Floppy Hands
There’s a more in-depth version of this article on our Drum 101 course – hopefully this is enough to get you started though! To play drums you need to have nice floppy hands. Lift your arm up with the top of your hand pointing upwards. Now move your arm up and down and keep your wrist relaxed – your wrist should just naturally flop up and down to follow your arm. This is the motion we’re going to make use of when you hold a pair of drum sticks.
Picking Up The Drum Sticks For the First Time!
Put your sticks on the snare drum and leave them there for a minute. Sit on your drum stool behind your kit and dangle your hands at your sides like this:
Remember, good posture, straight back, floppy everything else. Give your hands a little shake while they hang by your sides – they should be completely relaxed. The palms of your hands should be pointing behind you and the tops of your hands should be pointing towards the kit. Now, bring your lower arms up so they’re horizontal, like this:
That’s going to be your default playing position. Put your sticks in your hands and you should find that you’re naturally in what’s known as ‘German grip’ with the sticks at around 90 degrees to each other. If in doubt, play in this position to start with. You will naturally shift to different grips such as American and French grip as you move around the kit. Avoid traditional grip for now.
Want to learn the drums properly?
If you want to know more about drum kit posture and how to hold drum sticks head over our Drum 101 site. You can follow a full structured training course and online drum lessons to get you started on the drum kit.
