HOW TO GRAB YOUR DRUMSTICKS

Hello there DRUMMERS, this time we will share you a knowledge about how to grab your drumsticks.

In general, there’s three gripping technique. Wait, three? Not just two? Yes my friends, three.

There’s Matched/ Parallel Grip, Traditional/ Orthodox/ Conventional Grip, and the third one is Wacky/ Novel/ Knuckle Grip.

And we have three different/ specific form positions for our back of the hand. There’s French form style (palms sideways, thumbs up), Germany form style (thumb sideways, palms down), and American form style (somewhere between German and French, thumb on 10 o’clock and back of the hand on 2 o’clock).

For striking our drumsticks we have close hand/ wrist control, it’s good for building our groove, doing pumping motion (we’ll discuss it later), etc. And the second one is open hand/ finger control. We’re bouncing our drumsticks using middle finger, ring finger, and our pinky.

MATCHED GRIP: The matched grip is performed by gripping the drum sticks with one’s index finger and middle finger curling around the bottom of the stick and the thumb on the top. This allows the stick to move freely and bounce after striking a percussion instrument.

TRADITIONAL GRIP: The stick then rests in the space between the thumb and index finger, and the two fingers close around the stick with the thumb atop the index at the first knuckle. The middle finger then rests slightly on top side of the stick (typically the side fingertip is the only contact made). The stick then rests on the cuticle of the ring finger with the little finger supporting the ring finger from below.

WACKY GRIP: The stick rests between our first and middle fingers, while our thumb is not involved.

Additional note: When we’re playing using wrist control (close hand), we can use another option. There’s Tony Williams’ Hybrid Matched Grip. Our middle finger, ring finger and pinky are becoming a fulcrum, while our thumb and index finger are placed softly on drumstick.