- Hi there, I'm Jason Sutter on Drumeo.
And today, I'd like to talk a little bit about
practicing quietly and being able to work on your hands
without disturbing other people.
You know, in our, with out instrument, it's often
difficult to find places to practice and times to practice
when you're away from a practice room or a drum,
where you're not making too much sound.
And so, I found a great tool that I've been working with
since I was in high school is the wire brush,
and it's often overlooked as an instrument,
just for a drum set and for playing in general,
but also for practice, I felt like the wire brush,
for me, has really served me well.
It's a great tool that you can practice on, you can
keep your technique up, you can work on rudiments,
you can work on all kinds of different conditioning
for your muscles and your fingers and wrists,
but at the same time, you can be doing it in silence.
So kind of a cool tool for that.
I'm gonna demonstrate that on a just
run of the mill pizza box.
Back when I was in college, this actually served me
quite well.
I did a lot of practice on one of these things
because I could practice late at night in my dorm room,
or if I was, say, busking on the street corner,
I could take this out, practice, and then,
when I was done playing with, say, an upright bass player
and a saxophonist, I could just throw it away.
I'm gonna show you just a couple basic things.
Take, say, a paradiddle, just a basic paradiddle.
And it doesn't have to just be a pizza box.
It could be a book, you could do it on, I've done it on
garbage cans, waiting for a sound check, y'know,
like a tall garbage can that has a little bit of surface,
I can kind of warm up on it.
But anyway, here's an example.
Let's say just, basically, take a paradiddle.
(drumming)
And the great thing about a brush is that it doesn't bounce,
you're really required to use your fingers and your wrist
and it's a great way of kind of getting blood in there
if you're trying to warm up before a gig, say,
and it's quiet, and you have nowhere to go,
or even audition, y'know?
So, for me, and you can also, obviously, get basic
brush strokes with a pizza box, y'know?
It's basically like wonderful little drum
that actually has food inside of it.
Kind of awesome.
And it's cheap, it's free!
So anyway, the pizza box, different rudiments.
Another great technique I found in college is also actually
practicing away from the drum entirely with brushes
where you actually just kind of hold them directly
off your wrists, and with this, you can hear if I play
double stops, I'll play sixteenth notes.
A paradiddle.
With an accent.
Right, what that does is, you basically have an imaginary
drum, it doesn't hurt your arms, and it forces you
to use your wrist and your fingers, so it's a really great
way of practicing silently and really really conditioning
your hands and building up your fingers and your wrists.
So, anyway.
That's just some different variations on practicing
with wire brushes anywhere and at any time,
and it's a great way to kind of keep the blood flowing
and keep kind of moving forward regardless of the setting.
Yeah, so have fun with it.
I'm gonna play a solo right now, here on a pizza box,
just a little thing, just to give you an example of
some different techniques and kind of
the fun you can have with it.
I hope you dig it.
(drum solo)
And, when you're done, you can just...
Throw it away.
Anyway, if you liked this, feel free to check out
Drumeo.com, where I do an entire brush lesson,
and thanks again for checking it out.