World record drummer with Rob Scallon

Playing Technique
#1

Rob Scallon did a video last month featuring the world record holder for most single stroke drum beats in a minute (Tom Grosset), beating out Mike Mangini. Given that we are similarly aficionados for moving our hands back and forth very quickly, I thought it’d be interesting to share and discuss.

Things I saw that I thought were noteworthy: the motion that Tom uses is definitely either dart thrower or reverse dart thrower (I can never remember which is which). Definitely proof that you can get extremely fast movement with it.

He advocates the “start slow and build up” approach, which I think makes sense - I feel like it’s definitely a viable means of building speed provided the movement you’re starting with is efficient, which is why stuff like piano, violin, drums etc all advocate it - they have a sufficiently established pedagogy that they start with movements that are efficient and can be sped up and as such they can start slow without having to worry about hitting an early plateau, provided they’re stringent with keeping to that motion. Unfortunately, plectrum guitar doesn’t have that pedagogy (until now, that is) so we have to start with speed to make sure that the motion we’re working on can work at that speed.

I think his comments about endurance are also super worth looking into - being able to tremolo pick for long periods is a valuable skill as well.

#2

Tom Grosset plays from an American grip, which is dart-thrower (radial extension and ulnar flexion) wrist action. There is some elbow involvement because the radial wrist extensor (extensor carpi radialis longus) has secondary function in elbow flexion

I’ve only recently started practicing drum rudiments on a practice pad, but I’ve been watching drum instructional videos for years and my father is a good drummer. When drummers practice, they get better. When guitarists practice, we get frustrated. I wanted to understand why.

Drums movements are learned slowly, but the movements are large, powerful and easy. They establish and maintain strong connection of their movements to their internal clocks, and they include powerful accents while practicing.

2 Likes
#3

I second the notion (ha ha) that if you take someone with good body awareness-- BJJ player, breakdancer, gymnast, or athlete in general, and coach them what RDT wrist motion should “feel” like, you could start slow and work up to speed provided the coach is observing the smoothness and direct, correct trajectory of the motion. It’s what I did-- I learned 2:00 RDT after I knew how to pick with my forearm, so I knew what easy movements with potential for high speed “felt” like (a semester learning the Alexander Technique helped a lot), and I set up a mirror to observe my upstroke rest strokes and clearly escaped downstrokes. If you’re self taught and don’t have access to Troy’s resources, you could think string hopping “feels” right because you probably aren’t looking at your right hand and don’t know what easy really feels like.

1 Like
#4

When I’m teaching, much of my early work with student’s is focused on lowering their background tension and increasing their tactile and kinaesthetic sensitivity. Telling people to “do what feels right” is the best advice possible when they know what right feels like, but until then, it’s useless. Most people just don’t know what right feels like yet, and often they aren’t sensitive enough to recognise it when it happens.