Following on from the Drum Lesson Warm Up posted a few days ago, this intermediate drum warm-up is for drummers that have reached a higher level of ability (about Grade 4-6 but could be used by higher grades too).
Exercise 1 – Intermediate Snare Warm-Up
Each of the 4 lines starts with a paradiddle, then the second half changes each time. The first line is singles, the second line is doubles, the third line is 4 with each hand and the 4th line is a 3-3-2 pattern (RLLRLLRL).
Exercise 2 – Paradiddle Drum Beat with Sticking Patterns on the Drum Fill
Using the sticking from exercise 1, we change the paradiddles into a drum beat by moving the right hand to the hi hat and the left hand to the snare drum. The drum fill then borrows the sticking we used in exercise 1, from the second half of each line.
Exercise 3 – Funk Rock Drum Beat and Drum Fill working on fast double bass drum with 1 foot
A rhythmic bass drum pattern with 16th note hi hats followed by a drum fill that works on the bass drum.
5 warm up exercises for the start of a drum lesson. Sticking patterns, drum beats, drum fills and beats with 4 way co-ordination.
These exercises that would be a good warm up at the start of a drum lesson or at the start of a drum practice session. Anyone from Grade 1 up to Grade 6 could use this as a warm up. It would be quite a challenge for grade 1. For a grade 6 player, they should be able to play through this quite quickly.
Exercise 1:
Snare drum exercise with a RRRR LLLL RLRLRLRL sticking pattern.
Exercise 2:
A drum fill exercise using a RRRR LLLL RRLLRRLL sticking pattern.
Exercise 3:
A 3 bar drum beat with open hi hats and drum fill exercise using Exercise 2 as the drum fill
Exercise 4:
Working on a 16th note hi hat pattern and moving that to a snare drum whilst adding a stepped hi hat to work on 3 way co-ordination.
Exercise 5:
Drum grooves focusing on 3 way co ordination and 4 way co ordination between both hands and both feet.
The Meinl MPP-12 practice pad is quiet but loud enough that it’s satisfying to play. The rubber surface has some give to it so it’s not like hitting hard plastic. The bounce is realistic and similar to a tightly tuned snare.
I bought this pad to use with a youth snare drum group I tutor in the UK. It’s sort of a Snare Line, but I’m just a normal drummer adapting bits from what I’ve seen drumlines do for my group, and creating something different. We spend a large part of the weekly session on warm ups and exercises using the practice pads before then moving onto the snare drums to play pieces nearer the end of the session. I fell in love with this Meinl practice pad instantly when it came just by how nice it looks, and how it’s made. I was worried the playing surface might be too hard, but it’s not. When I started playing it, I knew this pad was a great choice.
The drum pad can sit on a table or on top of a snare drum just fine without moving around and with the volume staying about the same. It can also be attached to a snare drum stand. Meinl do sell a 6″ one that has a screw hole for attaching to a cymbal stand. I prefer the 12″ one because it can sit on a table or a snare drum and feels more sturdy than on a cymbal stand, which can wobble around. The 6″ pad is also less solid on a table or snare drum and is likely to move around a lot. I have attached a 6″ pad to a snare drum stand before an I can report it’s not good because the 3 parts where the stand grips the pad can get in the way of your sticks and you really have to crank up the screw thing underneath to get it to fit (annoying if you are switching between pad and snare often).
You can also get signature models such as the Thomas Lang practice pad seen in the video below. The video mentions it not being for practicing marching snares but I personally disagree because for the marching snare pads I’ve seen, such as the Ahead 14″ S-Hoop Marching Pad, I don’t think it’s good for people’s hands and arms to be hitting carbon fibre. My drum teachers in college always said it was dangerous to have practice pads that are hard because it can cause tendonitis. So I would say, these Meinl pads would be good for marching practice and general snare drum practice, but check with your drumline / drumming group before buying, because they might prefer something else. The sound of the 12″ pad has a nice crisp sound, not dissimilar to a marching snare.
There are six parts of a drumstick. The tip strikes the drum. The neck is the thinnest point. The taper is where a stick thickens and widens. The shoulder is the thickest end of the taper. The shaft is the main body of the stick. The butt is the part you hold.
When you first start playing the drums, it’s easy to assume that picking up a pair of drumsticks is the simplest part of learning to play the drum kit.
After all, aren’t different drumsticks pretty similar? And why do I have to learn about the parts of a stick? Isn’t it the drums that will really determine how you’ll sound?
Surprisingly, the pieces of wood that come between you and your drums can have a huge impact on your tone, feel and ability to play the music you love.
Drumstick anatomy can seem complex, but fortunately, there’s really not too much to learn.
This article will take you through everything you need to know, so you can sound like a seasoned expert wherever you go.
A great place to start is a quick overview of the entire drumstick.
Neil Larivee from the iconic drumstick company Vic Firth takes us through the various parts of a drumstick in the helpful video below.
He doesn’t mention the butt of the stick, but it’s such a common term that I decided to include it in this article.
Learning more about how a drumstick is designed is essential for finding the pair of sticks that suits you best.
If you’re a rock drummer, you’re going to need a pair of rock drumsticks that can compete with the volume and intensity of a loud band.
Yet, if you’re a jazz drummer, you’re going to need a pair of jazz sticks that give you a crisp, light touch on the drums.
Understanding the parts of a drumstick, and how they differ from stick to stick, is key to getting the right tools for the job.
First and foremost, it will allow you to make a more informed choice every time you visit the music shop.
You’ll be able to compare different brands, makes and models and understand more of the key differences between them.
What’s more, you’ll be able to speak a common language with other knowledgeable drummers, and this allows you to benefit from their experience.
So without further ado, let’s get into the nitty gritty of what makes each drumstick unique!
The Tip
wooden vs nylon drum stick tips
The first and arguably the most important part of a drumstick is the tip.
The tip of a drumstick is the area of the stick that is most commonly going to be coming into contact with the drum.
As a result, the shape and style of the tip has the most direct impact on your sound.
Different shaped tips bring out different sounds from your drums.
Some produce a darker, warmer tone, whereas others are more defined, with a sharper and brighter sound.
Why do different tips produce different sounds?
Here’s the clever science bit: It’s all to do with how much of the surface area of the tip comes into contact with the drum.
Some stick tips are shaped so that only a tiny amount of the stick tip will actually touch the drum.
This produces a lot of higher overtones, producing a brighter sound which is more defined and more easily heard in the mix of the music.
On the other hand, some stick tips have a much wider surface touching the drum, increasing the number of lower overtones in the mix.
This extra surface area often provides a fuller, more rounded tone; while not as defined as the brighter stick tips, many drummers prefer this extra warmth to their drum sound.
Different Drumstick Tips
Here’s a breakdown of all the different drumstick tip types you’ll need to know.
Drum companies are always designing new variations for drumstick tips, however, most typically fall into a number of popular categories:
types of drum stick tips
Ball: A ball shaped tip is a useful tip shape because it provides incredible consistency to your playing.
The tone you produce with this stick tip is likely to be very even and well-balanced.
Why? Because the amount of surface area that comes into contact with the drum you are playing is always the same.
This is because it has a perfect sphere shape (shown above), so whatever angle you hit the drum at, you’ll get the same amount of stick surface area coming into contact with the drum.
Pretty neat huh?
As a smaller stick tip, the ball shape provides a bright, light and crisp sound.
Oval: The oval tip is a really expressive stick shape, providing great variety in tone to the drummer who plays with them.
In contrast to tips like the ball shape, you have a lot of freedom with the sound you choose to generate every time you sit down to play.
You can play your drums at different angles to change up your tone pretty easily with this stick.
If you’re not sure what tone you like, try an oval stick.
You’ll have access to a wider range of overtones with this stick.
It’s a great stick shape to experiment with and unleash your creativity.
Acorn: Acorn tips typically have a large surface area that comes into contact with the drum.
This produces a fuller, fatter sound with a nice rounded mix of tones.
Simply put, the acorn tip is a heavy lifter in the world of drumstick tips, and it’s well worth having a pair of acorn tips in your stick bag.
The acorn tip is versatile enough to suit most musical styles and genres, and as a result is widely used by the top drumstick companies.
Drop/Teardrop: You’ll find this shape on the most popular drumsticks ever created (the Vic Firth’s American Classic 5As), and it’s easy to understand why.
Like the acorn tip, it has a large surface area coming into contact with the drum, providing a warm, full and highly desirable tone.
Like the acorn, you can use the teardrop in many musical situations, making it another top all-round choice.
A useful thing to know is that if you like the tone of a particular drum tip, you can customise that stick to the kind of music you play by changing the size of the stick.
So if you’re a fan of the teardrop shape but need a stick with a big more oomph for loud musical settings, you could choose a 5B stick over a 5A stick.
Barrel: The barrel tip is small and fat.
It provides a punchy sound favoured by some of the world’s top drummers.
Take a look at legendary drummer Steve Gadd rocking out with a pair of barrel tip drumsticks in this epic drum solo.
The barrel tip is great for producing a high-quality recording sound in the studio, and therefore is favoured by a great session drummer like Steve.
Nylon: While you’ll find wood tips on almost all drumsticks, there are alternatives that drummers sometimes prefer.
Whereas we’ve been focusing mostly on the shape of drumstick tips so far, choosing a different material for the stick tip has a significant impact on the overall sound.
Nylon tips produce a brighter sound than wood sticks on average for stick tips of the same size.
In particular, they are able to generate a sharp ‘ping’ sound from playing the cymbals.
This can help drummers be heard more clearly, particularly when playing in noisy environments.
Nylon tips also tend to break less easily and don’t wear down like wood tips do.
Editor’s Note: If you play heavier music such as rock or metal, you may find the tone of the snare drum and tom hits less pleasing, and even worse, the tips can fly off. You could try using some strong glue if this happens, but in my experience, wooden oval tips are the way to go for heavier styles just because the overall sound suits the styles better.
Can I hear an example of the differences between the tips?
You certainly can! Have a watch of this great video that provides real examples of different stick tips in action.
The neck is the thinnest point of the entire drumstick. You’ll find this point just behind the tip of the stick, before the stick thickens and widens.
Thicker stick necks are more durable and likely to make your stick last longer, but this can make the stick feel clunky and unresponsive.
There was a time when drumstick necks would break regularly and the drumstick tips would just fly off, but the reliability of drumsticks has improved greatly over the years.
Most of the time, you don’t need to worry about this one point on the drumstick.
If you’re breaking your sticks a lot, you’ll probably want to choose a larger, thicker drum stick.
The Taper
The taper is where the stick thickens and widens, from the neck all the way up to the shoulder of the stick.
The design of this part of the stick has a big impact on the playability of the stick, giving a stick part of its unique feel when you strike the drum.
All drumsticks have a different “feel” to them.
Sticks that are thinner and longer are often described as highly responsive sticks.
Heavier and shorter sticks provide more power, but are stiffer and harder in the hands.
A shorter taper will favour a drummer who prefers to have more power and a longer taper will favour a drummer who prefers responsiveness.
There’s no right answer when it comes to choosing a style of taper that you like.
It’s likely that you’ll develop a personal preference depending on the music you play and your own playing technique on the drums.
The Shoulder
The shoulder of the stick can be found at the end of the taper, where the taper has reached its thickest point.
The location of the shoulder is determined by how long the taper is.
So the longer a taper is, the further away from the tip the shoulder is.
The shorter the taper is, the closer the shoulder is to the tip.
This part of the stick is mostly used for a single drum technique, which is to “crash” a cymbal.
Rather than playing on the top of a cymbal with the tip, we can get a much warmer and washier sound by striking the side of the cymbal with the shoulder of the stick.
In the video below, you’ll hear the difference that playing a cymbal with the shoulder of the stick produces.
The first time the drummer plays the cymbal, he uses the shoulder.
Tip: When “crashing the cymbal with the shoulder of the stick, make sure to avoid hitting the edge of the cymbal at too sharp an angle.
The stick should never be at 90 degrees like this. Your drumstick (or cymbal!) is likely to break very quickly!
Here’s how your stick should look as you strike the cymbal with the shoulder.
Hitting the crash with the shoulder of the stick
The tip of the stick never touches the cymbal, only the shoulder.
The Shaft/Body
The shaft or body is the main thick section that provides most of the weight to the drumstick.
The thickness and weight of this area will have a big impact on how the stick feels to play.
Thicker sticks, such as 2Bs and 5Bs, will deliver a huge amount of power thanks to their increased weight, but can be difficult to move around the kit.
Lighter sticks, such as 7As, are great for more complex and intricate drumming, but deliver less power.
There are two occasions in which the shaft of the stick comes into contact with the drum.
The first is when using the crosstick technique (shown below) which creates a rim-clicking sound, popular in jazz, ballads and music that requires less volume.
cross stick snare drum hit
In the crosstick technique, the stick is turned around the opposite way to play.
The tip of the stick sits in the centre of the drum; the drummer then controls the stick with a light grip to knock the body/shaft against the rim.
Editor’s Note: You don’t have to switch the stick around, it just sounds cool if you do. If you are playing a piece that requires switching from normal snare to cross stick snare, don’t worry about swapping in the stick around to play the cross stick.
The other time that you would play with the body of the stick would be when playing a rimshot.
snare drum rimshot
When playing a rimshot, you strike the centre of the drum and the rim of the drum simultaneously.
This creates a much more powerful and defined sound, ideal for rock, metal and any genre that requires a punchier style of drumming.
The Butt
The final area of the stick is the butt end, where we will be holding the stick most of the time.
There’s no defined point at which the body of the stick becomes the butt, but we just think of the butt as the end of the stick that is the thickest.
Sometimes, drum companies will put a coloured grip or texture on the butt end to help drummers keep hold of the sticks during intense practice sessions and performances.
On occasion, drummers will turn their sticks around to play with the butt end instead of the tip, to get a heavier, fuller sound.
Some drummers go even further, adding a rimshot to the mix as well as using the butt.
They use the shaft of the stick on the rim while using the butt end to play the centre of the drum.
This creates a truly earth-shaking sound; it delivers even more power for drummers that need to be heard in the noisiest musical situations.
In conclusion
I hope you’ve enjoyed this introductory guide to the different parts of a drumstick.
My advice would be to get yourself down to your local music shop, and experience how the various types of drumsticks feel in reality.
You’ll be able to put this information to practical use and find the ideal pair of sticks that suits your playing style and the music you play – taking your drumming to the next level.
Check out this new drumming blog for more helpful guides: if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to read drum notation, the ‘how to read drum music’ guide is a great place to start.
I play some heavy styles and I have found that it is the only 5A pair that doesn’t break. They are so reliable and they will go on and on if especially if you are playing with good technique and hitting the edge of cymbals with the thicker part of the stick (on the shoulder).
To play these drum beats you must follow a RLRL pattern on the hi hats, and move over to the snare on beats 2 and 4 with the right hand (all opposite for left handers). The bass drum foot is doing all the work here but you will also need to make sure to lock in tight where the bass drum is played together with the left hand on the hi hat, as these can sometimes go out of sync.
As the year draws to an end, we still have 4 weeks of lessons left to prep for exams and I have some Grade 5 drummers taking their exams in Feb/March. To give them a break from their pieces and bolster their playing, reading and listening ability of Grade 5 level, I’ve been getting them to play these 8 drum beats. We’ve done a mixture of reading, groove recall and also playing from memory. The beats are not easy at first, but they get easier. We’ve also expanded the exercises, for example play a crash on the first bar and play each beat 3 times and then make up a drum fill for the 4th bar, either a whole bar or part of the bar.
Coincidentally (not!), I wrote this snare drum warm up this morning for my drum group. We went through it today without reading it but soon it will be a reading exercise. It has most of the basics needed for levels spanning grade 1-5. Lots of different subdivisions in here to practice. You could break up the warm up and just work on one line, or 4 bars, or 1 section at a time.
Breakfast rhythms are great for all primary school ages, and they can be fun for high school and adult ages too to help with the initial barrier of learning the rhythms. By saying the rhythm and seeing it at the same time, you will be associating the sound with how it looks on paper, so eventually you will know that two 16th notes and an 8th note sounds like the word “sausages”, so in the future you may not think of the word sausages but you will know how the rhythm goes instantly when you see them combined on the sheet music.
This sheet is an accompaniment for a book I have made called “First Drum Book – Easy Reading Beats & Fills” (it’s a premium download). This page is not in the book yet but I’m currently going through the book again to improve parts of it. If you download the book now, you’ll get a notification to download the latest version for free when it’s ready.
This sheet will also be very helpful for any of the free snare drum exercises or snare drum sheet music I have posted and also for any of the beats and fills exercises, for help with reading the drum fills.
I’ll never look at the paradiddle in the same way, after a student asked a sporadic question “who created the paradiddle?”. I replied quickly with “Jerry Paraddidle”. After some chuckles at the name and then the rest of the lesson passing, I had to admit at the end that it was a joke! I still don’t know who did, but I’m sure there is info out there.
But is the paradiddle boring?
Well yes and no. It’s how you look at it really. Practicing paradiddles can be boring if you focus on just repeating RLRRLRLL for 10 minutes with a metronome. However, when you look at it as a pattern to unlock a different path to the regular RLRLRLRL, then it’s more interesting because you can move the left and right hands onto different drum voices and make some interesting sounds.
The popularity of the paradiddle can also be limiting in the sense that it’s the go to rudiment. It’s important to keep an open mind with composing and to remember that you can make up your own patterns, in a similar way to the paradiddle, but different. Let’s take the idea of the paradiddle and make new rudiments, new patterns, new standards. Surely there’s other patterns we can be playing. OK let’s give it a go. RRLLLRLRRRL. Any good? Maybe it’s amazing played in an 11/8 time signature. I’ve not tried it, but do you get what I mean?
So anyway, let’s get onto the point of the post. This exercise sheet works with the popular paradiddle and shows how you can make practicing it interesting by moving the accents to toms and cymbals and making up different exercises with it.
The first 3 exercises are all seperate ideas, and then the 4th exercise combines all 3.
The paradiddle features in most of the Rockschool drum grades, so it’s not going away any time soon. You can work on these exercise at any level really, which is why I’ve specified a non specific ’60 to 120bpm’ as the speed. Basically, practice these with or without a metronome at what ever speed seems manageable and then try to increase it each time you go through it, or do it faster next time.
For this exercise sheet, you will need some basic beginners reading knowledge of drum beats and drum fills.
In the exercises, you will play 3 bars of drum beats, 1 bar of a drum fill and then repeat the exercise. There are 4 exercises on the sheet and each one can be played twice, or more times if you like and perhaps the sheet can be revisited on over several practice sessions if needed.
On the first 3 exercises, there are times when there are 2 hi hats on their own with no bass drum or snare drum, so it’s helpful to especially listen out for these two hits whilst playing to avoid missing one of them out, as some learners can do by accident.
All of the drum fills are played on the snare drum only. If there are 2 lines attaching the notes, they are played as 4 fast notes. If there is 1 beam attaching the notes, they are 2 medium speed notes, and if there is one single note on it’s own, it’s 1 single hit lasting for 1 beat. There is also a rests for 1 beat that look like a squiggle on the 3rd exercise’s drum fill, so for that you don’t play anything, and wait for 1 more beat before continuing.
It’s still the summer holidays and most people are taking a well deserved break. I’ve been on holiday and I’m fully relaxed but I have a few lesson days coming up so I’m keeping on with lesson prep and making new material like this. I have made this sheet for some of my drum students to learn and practice over the holidays, which can be done in about 5 minutes and can be easily practiced several times per week.
In this practice routine, we are covering many of the fundamental parts of grade 1 and grade 2 material. First on the sheet we have singles and doubles (left handers need to play the opposite sticking to the ones shown). Whilst we don’t usually learn a proper double strokes technique until about grade 5 level, we still play doubles to get used to it, and you will just be hitting the drum with the same technique as you would for a single hit.
Secondly, we will be accenting (playing louder) the ‘off beat’, which means it’s not on the 1 2 3 4, it’s in between those. You could cound 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +. The accents would then be on every +. Then, moving onto a basic drum beat in the second bar, the accents are played in the same place but this time you play them on the hi hats.
The flams and stepped hi hat section is for building up your stepped hi hat coorination aswell as for practicing the all important flam. Make sure the stick height for the quiet note in the flam is kept quite close to the drum (2 to 4 inches depending on the volume). The stick can start at a much higher position for the loud note in the flam.
For the rhythm/fills section, I have included ‘breakfast rhythm’ counting to help. If you say the words at the same time as playing the rhythm, it should help you. The rhythm on the drum fill is the same as the one in the first bar on the snare drum, so it’s a nice exercise that flows.
Lastly, many students complain about improvisation, so it’s important to practice this until confidence is higher. Start off with really easy drum fills lasting for 1 bar and build up your confidence with each practice.
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