in particular think about how stickings can help or hinder phrasing.
2. Try out many stickings and be able to change them at will. This practice unlocks interpretive flexibility while reducing performance anxiety.
3. Use what you know, but be willing to expand your horizons

Next time, I’ll dig deeper into WHY this works, and what stickings can teach us about learning.

Drop me a line if there's a piece you'd like me to cover vis a vis stickings!

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