[MUSIC]
Are we
warmed up yet?
Well, before I go any further, let me show
you a warm up routine that my teacher,
Professor George Gaber showed
me when I was 12 years old.
So wow, 50 years ago, he showed me this,
and I still use this warm
up routine every day when I play,
and it goes something like this.
Eight strokes with the right hand, one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Eight strokes with the left hand.
[SOUND] And
then seven strokes with the right.
[SOUND] Followed by seven
strokes with the left hand.
[SOUND] And so on down the line.
Eight, eight, seven, seven, six,
six, five, five, four, four, three,
three, two, two one one, two two, three
three, four four, five five, and back up.
And then back down again,
back up, and back down again.
Don't worry about playing these too fast,
the idea is to get control.
Now, why is this exercise and
warm up so much fun?
Well, because you can't do it mindlessly.
You can't just start
playing sets of fours or
threes and start reading a newspaper or
watching the television.
You really have to concentrate and
pay attention,
because it's tricky, eight, seven,
six, five, four, three, two one.
And it frees you up rhythmically.
You do this exercise for a while,
you're gonna just start feeling
more free inside of yourself when it
comes to different rhythmic groupings.
So try this, here we go,
with me, one, two, three, four.
[SOUND]
Okay,
you can
do a
variation
where you
accent
the first
note of
each
subgroup,
so.
[MUSIC]
So on
and so
forth.
You could even try it in unison, and
see how well you can play those
without playing any flams.
Be honest with yourself when you do
the rudiments, or any kind of warm up, or
basic technical practice.
If the angle seems off
with one of the hands,
if the balance isn't right,
slow it down and work on that.
I have a tendency, I'll be honest,
when I play with the left hand, I pull.
[SOUND] And I think it's just so
many years of [SOUND] kind
of bad drum set technique
creeping into my kind of
legitimate snare technique.
So I have to catch myself and
work on that.
And I even recognized it a little bit here
today, so I'm gonna go home and practice.
So pardon my showing you all this
in my less-than-perfect state.
But when it comes to technique,
I am always way less than perfect,
but strive for good tone.
[MUSIC]