Marching Snare Drum Theory

This is a script I made for an unmade video that was heavily inspired by Bass Drum Group’s style of videos

So, 8th grader that has been doing percussion. You want to play the snare drum, ok. I guess I can help. The first thing you need to get down is the grip. Traditional which consist of this mess on the left hand and a nice match grip on the right hand. For now let’s focus on the right hand, simple, take the stick, pinch it with you thumb and your index finger. Then guess what you are done all you have to do is wrap the rest of your finger around the stick and boom match grip, just make sure to keep all fingers on the stick, *Especially that pinkie!*. AHHHHHHHHH.

Oops I went a bit ahead of myself this is the stick, the thing that helps you make sounds of all types on the snare drum (or other instruments, lets not worry about that). The few parts go as follows the TIP this is what primarily is supposed to hit the drum, unless specified otherwise hit the head with that. The next part is the shoulder this is mostly used for pings or higher burst shots. The last tow parts are the shaft and butt which make up the rest of the stick. And no the tip does not touch the butt. The special space in the middle of the shaft is an area called the fulcrum this is where the stick is most able to bounce so you can be fast and loud. Also this is where you want to grip the stick.

Alright now that the stick is done. Let’s quickly head to the drum. This is the drum (hits it), it makes this sound. The thing I just hit, It’s called the head, the little circle around it, it’s called the rim you make shots with it, or rim clicks, or rim taps? Idk. This thing is the shell it helps make the drum loud. Then this stuff at the bottom is the bottom head and snares, (“Snare drum” pops up on screen). Ohhhhhh, well the snares make this sound.

Now that I’m done explaining the drum lets move on to this mess (zooms into the left hand). This is called traditional grip. It was used because the drum looked like this and the harnesses well, was a string, not very comfortable either. But we still add a tilt to the drum anyway so the grip does work. The very first thing you want to focus on with this grip is that it comes the bottom of the L you can make with your hand it relies on the grip of your thumb with relation to your index/pointer finger. This is also were the fulcrum of the stick should be located so you get the most out of each stroke. You should be able to only bounce the stick with this part of the grip because that is where most of the actuation comes from. Now you want to wrap your thumb and index finger together this should be accomplished by making a small T with your thumb and the first inner bend of the index finger, *this one*. There should also be a little space near the palm or the left side of the O this is so you don’t crush the stick. The next thing we will be taking a look at is the ring finger, where most of the stability of the stick and grip comes from. You should take the stick and place it on the right side of the fingernail cuticle or right here, you should also easily see it on my hand since it has been callused from repetitive practice. For the middle finger, you should just gentle wrap it around the stick because even though it is touching the stick this is not where most of the grip comes from. For the pinkie just put it comfortably under the ring finger so it is not flailing out. For rotation and placement of the hand, your palm should be towards the drum and not facing the ceiling and then for your wrist it should be slightly tilted backward however it should be mostly straight with the rest of your arm because if you continue *like this* then you WILL develop injuries in the future.

Now for the stroke, when hitting the drum it should be something called a velocity stroke this is when full force is put into each stroke which is the opposite of a feather tap where you could have the most height but the drum still sounds quite. For each hand, the rotation for hitting the drum should come from the wrist however for bigger heights and fast rolls it will will involve including some arm.

Now what you want to do after you have the basic grub of both hands down is to the “fuuuuunnnnn” part practice. This ranges from anything to 8 on a hand all the way to dci warmup packets however whatever you want to do make sure you take the logical difficulty vs skill curb meaning play harder stuff as you get better.