I'm gonna show you how to play the French grip technique to make you a
faster and better drummer coming right up
welcome my name is Cameron and if you're new to this channel and you want free
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bell so you don't miss a thing a common question that I get is about stick
technique and grip so I'm going to show you the techniques I use for the French
grip and I'm also going to provide you an exercise that'll make you a faster
and better drummer the very first thing we need to look at is the finger
positioning on our drumsticks what I mean by that is let's say you're still
using your fingers but you still burn out quickly and you can't play as long
I'll show you a really interesting thing that's happening with that let's take a
closer look for starters you're gonna want to take your hand and make an L
with it like this and we're gonna set the drumstick inside of that first joint
of the index finger rate in here we then take our thumb and pinch over top or
before the index finger like this that's kind of drastic like that
this step is to really set up the rest of our hand so that we can make sure the
stick sits properly in the right spot of our hand when holding the drumstick in
the French grip position like this our thumb is facing upward we're not moving
it off to the side completely so that our palm is facing down that is called
the German grip and in between the French and the German on a slight angle
like this is called the American grip but I'll get to that in some later
videos and we'll talk more about those techniques next thing we want to do is
curl these three fingers around the stick like this and now we have our
basic position for the French grip a lot of drummers use the index finger and the
thumb as the fulcrum using the remainder of the fingers to control the rebound
it's not wrong however you lose the ability to take advantage of another
finger to add more power and a lot more control to your stroke instead of doing
that try pushing down with the thumb by using a little bit of wrist motion then
use the other four fingers to propel the stick ensuring we have full control and
rebound from the stick
you see here how the fingers open up after impact that's exactly what we're
trying to achieve with this technique furthermore you pull the stick back into
your hand with your fingers now there's a lot more to this technique than just
knowing how to place your fingers on the drumstick so keep watching and stick
around for an exercise that I use personally to strengthen my fingers and
metal drumming we use the efficiency and the strength and our fingers to help us
play longer with more endurance at faster tempos more often than not I see
a lot of drummers using this technique it's not necessarily incorrect however
you can get more power out of this grip by doing some simple exercises and by
doing this instead we should consider using the full range of motion with our
fingers this is much like I talked about in a previous video about the ankle
motion and I'll link that up here so you can check it out after this video
instead of doing the small range of motion with your hand like this and
barely getting any volume you want to be able to open your fingers up all the way
like this instead of making small movements you want a lot of power behind
this so practice that now to do this we'll place the stick in our hand like
normal and we'll just practice the rebound your stick will pretty much go
straight up and down if you let it but if you want to control it obviously do
it like this but it is also much more important that we focus on the release
of the stick and by doing that will increase our ability to play louder for
longer all right now the moment you've all been waiting for the exercise I've
been telling you about that I use it is from Ricky Sebastian and Marco Minnemann
it's their finger isolation exercise to simply put it you isolate each finger
for eight bars so you use your fulcrum then you sleep
through so you got your middle finger your ring finger and then your pinky now
I was down in New York City at the collective School of Music a couple
weeks ago and I was shown this by a few friends Tobias Ralph Alex Cohen John
Longstreet and Luis Santiago jr. here is how the exercise goes now just a quick
note if we're playing with the ring finger here and make sure to keep and
maintain fulcrum on the drumstick with your thumb and your index finger you
then slowly work your way through each finger and then you play with both hands
doing the same thing at the same time if you want keep playing along with me and
we'll do it without a metronome just for starters to get you accustomed to the
motions now this exercise is intended to be practiced for a long period of time
take it slow at first practice it 20 minutes a day and obviously start with
your weak hand because that's the one that needs strengthening the most give
yourself a few weeks and you'll see yourself progressively attaining faster
speeds for longer I've got more videos on hand exercises you should check out
up here and the playlist above to learn more about drumming and drumming related
things start now by clicking the round subscribe icon below so you don't miss a
thing thanks so much I'm Cameron and I'll see you in the next video