Not only does bad technique make it more of an effort to play the drums, but it can hurt you as well – sometimes enough to stop you from playing altogether.

I have seen these problems come up with various students through the years. These patterns make it clear that drummers are risking injury by continuing to play with bad posture or technique.

Problem: Tension injury

The types of injuries from bad technique can range from your wrist and forearm all the way up to your shoulder. Tension is especially notorious for causing problems not only in the trouble area, but beyond that as well. Some drummers pinch the stick too hard, and others seem to have a disconnection between their fingers and the moving stick.

A tense grip is usually responsible for technique-related injuries, but that’s not always the case. You could harbor tension in your shoulders, which then affects your forearm or wrist. According to kinesiology professor Dr. Nadia Azar, the combination of repetition and force can cause injuries like tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

“Excessive muscle tension reduces blood flow to the muscles. As a result, less oxygen and nutrients are delivered to the muscle and less waste is removed, which leads to fatigue. Positioning your joints away from their neutral/resting position places additional stress on your tissues (such as pinching or overstretching) and puts your muscles at a mechanical disadvantage by reducing the amount of force they can produce, so they fatigue more quickly.”

How to prevent it: Loosen up

While repetition is unavoidable for drummers (take regular breaks while practicing to lower your risk of injury), you can prevent many problems by using less force. It’s key to work on releasing the tension wherever it emanates from. I use specific exercises to bring about a high tuned awareness and slowly shift the body to give it a more relaxed approach.

Make sure your fingers follow the stick as it moves. Repositioning the stick can also make a difference. I use the Moeller method for better fluidity from your shoulder (ball and socket) down to your elbow (hinge) and wrist (hinge). Building choreography that complements the mechanics of your body – combined with using balance, bounce and gravity to ‘let the stick play you’ – will make it easier to play with less tension.

You can read more about this (and see a video demonstration) in the article “How To Fix Bad Drum Technique”.

Problem: Lower back pain

Seating posture can be crucial to one’s health. Poor posture – along with muscle tension – can lead to other issues such as lower back problems, shoulder problems, and possibly hip problems. According to Dr. Azar, “When your postural muscles (e.g. the ones that help you sit up straight and keep your shoulder blades back and down) are fatigued, it becomes much more difficult to maintain proper posture, so your mechanics begin to suffer. And again, positioning your joints away from their resting position can cause problems. Not only can these things potentially lead to an injury, it can also cause your performance quality to suffer – and no one wants that!”

How to prevent it: Change position

Not only should you position yourself for better posture, you should set up your drums as ergonomically as possible. Think of the drum set as an extension of your body. When you sit down, your legs should be evenly spaced and your feet resting comfortably just ahead of your knees. Start with your throne, pedals, and snare drum. Make the adjustments you need to be comfortable, which means everything is easily accessible so you don’t need to reach, twist or strain.

When sitting at the kit, have your hips higher than your knees, so when lifting each leg it doesn’t come above the hip and strain your lower back. You should also have the ankle slightly in front of the knee to open up the range of motion to the ankle. If you have your ankle directly below your knee, try pulling your toes toward your shin. It’s not very comfortable. Now, place your ankle slightly in front of the knee – you’ll find that you have an easier flex back.

The sooner you can get your technique and posture to the place of least resistance, the more likely it is that you’ll have many more years of drumming ahead of you.

I looked at my brother squarely and said, “We gotta go to Europe.”

At the time, we were a bit frustrated with where we were at in our career. It wasn’t all bad; we had great reviews, and we had two records with MCA Jazz and two with Blue Moon Records (real records with real budgets, back in the day when that still happened). But even with all of the press and airplay, we just weren’t manifesting the level of touring that I wanted. Many of my influences were on ECM, a label in Germany. I knew about the respect this kind of music earned in Europe, and I felt that was the most appropriate place to be.

Seven months after that car ride, we were there.

I think back on it now and wonder how the hell did I do that? These days, if my wife and I were to think about moving to another state, we’d be carefully making plans. But when I moved to Europe?

“Bro, pack up your stuff – we’re going!”

Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. As a musician, taking chances is part of it. You don’t want to get stuck in your comfort zone, and be fearful of stepping out or trying something different.

Before we moved, everything seemed to line up under a really peculiar set of circumstances. My mother has Dutch citizenship, but was born and raised in Indonesia. She was a POW from 1941-1945. When the war ended, she and her family left to go back to Holland. It was later that she met my American father.

We traveled all the time. We had relatives in the Netherlands and in Germany (Mom’s mom was German), and we’d visit these people quite often. So when my brother and I decided to move to Europe, we thought we’d reach out to these relatives for help. We really didn’t have a concrete plan.

But in February of 1992, I saw an advertisement at a little club where I used to host events – a hip, independent coffee shop that featured jazz music. The ad said “Dutch bass player looking for work.” I met him by chance and he had a friend who was in town visiting for two months. A week later, we started getting to know the friend and he ended up staying with us.

At one point he started saying, “Oh, you gotta come visit my city. I’m from Antwerp.” He kept throwing out this offer. As time went on, I started seriously considering it. Maybe we’ll just go there and see what the adventure leads to. He had a two-bedroom apartment above a bar in the heart of Antwerp. Between four of us, we would eventually each pay just $75 a month in rent.

We now had a place to stay, and things started to line up after that. The president of our label, Jim Snowden gave us money to ship our gear and purchased our carnet. He even bought my plane ticket. My dad worked for an airline and landed us some great deals.

We were going to fly to Brussels. My brothers and family call me ‘Bru’, and coincidentally, the tag for the Brussels airport is BRU.

I thought, cool – this is my airport.

After the move, things didn’t happen quickly, but they happened. I met so many drummers I would’ve never met had I not gone to Europe: Tony Arco in Milan, René Creemers, Bruno Meeus, Jojo Mayer.

I was in this mode of traveling between Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. I was asked to be the head of the drum department of the now defunct American Institute of Music, in Vienna. I had a gig with a famous organist, Barbara Dennerlein from Munich. René Creemers even brought me out to do some workshops at the Conservatory in Tilburg and the Conservatory in Arnhem (both in the Netherlands).

None of these things would have happened if I didn’t make the move. I also wouldn’t have experienced a deeper relationship with my drum teacher, Freddie Gruber.

None of these things would have happened if I hadn’t made the move.

Freddie was so knocked out of his head that I was leaving Los Angeles that he was freaking out. We were close. I was his first call guy, his pick-up-food, take-to-airport, always-reliable guy. If you knew Freddie, you knew he just didn’t go anywhere. But two months after arriving in Belgium, he came to visit.

Dealing with him was always a challenging affair.

At one point, Freddie, my brother and I were driving to the DW distributor located about two-and-a-half hours from Antwerp. I knew where it was, but actually getting there by car was another story. I would get stuck on a one-way street, or go the wrong way, or have to get around a construction site. After a while, Freddie started badgering me from the back seat.

“This don’t look right, man.”

“I think you fucked up, man.”

“Do you know where you’re going, man?”

After 30 minutes, there was steam coming out of my ears. We saw a landmark park by the Rijk’s Museum. I pulled over.

“Get out of my car.”

Freddie looked at me. “What?”

“David, stay here with Freddie and I’ll be back in an hour.”

After I drove away, Freddie apparently looked at my brother and said, “Jesus Christ, David! What did your father do to Bruce?”

“The same thing your father did to you, Freddie.”

–

He came to visit me a few times. We would do Musikmesse in Frankfurt (basically the NAMM of Europe), and Koblenz Drum Fest. We met the guys from Drums & Percussion Magazine, Slagwerkkrant (the Dutch Drum mag), store guys, school guys. During that first trip, Freddie was having a hard time acclimating to the cultural changes. He was also upset because no one really knew who he was; it was kind of a pride thing. We did a couple of clinics together where I would play and Freddie would pontificate. He wasn’t the most focused guy, so I’d have to rein him in sometimes.

“Don’t be a fucking wise guy,” I’d warn him. “They aren’t going to get your sense of humor. Be straight up. If you’re just doing schtick, nobody is going to ‘get’ it.” On one occasion I got him to deliver – still cryptic, but his tone of voice was open and giving.

Freddie originally had plans to go to London, but he had to blow them off because he fell down my stairs and dislocated his shoulder.

We were chilling out at my place one night, listening to this Bill Evans record, Explorations. Freddie wanted to smoke some black tar hash. You take a pin and put the hash on it, and slide it through a card or something. You put a glass on it, light it, then take the glass off and inhale the smoke. It was two or three o’clock in the morning.

I said, “Freddie, I gotta go to bed. There’s a light on this side of the hall; it’s a timed light. Hit it here. On the bathroom side, hit the light outside the door so you can see where you’re going.”

Right outside of that bathroom, if you took the wrong step, you’d go straight down a narrow and steep flight of stairs.

When Freddie fell down that flight at around 4 o’clock in the morning, it woke my brother and I out of a dead sleep. “What the hell was that?”

All you could hear from the bottom of the stairs was, “Jesus Christ, goddamnit…”

We had to bring Freddie to Emergency while he was freaking out. As it turns out, he didn’t break anything, but I had to tie his sling the rest of the trip.

My brother always joked with Freddie that he spent so many days bitching, the ghost of Buddy Rich pushed him down the stairs.

–

That first time Freddie came to visit, we spent almost three weeks together. His girlfriend, Cindy joined us for the last few days. She was 30-something years his junior. They were like Alice and Ralph fighting in The Honeymooners; I had to put up with their yelling.

When the trip came to an end, I dropped them off on the curbside of Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Freddie looked back at me like I was a father leaving my kid at summer camp.

“Who’s going to tie my sling?”

I said, “You have Cindy.”

“She can’t do anything,” he grumbled.

“Bye, Freddie!”

I lived in Europe from ‘92 to ‘97. Part of that journey opened my eyes to a much larger landscape of the drumming and educational community. I saw how much interconnectivity there was, even before the internet became popular.

Following an idea on a whim was monumental in my life, not only as a player, but as an educator. I had a better flavor for how it all works. I’d come back to America and guys would say “How do you do that?” and I’d try to explain, but everyone has their own journey.

If you’re a musician sitting back and waiting for the perfect scenario, it ain’t gonna happen. Go and take chances. Think about where you want to go, and just go and do it. If you want to become successful, it’s all about laying it on the line. Have a vision of what you want to do, and don’t worry about going in order from steps 1-4. You might have to do step 4, then step 2. There’s no straight line.

You don’t think; you just do it.

If you’re open to the experience, I think things will line up for you. If I were to sit back now and calculate going to Europe and doing it the way I did, it would never happen. I’d be frozen in fear. No one was going to bring me to Europe. Maybe if I’d waited, but I don’t think so. It’s hard to say. I said “I gotta do this”, and got it together.

Sometimes you have an idea, and you just beeline it. You don’t think; you just do it.

Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. Think about the odds he had. A bodybuilder with a thick Austrian accent? Look at what he achieved as an actor in America.

Whether it’s putting together a project or taking an opportunity, don’t think about how hard it’s going to be. Just start doing it. Make the steps. You know no one is going to do it for you.

Right?

Bruce Becker

If you want to start playing polyrhythms – or just improve your creativity around the kit – start with technique guru Bruce Becker’s 7-7-5-5-3-3-2 exercise. It consists of paradiddles and paradiddle diddles:

• The 7 is a paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle diddle (RLRR LRLL RLRR LL).
• The 5 is a paradiddle paradiddle diddle (RLRR LRLL RR).
• The 3 is a paradiddle diddle (RLRR LL).
• The 2 is a single paradiddle (RLRR).

The sticking for the entire phrase should look like this:

RLRR LRLL RLRR LL (7)
RLRR LRLL RLRR LL (7)
RLRR LRLL RR (5)
LRLL RLRR LL (5)
RLRR LL (3)
RLRR LL (3)
RLRR (2)

But we’re counting 16th notes in 4/4, so it becomes a tracking exercise. Because the accents become syncopated, you’ll have to count along with the 16th notes and not lose yourself within the sticking.

This exercise will help you expand your polyrhythmic range, even though it’s still in 4/4.

Want to take this further? Try putting the accents on the toms. Or put the accents on the cymbals with a bass drum hit beneath each accent to add even more polyrhythmic feel to it. You could also put your accents on the snare drum, with everything else alternating on the toms.

Whether you’re laying this down on a practice pad or exploring new variations on the kit, Bruce Becker’s exercises can help you take your technical game to the next level.

Sign up for Drum Technique Made Easy to get more of the guru’s secrets!

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Bruce plays:
DW Drums
Zildjian Cymbals
Evans Drumheads
Vic Firth Drumsticks

About Bruce:
An educator for over 30 years, Bruce Becker’s studies with Freddie Gruber influenced his approach to drum education. His reputation has led heavy hitters like David Garibaldi, Mark Schulman, Daniel Glass, Glen Sobel, and many more to seek his teachings. Founding member and drummer of the David Becker Tribune, Bruce has recorded and co-produced 10 critically acclaimed recordings. His game-changing 26-week online course, Drum Technique Made Easy, is available on Drumeo.
 

Drum Technique Made Easy: www.Drumeo.com/technique/

In his 30-plus years of education, Bruce Becker has seen many drummers approach playing in harmful ways. It could mean developing an injury, or not being able to execute exactly what you hear in your head.

Since Bruce isn’t there in person to show you exactly what you’re doing wrong, here are three tips to help you push your technique forward:

1. Find the balance of the stick

Find that place of balance where the stick will bounce without you having to struggle or fight against it. This is how you can get the most bang for your buck, so to speak. Make it easy and take the path of least resistance. Once you find this balance point, you can play around with it.

Don’t pinch and apply too much pressure. Some drummers wedge their stick deep into their hand and end up gripping too hard. Find the balance and see if that gets you closer to the feel you’re looking for.

2. Find the motion

What comes down must also come up. Find the cycle of movement to come up and down easily, and use that element to choreograph your motions. Learn to let go, find the fanning or waving nature of the stick and wrists, and use this to your advantage. You wouldn’t want to play 16th notes from your forearm – it won’t be long before your arm starts to give out.

Every rudiment has up and down strokes. Loosen up and find the flow.

3. Connect the fingers to the stick

If you hold the stick where your fingers can’t move naturally with it, this creates some movement flaws that can interrupt what you’re trying to execute. Use a fulcrum wrist bounce: with the fulcrum in German position, your middle fingers helping your index fingers and thumbs and working in sync with your wrist, you can really open up the stroke.

Let your fingers follow the body of the stick with every note. Don’t let them move away from the stick, and create that harmony of movement.

Combining these three tips can really set you on the path to push forward with your technique. If you understand that up-down dynamic, get a good bounce, and reposition your sticks, it can make a huge difference.

If you liked this short video, Bruce’s Drum Technique Made Easy course is full of hundreds of tips like this, plus demos and skills you can apply to your playing right away.

Follow Bruce:
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Bruce plays:
DW Drums
Zildjian Cymbals
Evans Drumheads
Vic Firth Drumsticks

Sometimes you wake up, grab a brush, and put on a little makeup. And sometimes you wake up as Bruce Becker, pick up your drumsticks, and head to the Drumeo studio to lay down one of the best-known tracks by System Of A Down.

Today is Bruce’s 60th birthday! And, of course, whether you’re 30, 60, or 90, age doesn’t actually matter when it comes to playing drums. When your body and mind is ready to go, you can make virtually any song happen. Just don’t forget your morning routine!

If you liked this cover of Chop Suey by System of a Down, check out Bruce’s tips on how to improve fluidity on the drums, or one of his inspiring lessons.
 

Follow Bruce:
Facebook
Instagram

Bruce plays:
DW Drums
Zildjian Cymbals
Evans Drumheads
Vic Firth Drumsticks

About Bruce:
An educator for over 30 years, Bruce Becker’s studies with Freddie Gruber influenced his approach to drum education. His reputation has led heavy hitters like David Garibaldi, Mark Schulman, Daniel Glass, Glen Sobel, and many more to seek his teachings. Founding member and drummer of the David Becker Tribune, Bruce has recorded and co-produced 10 critically acclaimed recordings.

Drum Technique Made Easy: www.Drumeo.com/technique/

Ever wanted to improve your fluidity of movement? Improve your speed? Have way more control on the drums? In this video, Bruce Becker will introduce you to the Moeller Method.