Positively Productive Pad Practice
Are you stuck at home without a drum set, but you still have the insatiable desire to further develop your drumming skills? Do you possess a practice pad and a pair of sticks? Well then, here’s some good news…
There are actually LOTS of really effective ways to use a practice pad to improve and push fundamentals such as technique, coordination, and chops overall (ability to play with confidence). So, here are a few exercises that can scale in difficulty according to your abilities. These will help you hone your skills in between your drum lessons at our music school near Somerville.
Technique: Double strokes & 3-stroke snap
Let’s say you want to improve your double strokes. A great way to build your control with doubles is to accent the second stroke of each hand. Keep the first stroke as low as possible. This exercise trains you to lift the sticks with an upstroke, where the stick starts in a low position and ends in a high position, and use more of a relaxed throwing motion for downstrokes.
If you feel good snapping the sticks up and throwing them down, try to sneak another tap in with your upstroke. So now each hand plays 3 consecutive strokes with one fluid motion. Still accent the last stroke.
Coordination: Gridding patterns between hands
We could also use pad practice to improve coordination between our hands. Start by playing steady 8th notes with your right hand, as if it were playing the hihats, and then play the first 2 16th notes of each beat with your left hand. Then, play the left hand starting a 16th note later. Keep bumping the left hand back until it starts at the beginning of the beat again.
If you find that’s not challenging enough, try playing a 3-16th rhythm with your right hand (Like 1e&, 2e&, 3e&, 4e&) and then cycle through those left-hand patterns.
If THAT’S not challenging enough, then play the 3-16th rhythm with your left hand, and play the 2-16th rhythms with your right hand. Doing so will also strengthen your weaker hand in the process.
Chops: Single paradiddles + paradiddle-diddle-diddles
Pad practice is a great chance to build your “chops,” which is a hip way to describe playing with lots confidence AND control. Mixing together different rudiments and patterns, and then gradually building the speed at which you can play them, is a simple and effective way to build chops. And they don’t need to be complex patterns. Simple patterns work just fine.
For this exercise, play 2 beats of single paradiddles, and then a paradiddle-diddle-diddle. That’s right, 3 diddles. Altogether, it’ll be 2 measures of 16th notes. The sticking is RLRR LRLL RLRR LLRR, and then it flips so everything leads with the left hand: LRLL RLRR LRLL RRLL.
The difficulty increases the faster you play this combination. At a certain point, you’ll really need to make use of your back fingers and rebound strokes to attain higher speeds. Start by playing the exercise at 60 bpm. If that’s not challenging enough, then push it 120 bpm. If you feel really fast and confident, try it at 180 bpm.
So those are a few different ways to effectively use a practice pad to improve technique, coordination, and chops. Work at a pace that’s comfortable for you to get the most out of each exercise.
But these exercises are just the tip of the iceberg. What’s next? How do the above concepts transfer to the drum set? How can you take these exercises to a more advanced level? Schedule a trial drum lesson with one of our awesome instructors to find the answers. Learn more by clicking the button below!