also congrats on your anniversary!!
― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Tuesday, 19 December 2023 19:57 (six months ago) link
Thanks! I was using the thumb and pointer finger as the primary fulcrum with the other fingers more free to do finger control stuff, but it felt inconsistent and on my right (non-dominant) hand I was still having trouble with a lot of things. I had the revelation when I strapped on the snare to practice for these gigs (which I almost never do), when I started using the back fulcrum and found that I was getting the consistent rimshots and volume (while still being relaxed) that I was looking for.
There's a famous Tony Williams clinic where he talks about this, but it never quite made sense to me since it seemed like a rigid way of playing. But it seems to me you can use the back fulcrum (or a middle finger fulcrum, where it's sort of a triangle between the thumb + first finger + middle finger) and still have rebound. That's what I'm working on anyways. And almost immediately my stroke started to look & feel better, more integrated with the wrist movement, less to think about, more consistency across different surfaces.
It's hard to find drummers who teach this, but I also heard Nate Wood very briefly say in an interview that he switched to a ring/pinky finger fulcrum three years ago and that he wished he had done it a long time ago, that it's a better way to play drums. Everybody's hands & brains are different though.
I'm still trying to figure out how this works when playing the ride cymbal (ie switching to french grip and playing jazz patterns) though, if I move back to more of a pointer/middle finger fulcrum or can keep the same grip.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, 19 December 2023 20:30 (six months ago) link
Btw I reserve the right to repudiate all of this in the future. :) Maybe this will be a blind alley, or a situational tool for certain kinds of playing.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, 20 December 2023 18:01 (six months ago) link
Here's Nate Wood talking about it in depth with Mark Guiliana (who clearly does something completely different, which goes to show that there's no one way):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCAQkeqCs54
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, 20 December 2023 18:44 (six months ago) link
I was on the Cities And Memory podcast stream yesterday - doing what I would do if I could record inside the abandoned submarine pens at Kotor, Macedonia: https://audioboom.com/posts/8419423-kotor-bay
― Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 21 December 2023 22:07 (six months ago) link
that's a cool idea for a podcast and your track sounds awesome
― budo jeru, Thursday, 21 December 2023 23:30 (six months ago) link
What budo said. I am listening my way through close to 500 of these recordings now. Yours was a highlight.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 22 December 2023 15:23 (six months ago) link
Re: what I was blathering on about above, I've already gravitated more towards using the middle finger as a primary fulcrum rather than the back fingers, there's more bounce and it's easier to go back and forth with the ride cymbal if I'm playing jazz. But either way has helped my wrist motion a lot, and gives a lot more control & power than relying on thumb & first finger and letting all the other fingers move with the stick. It's hard to explain but I'm still letting the stick move in the hand & rebound, and I'm working on more freely moving between the different fulcra for different situations.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, 27 December 2023 17:25 (five months ago) link
i made this short instrumental alt tuning guitar piece i'm happy with. i tend to not have the patience to see a chord progression through but this one came together nicely. i feel like it could use a soft bed of noise underneath or something. suggestions welcome: https://on.soundcloud.com/Va2jV5iQ2rvZBDdn8
― Comfortably numbnuts (Heez), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 15:00 (two months ago) link
vault stuff. multi-part vaporpop suite. shoutout to js.
― interstellar anthropologist+music philosopher, (Austin), Tuesday, 28 May 2024 17:24 (four weeks ago) link
i love that!
@heez - way late but that's a lovely song would love to hear more
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 4 June 2024 17:11 (three weeks ago) link
back on a very tenuous basis, the spectral REprojections compilation is bandcamp-only. overlapping with the philomath material quite often, we nicknamed it "beyond benton." if philomath represents the bustling center of the galaxy from which this music originated, the REprojections are the farthest edges of where you might end up; related by coincidence more than anything.
something tangible+based in reality about all this music is that it was recorded in late 19-summer 20, so right in the initial wave of covid/lockdown. not meant to be sad or depressing, just a statement of fact: it's what was coming out of my brain as the last semblance of any sanity slipped away. sure does sound nice sometimes, considering.
― interstellar anthropologist+music philosopher, (Austin), Friday, 21 June 2024 00:25 (four days ago) link