Lesson 1: Hold the sticks and sit like a drummer

Everything you will ever play on the drums passes through your hands. Get the grip roughly right today and the next nine lessons are easier; get it wrong and you will be undoing it for a year. Fifteen minutes, no kit needed, a practice pad or a folded towel on a table is fine.

Watch first

The grip, in three checks

The pivot. Hold the stick about a third of the way up from the butt end, pinched between the pad of your thumb and the first joint of your index finger. That pinch is the fulcrum: the stick rotates there. Everything else is support.

The back fingers. Wrap the other three fingers loosely round the stick. They are not gripping; they are along for the ride, catching the stick on the way back up. If your knuckles are white, open them.

The palm. For now, palms facing down, both hands the same. That is matched grip, and it is what almost every drummer in every genre uses. Traditional grip (left palm up, from marching drums) is a lovely thing to learn later. Not today.

Now the bit nobody tells you: let the stick bounce. Drop the tip onto the pad from about six inches and let it come back up on its own. That rebound is free energy, and the whole art of drumming fast and relaxed is learning not to fight it. If the stick thuds and stays down, you are squeezing.

Sitting

Set the throne so your hips are slightly higher than your knees, feet flat on the floor. Sit tall, shoulders down, elbows loose at your sides. The snare (or the pad) should sit just above your knees, flat or tilted a touch towards you. If you have to reach for it, it is too high or too far away.

Nobody plays well hunched, and nobody plays for long with their back straining. A minute setting the seat up now is worth an hour later.

Your first strokes

Alternate hands, right then left, slow and even. Same height, same sound. Press play and follow the halo across the notes; the right hand rings higher than the left so you can hear which is which.

RLRLRLRL

▶ Play60 BPM−5+5

Two things to listen for. Are both hands the same volume? Is the space between every note the same? Those two questions are the whole of technique, and you will still be asking them in ten years.

Then eight on a hand. This is the exercise that shows you what the rebound is doing.

RRRRRRRRLLLLLLLL

▶ Play60 BPM−5+5

If the weaker hand tires first (it will), that is normal. Slow down until both hands can finish the eight without tensing up.

Practise

Ten minutes a day on the pad. Single strokes at 60 BPM until it is boring, then nudge to 65. The rudiment trainer plays the pattern back with each hand at its own pitch so you can hear whether yours match. In lesson two you take the same hands to the kit.