X-Navy...Update on Grip Change

[PocketPlayer]

Hey Andy
I started over the past eight months shifting my stick grip based on Dave's video. I recently acquired the video (5-8), and wanted to refine some things

For myself, I feel comfortable now, but not with my finger control, ala Marco Minneman's exercises of isolating each finger. When I try to combine both the knuckles "up" from Dave (matched grip) and the Moeller "whip" for accents--I run in trouble with the fingers (more of a French grip).

Also, when doing double strokes at faster tempos, the center finger grip is much more difficult. I find myself shifting to the second finger.

Any thots?

[XNavyDrummer]

Hey Pocket,

I'm a matched grip player, so I can only talk about it from that angle. For the Moeller/Weckl technique, check out the video where he plays quarters, eighths, triplets, and sixteenth notes on the high hat. It?s either the How to Develop Technique or How to Practice video. That's a pretty good visual of what he's doing with Moeller, at least for matched grip. Watch how he actually swings out the butt end of the stick while he's doing it (look at the back of his hand).

Dave teaches an exercise where you hold the stick (palm down) and then open the thumb and first finger so that your last three fingers only are holding the stick. Next, move the stick down and up in your palm using only the last three fingers. For me, this felt really weird and hard to control. The last three fingers play a significant part in executing the Moeller technique, wrist strokes and doubles. Once I started concentrating more on the back of the hand, the Weckl/Gruber grip started to make a lot more sense. My doubles are now really open sounding. They were good before but in comparison they sounded small and choked. Also, while trying to approximate Dave?s techniques I started getting more complements on the sound of my kit. Since my kit hadn?t changed, I can only attribute the improvement in sound to Weckl?s technique.

Good luck!

Andy