Hi everyone,

Here are your practice assignments for this week:

Sam

Keep practicing the double strokes that we have been working on. It is important that you can isolate the roles of the wrist and the fingers: the wrist generates the downward force that causes the stick to bounce back up after it hits the drum. The fingers need to stay loose while this happens to allow the stick to bounce. After the bounce, the fingers pull the back end of the stick into the hand causing the tip of the stick to come back down and hit the drum. The wrist should stay down during this second part; if you lift the wrist then the stick won’t hit the drum a second time.

Josh

Practice the three new beats that we worked on this week. Remember to play them slowly at first and to count the rhythm as you play. If you find that you’re struggling to keep the beat consistent, then try playing just the snare drum and bass drum parts without the hi-hat. Also, review the rhythm exercises from your book that use quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes. We’ll work more on these next week.