Help me with stick control, plz.

[red n black]

OK, I bought SC yesterday and have been playing from it the whole day. But with my feet. Why? Because I have a problem. It says that you should do each exercise 20 times before moving on, so when I play with my feet I count on my fingers. But my fingers are busy when I play with my hands, so I lose track of how many times I have played.

have any SC tips/tricks?? plz share


:chug:

[Corkofski]

count in your head?

its not hard, and you should be able to.

if not, put it down, and just play 8th notes on yourhannds and count the bars until you can

[red n black]

OK, take the first exercise for example, it's just LRLRLRLR all the way.
pain in the ....

ok, I guess I could count the bars. But it's 40 bars. meh

anyone have a beter idea???

[Loser]

Yeah, count in your head.

[We_Love_Lime]

You could take the beats per minutue your playing, and work that in to 60 minutues... and than do like... yeah,.

[Loser]

You could count with your toes.

[Win A Rabbit]

there's no limit of ONLY playing it 20 times. play each until you're certain you've played it atleast 20, 30, 40, etc times. it's not a book to be rushed through. it will last you your whole life, so you might as well take it slow and play each pattern a few extra times, to get even more accustomed to each one.

[Schism666]

You could set a timer for 3 mins run through the exercise at a certain tempo on your metronome something like 80 and then up the tempo on your metronome, and run through the same exercise again. Thats what i personally do.
Like 'Sic' said its not a book to be rushed through.

[aznriceball]

I know I'm going to get corrected on this but.. you've tried just counting aloud?

[Ellx]

I never play to exactly 20, I usually play untill I get the bar perfect 5 times in a row, which is usually around 20-30. ( Im going to buy it, but for now ive been using a cheap version off the net)

[Electric Requiem]

I never play to exactly 20, I usually play untill I get the bar perfect 5 times in a row, which is usually around 20-30. ( Im going to buy it, but for now ive been using a cheap version off the net)
if you cant get it perfect 20 times in a row then I think youre doing ones that are too hard.

[Josiah]

Yea, count out loud?

You should learn to feel bars going by anyway. That occurs from just lots of counting of bars until the counting becomes internalized.

[milkmit]

You could set a timer for 3 mins run through the exercise at a certain tempo on your metronome something like 80 and then up the tempo on your metronome, and run through the same exercise again. Thats what i personally do.
Like 'Sic' said its not a book to be rushed through.

this is a good idea.

at 80bpm, you will have done exactly 20 bars in one minute (80 beats / 4 beats per bar).

keep doing this math to figure out how long you should play for 20 bars @ 60bpm, 66, 72, 80, etc etc..

yeah, or as everyone else said.. feeling 4 bars isn't that hard at all.. you should be able to sense the end of 4 bars without counting in your head or otherwise, and then just group them up in 5's for 20 total.

[snoop-au]

Set your metronome to 2 bpm - that should be easy to count off :-)

[Ellx]

if you cant get it perfect 20 times in a row then I think youre doing ones that are too hard.
Yea I know what you mean, but what I ment to say was after I do around 20, then get 5 perfect in a row I move on, just to make sure im doing them right. So I usually do around 25.

[some jive turkey]

You have to count the bars in your head. If you can't do that count them out loud.
1234
2234
3234
4234

Counting bars is a skill, & just like anything else, it requires practice. It's one of many thing this book can teach you.

The psychology of learning can be quite deceptive. A lot of times, you may be building skills you didn't know you were building.

For example, Stick Control, page 17, #s 25-31. In a way, what you're really learning to master is in the first bar: F LL F LL, and what's in the second bar is there, kind of like an interesting distraction, it keeps you entertained, and it functions to prolong your attention span to a continued study of the F LL F LL, in the first bar. This isn't to say the second bar exists on it's own level for building skills, but I'm just pointing out that the learning process is multifaceted.

[Chrysler]

lol. You serious? (To Threadstarter)

[fiojamdrummer]

LRLRLRLR LRLRLRLR LRLRLRLR LRLRLRLR etc
1............2............3............4


count like this. I usually tap my right foot on 1, left on 2, right on 3, left on 4 etc and count aloud.

[Zildjian]

My old teacher always said to count out loud and with a metronome, it helps alot

[crazyguy832]

I just play till it feels right and I move on.

Usually at least 45-60 seconds, which at an average speed of 120 means I have played around 20-30 bars, so meh to it all.

[Talos]

Yeah count out loud, it helps more than anything.

[red n black]

Thanks for all the replies.
I know it's not bad to play more then 20 and I most often do, but always when I count I lose track, often somewhere around 10 bars. I have no problem feeling bars when I play clarinet, it's just that when I'm just playing on the snare the sound doesn't change, like with clarinet you have a melody to follow, so I lose track.
I do the:
1234
2234
3234
thing, I still lose track after like 10. I just start at 10 again so it's no biggie, but it bugs me.

EDIT: And with a metronome it's even harder, cuz then I gotta concentrate on that too.

[Win A Rabbit]

just keep working on it, and eventually you'll get the feel for 4 bars. it's hard to explain, but when the 4th bar comes around, you should hear a sort of "resolve" feeling. practice practice practice. it'll all come naturally eventually.

[Josiah]

Thanks for all the replies.
I know it's not bad to play more then 20 and I most often do, but always when I count I lose track, often somewhere around 10 bars. I have no problem feeling bars when I play clarinet, it's just that when I'm just playing on the snare the sound doesn't change, like with clarinet you have a melody to follow, so I lose track.
I do the:
1234
2234
3234
thing, I still lose track after like 10. I just start at 10 again so it's no biggie, but it bugs me.

EDIT: And with a metronome it's even harder, cuz then I gotta concentrate on that too.


Well if you can make it to 5 2 3 4.. then you just need to play that 4 times.. or go to 4 2 3 4, five times...

[some jive turkey]

Yeah, counting does take practice.
Working with a click takes practice.
Doing them together takes practice.

When I work in stick control I like to count in groups of 8.
To me, that's more musically applicable than groups of 5.

I usually just count to 8 three times through, so I do each 24 times, no big deal. Sometimes I go well beyond that until the feel of it noticably improves. 3x8 also gives me a couple oppurtunities to change metronome speed. Sometimes when I use this book, I'm just all over the metronome: faster, super-slow, random. If I play something 8 times through and it's decidedly easy, I'll jack up the tempo for the remaining two groups of 8. It's just one my ways of using this book.

I can feel 4 bars, I can feel 8 bars. I can even feel 12 bars, but after that it's abstract.