Kirstin

I've not paid a lot of attention to Zak Starkey as I'am not an avid The Who or The Offspring listener. I've seen him in the past playing a standard setup but a more recent clip I just watched shows that he's moved his HH over to the right side of his kit. I haven't gotten a good view of what else might be going on with his setup but he's apparently moved to a variation of OH playing.

@Eyal Do you feel like things are starting to improve at this point? Hands and feet growing more accustomed to the new style and layout? Regarding that drumming example video I posted for you, I've currently set myself two challenges, though not at the same time. Challenge 1. Now that I have a pattern of voices that supports OH playing, I now need to play it proficiently the way @Stephen does in his video to gain all the benefits. Meaning no gaps between while adding voices. His instruction is a timing exercise as much as it is about adding voices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv3f1Emdn2w&t=16s This will take slowing way down and I'll need to change my rule from beat 3 to beat 1. Otherwise, the voices on grid and off grid should stay the same. Challenge 2. Come off the hats and play the left crash/Ride with my left hand instead of the right. Again, since Stephen is coming off the HH with his right hand, I should also challenge myself to take my left hand off the hats and play another voice. One I get that, I may continue and add the left Tom to left hand. I let you know how THAT goes, maybe in a month or two. 😰

One that I am now considering because I cannot find anyone who can give me length dimensions on the Luddy Atlas Pro HH stand I covet. I really don't want to buy schmancy and then take a hacksaw to it. (ok for real I have proper tools like a pipe cutter for this).

A lot of open handers modify their stands to get them lower. One of mine I had to pull the top tube out and gently saw about an inch off. Have to be careful because it is easy to compress the tube out of round and then you can't get it back together. I usually like my HH edge to sit about a cm above the top of the snare hoop. I had to raise the stand up with the new VH-14D. The anti rotation collar extends below the hats and bumps up against the lower tube. So I have it as low as it can go with this particular stand. Here is a picture of my VH-14D in profile for your research purposes. It's not thinner but is made of two pieces and is 14" in diameter. You can see the anti rotation collar in this picture as well.

Haha. Well any start is a good start.

1. I was born left handed but forced to use my right for writing, scissors or whatnot. I doubt I qualify as ambidextrous but I'm strongly mixed handed. 2. I lead with the right so that timing wise, my right hand can drop onto the snare on the 2 & 4. It took me over a week to encourage my left hand to stop trying to lead on this one. A few more months of working with it and it is fully in muscle memory and I don't have to think about it.

@Eyal I'm posting this embarrassing video for you, as promised. After a few failed starts with the phone and general lack of equipment, I decided this would be a drum only recording with my laptop. No talking. Hopefully you can still pick out what is going on. The video amuses me because after so many false starts I was getting anxiety and my tempo suffered. My right leg is also doing its best to drag me up to the tempo I normally play this at 😅. Basically, I do the most basic drum beat with non-stop 8ths on the hats. 1 and 3 on the bass, 2 and 4 on the snare. Anytime I hit beat 3 on the bass, play the rack toms on the & of 3 and the & of 4 while maintaining the snare drum on 4. then rinse and repeat. Then I begin adding the floor tom which is on beat 1 with the bass drum. Then add the right crash on the & of 1. The left hand crash gets added on the & of 2. So inspired by the first half of @Stephen's lesson but still a work in progress. Also, if you want to make life interesting, play quarter notes on the hats. Then it becomes an independence exercise between your hands. That is how I normally play it. Next challenge to myself is to partition the kit Claus Hessler style and play the same thing, only the right hand is not allowed to cross centerline. Left hand has to maintain the hats, the left tom, and the left hand crash. And maybe, in certain instances, the snare 😨Gonna be fun! For demonstration purposes, I put a lot of gap in between each round so you have time to digest what you are seeing. One way or another, I hope this gives you some ideas.

His was one of the first vids I watched on the topic. I love me some Flamuel L. Jackson. If you really want to get down in the weeds, track Claus Hessler whenever you can find him talking about it. This guy wrote a book on the topic with Dom Famularo and to watch him you see how far you can go with it. https://www.facebook.com/drumeo/videos/5-benefits-of-open-handed-drumming-claus-hessler/752626841975525/ If you have a drumeo account, recommend you watch this video there along with the other lessons he has on Drumeo.

I did find the concept very awkward at first. Having seen right handed drummers dominate all over the kit with their right hand, be it the HH, ride, or leading on fills; it made me really question if I'm genuinely playing left handed. Simon Phillips and Claus Hessler encouraged me to stop thinking about it in those terms. But I still have moments. As for the video, it may be Sunday before I get to it. I forgot it is Friday and hubby and I may go out for dinner and he's off work tomorrow. The video will be real primitive, regardless, with me holding the phone in my left hand while demonstrating with my right and playing my electronic kit acoustically. It's sure to be a treat.

Hello. Congrats on your win. Glad you are getting a good start with the open handed layout. As for your questions: 1. My crash 1 is directly to the left of Tom 1, about chest high. Crash 2 is also about chest high to the right of Tom 2. It is on an angled rod to bring it closer, somewhat overlapping the floor Tom. That said, you can put the crashes wherever feels comfortable to you. I find that I use crash 2 on the right way more than I use crash 1 on my left. I'm trying to get better about including it or I may eventually move it. 2. Whatever hand is leading is entirely up to you, though mechanics will dictate. There is no hard fast rule here as long as what you are doing works mechanically and it doesn't trip you up getting into--and out of the fill. One big mistake I made in the beginning is that I sweated the question of what to do with the hands waaaaay too much. I finally learned to just relax and enjoy myself and I let my hands tell me what they wanted to do. We started having a lot less arguments after that. That said, on 8th and 16th note fills, I found it easiest not to force those one way or another. My transition from leading rolls left handed to right handed happened very organically while playing and I think it happened because I stopped trying think or force the issue. Coming off the HH for anything is going to naturally encourage you to start with your right hand. It was only after leading with the right came more natively that I started focusing on learning those 8th and 16th note trips around the kit, left to right. One suggestion that occurs to me is to play around with that fill called the Pat Boone Debbie Boone. It is in the very first beginner fill lesson that @Stephen gives in the Warrior Way. I find this fill to be the easiest beginner fill for an open hander to adopt and get creative with. It is also stylistically similar to what I see a lot of open hand pros doing with either one or both hands. Secondly, Stephen has this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv3f1Emdn2w One thing I have observed is that pro open handers enjoy using single stick fills a lot. It is a very stylistic thing with this crowd but I also think it is motivated by it being super easy to knock out a quick flourish right handed with doubles or Moeller sticking. I absolutely love this video and it is right up our alley. How I adapt this to open hand is my rules are 1. left hand never leaves hat or ride. 2. I build the rules off the bass drum rather than the HH. When I get home, I'll see if I can get you a quick vid of the first basic pattern I adapted from his lesson.

Ahhh I love it! How great is that? I agree about it being creatively limiting reproducing someone else's work in tribute. But definitely worth a short time for the memory.

Definitely Revolver. Of the latest works by Giles Martin, this is the only one I just had to have because it is a favorite, and because Peter Jackson was so kind as to lend Martin the means to fully deconstruct this album into separate tracks and remix it from the ground up. I was dead curious how Ringo's playing would sound now that the kit had been broken into individual parts and rebalanced. Yes, shame that tribute bands generally stick to the stage performance material. When I am good enough I wouldn't mind joining one for a time. Just to co-exist with my most favorite drummer for a while. There used to be an all woman tribute band around here, but not seen them for a while. I used to joke with them that if they ever needed a Jimmy Nichols "call me." P.S. The album also features "Rain" played at full speed. Mind blown. No wonder Ringo always claimed he was possessed and on fire that day.

I'm late, but I picked up the 2022 Remix and Remaster of Revolver, and wow. Martin really managed to bring Ringo up in the mix. The remixed "She Said She Said" really makes Ringo shine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZOBWYHgZjw You can finally hear the bass drum how it should be heard. Ludwig Squeak King not included. Walsh, Ringo & Co-Funk #49 is one of favorite vids to visit. I should be minding Ringo for a lesson but I still spend most of my time watching Lee Sklar. He is back there so chill.

No problem. I forgot to mention you will have to take some time to build up and tune those muscles in the right leg with your heel up and heel down exercises. Be patient with yourself 🙂

I think if give yourself a 30 day goal to try it out, you will like playing this way. It is a way to play with your dominant hand AND be able to play on any standard kit set-up at a friend's house or at a club. Also, maybe do it in increments so you don't overwhelm yourself at first. Maybe only move the HH and ride at first. See how you feel hatting and riding with your hand to your left. It is common practice for open handed players to place the ride on their left next to the HH, particularly if they are left handed. I have one on each side of my kit to keep my right hand at least familiar with riding if I'm on someone else's kit. I wouldn't worry about the feet so much. It will feed odd and a uncoordinated at first, but it is easier to transition between legs than changing hands. Mostly because we do little in our daily lives that favors one leg over the other. The brain is also designed to easily move existing muscle memory from one side of the brain over to the other, faster than you learned it the first time. Keep us updated!

Don't apologize for going on. I'm here listening and learning and you say a lot that makes sense. You are also sharing you goals which gets that out in the open where you can think about what you are after, and you are also sharing what makes you happy. It's great to nerd out about what you love with other nerds in the same track. This is also my first time really interacting with other drummers since I started. I've pretty much been going it alone. I absolutely agree with you, especially on point 2. I am weak on fundamentals, therefore I spend a lot of time on them with reward systems in place to encourage me to stay focused. I know the rudiments, intervals, and independence/interdependence will open the kit up for me. You have a good and very achievable goal. You shouldn't have to change what you've been doing because OHP is thing that every drummer does a lot of already. Before the hi-hat, everyone was OH, and after the hi-hat everyone was still mostly OH because time was kept primarily on the ride. I'm positive you will get where you are trying to go.

There's a guy on youtube who goes by the name AdrienDrums who is much the same way. He may start a song crossed over and occasionally go back, but usually by mid song he's gone fully open. He went full pro recently and is crazy good in my opinion. He's also using the kit I have in this vid which groovy seeing what it is actually capable of.

Nothing wrong with that. I went through this phase myself the first 5 months. Now I'm in the phase of avoiding drummers I share the most in common with and going after the ones with standout qualities I can't do but am absolutely fascinated with. I also have mountains of fundamentals to work through. I only know 4 rudiments at this point and my doubles and flams are not great. I do agree that playing open handed does provoke me into some odd but creative phrases. And sometimes I knock a stick out of my hand hehe.

AHA! Thank you, sir! You've provided me just the words I was looking for. Yes. Fills broken up in a musical way. That is exactly what I was trying to describe as the version of fill I am most drawn to along with back beat fills. I am besotted with back beat fills. What you say tells me that what the open-handed drummer said about the style and fills isn't actually true. It's an individualistic thing. I'm apparently just not inclined towards liking those old fills. I still practice them in all directions around the kit even if they make me cringe. And because you brought up Ringo, this is exactly why I avoid him like the plague for the moment. He's my drum dad and I love his style but for <reasons> I am pushing myself to draw in other influences first. I'll come back to him when I'm burdened with some learning and my own sense of me. Like him I was born lefty and forced converted to my right hand, but by the my mid 20s I no longer had any sense of a dominant hand and can write equally bad with both hands and lead left or right. From his stories he still had a strong connection to his left hand when he started out. I also work on intervals like you said you do. They are fundamental for time keeping on all instruments. Want to hear something crazy? I have a rock solid sense of tempo from my other musical endeavors, but put a metronome anywhere in hearing and I go to pieces. Tempo.exe crashes to desktop and I stop being able to feel anything. I'm working on it LOL. Thank you ever so much for your answer.

I wasn't aware of Gary Husband. I will check him out.

Love Simon. I wish he had more videos.

No, no problem. I'm not describing it well and probably will likely continue to fail at describing what I mean in this post. I'll just stick to the old school 16th note fill around the horn as some drummers describe it. Going from left to right, from smallest tom to largest, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, etc. Maybe linear fills is the right term for this? Like Bonham triplets and etc. I'm new to the world of drum terminology. I don't see a lot of open handed drummers using fills like this or other traditional fills that are usually top 5 in the text books. Or they very rarely do it. They tend to bounce around, hit multiple drums at once and whatnot. I didn't even notice this until a pro open-hander said something about how open handed playing gets you away from these types of fills. Then I started watching closer. Then next time I got on the kit to work on fills, I noticed that if I am going from the gut, I tend to tumble around a bit too, such as snare-floor-snare-10", one drum might get a single hit, another might get a double and I'm usually combining the bass drum on or off the grid. When I do traditional fills like the one described in the first paragraph it feels 'wrong?' Or like a wasted opportunity? I don't know what. I wondered if I had picked up a bias from that pro open hander or if there is something inherent in the playstyle that leads your gut towards a different sort of fill. If you still don't understand, that is all on me. It probably answers my question that it is only me feeling this way. LOL.

Simon Philips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOILUKL-xyw Simon has some snippets of instructional material out there on youtube. Carter Beauford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zpoIlEasY Claus Hessler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-P4RLsgvBU Claus has a decent amount of instructional material out there including a book on open handed drumming, co-written with Dom Famularo. Harry Miree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiSf-BtOERo The Dude never fails at keeping me entertained. Lenny White https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3LMJyyxDpk

Hi. Any other open handers feel like textbook fills--such as the old school 16th notes around the kit--go a bit against the grain with this style? I am wondering if this is just me.

Hi Mark. I joined the club just the other day and this is the first chance I've had to get back here and look around. Nice to meet you.