Practice Tips

HAND MOTIONS AND RHYTHMS

10.06.21 / Mark Perrett
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When you drum your hands move up and down, and this is called HAND MOTIONS. And when you play rhythms, your hand motions follow the rhythms you play.

And the rule is, the faster the rhythm, the faster the hand motions. 

But when we play rolls, the rhythms gets faster, but the hand motions stay the same. This is because rolls allow you to play 2 notes in the space of one hand motion. Now this is all pretty straight forward, but sometimes your hand motions will slow down but the rhythm will speed up.

For example, if we go from 16th Notes to Triplets, the hand motions slow down, and so does the rhythm. But if we play 16th notes into a triplet roll, the hand motions slow down but the rhythm speeds up. 

And for beginning players this gets confusing because you hear the rhythms get faster and more exciting, but really you need to lay back and maintain the hand motions of the triplet.

The video above shows an example of this. Watch how the hand motions (keep an eye on the forearms) stay the same in the triplet roll, as the rhythms go faster than the 16th notes before it.

Hope this helps! Keep getting better!

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