Its a very simple hand clap, but done in a special way.

Put your hands in the praying position, palms and fingers together, also bring the elbows together.  Keep the elbows in front of your belly and the hands the same height as your head.

Now just open the hands, keeping the wrists and elbows together and clap. 

Open the hands equally and close them, make sure from the elbow to the fingers is strate. To help with the eveness you could place a drumstick or ruler in between your hands.

Now this is the hard bit, your going to build up the muscles in the forearms.  To start clap up to 400 times, thats the same as play a 8th note pattern or quaver pattern for 25 bars, perhaps around a minute and a halfs’ time.

You must relax while doing this!

You will tense up, start gritting your teeth ! Don’t!!  Smile, slowdown and try again later.  Your aim is to build up speed and duration, I’d say you don’t need to go longer than 50 bars, just work on increasing your speed and maybe even work on how relaxed your feeling (maybe we can turn this into a medition or even warmup before you play??)

Result; Do this over a number of weeks you should feel that your arms are able to complete and perform the task it better.

Try count all the quavers and bars if you can, this will add another bit of mental training to the exercise.

I first saw it written on Sharescience, the video shows the drummer playing it a various speeds on the snare only, but Steve leads on the cymbals and snare.

the whole thing is made up using a single para-diddle followed by a double and then a triple para-diddle.

R l r r L r l l

R l R l r r L r L r l l

R l R l R l r r L r L r L r l l

R l R l r r L r L r l l

R l r r L r l l

You start at the top of the pyramid and work down playing each level twice and then move on to the next stage, the letters in capitals are accented, you can start on the snare only if you like or go strait to leading with the cymbals + the bass drum and snare.

Start, and get it smooth, then add accents, when that feels steady, up the speed.  Enjoy!

Enhancements of the exercise.

a) You can increase the repeats of each stage, X3 etc

b) move the non leading hand around different drums or cymbals

c) add a flam at the beginning of each stage

d) change all the accents to Flams

Vinnie plays the eample in the middle of the video at about 1min 49 sec

So the bass and snare basic but are a very important to the beat.

Click on thumbnail to get full size image.

You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking, ‘ok, I’ll play the sixteenth notes and that will help me’ doing that would detracted from the point.

Another example of the simple yet hard to play is on his first album Stretch. The track opens with a loop, in time the loop drops one 16th note, I could try explaining but I’ll let the playing do the talking.

http://www.drummerworld.com/Videos/vinniecolaiutatweaked.html

An exercise that I’ve applied is from John Blackwell, a great drummer, he’s played with many artist, two that I know of are Prince and Justin Timberlake.

 On his DVD Technique, groove and showmanship, he imparts the way he improve his foot speed was by using the Markus Williams exercise. (here comings the text)

It is in 7/8, its split between the left and right hand with an alternating right foot.  Start with the Snare and Bass drum for now and then start moving it around the kit.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (counting)
L * R * L * * (Hands)
* B * B * B B (bass drum)
The second part is exactly the same, the hand strokes start with the right hand this time.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (counting)
R * L * R * * (Hands)
* B * B * B B (bass drum)

A favourite variation of this is to have the right hand playing along with the bass drum and the left hand play all the hand notes.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (counting)
* R * R * R R (right hand)
L * L * L * * (left)
* B * B * B B (bass drum)

 Remember start at a slow pace and then slow it down some more and when your feeling better at playing it try it faster.

 Fitness:when I first started to play in a band, rehearsals was a three to four hour workout. Being younger I’d had the gunn-hoe mentality towards the drums, I was self taught so did have much in the way of knowledge apart from what I’d listen to (mostly Brit-pop) but this gave me a ferocious energy in playing the drums most of the time I was working very hard to play the drums, which gave my body a great work out every week!

 Stress: I dont think that this need much explaining but here one is, hitting things, that’s a form of stress relief!

 Self-discipline: Everyone should try to learn something new, a lot of people find the act facing the  unknown debilitating. Try reading ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’. A very good self-motivating book or sit in a cool bath for a couple of minutes this is test of self-discipline I saw on TV once. Can you build-up the motivation to do it?

This is the exercise.

Lots and lots of double strokes, on all four limbs all at the same time!!

R R L L R R L L (hands)

R R L L R R L L (feet)

 The hands and arms can be moved around the kit onto various drums or cymbals to work you upper body and the feet will keep going, try playing with the heel up (off the pedal board) and heel down.

 Vary the dynamics while doing this, keep the same speed but very slowly decrease the volume and hold for a minute, again increase or decrease the volume and hold for another minute.  If your a trooper, play for five minutes, if you haven’t got your sweat on, then increase the speed at which your playing, or the extend the time you play for.

 Afew warnings, keep your strokes even and play from the wrist and elbows – the motion you want is like cracking a whip. Just to be clear your not hammering down with an axe on a tree stump, doing this will lead to injuries.

I’ve counted the bar in sixteenth notes to give a visual representation of where the Clave notes should fall in the bar.

1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a
1 * * A * * * A * * & * 4 * * *

Another way of counting it is;
1 A (2) A (3) & 4
The the numbers in brackets aren’t played, its easier to count them, rather than leaving them out.

What I find helpful, is to play the floor tom with the right hand and the left play the snare.  This separates the two rhythms and gives a definitive sound.

1***2***3***4*** Right hand

1**A***A**&*4*** Left hand

Then swap over right hand plays Clave, left plays 4/4.

1***2***3***4*** Left hand

1**A***A**&*4*** Right hand

The next level:

Spread the Clave over two bars:
This counting will be in eighth notes

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
1 * * & * * * A * * 2 * 3 * * *

Notice that both exercises are exactly the same!

There is so much you can do with this, his book is full of ways to apply this, reverse it 3/2 becomes 2/3, played over a 6/8 time (slow triplets), changing limbs e.g left hand Clave right hand 4/4, combinations e.g. 6/8 then in to 4/4. If you enjoy Latin music then these rhythms are for you and our playing. His book is a change but the exercises he’s made are the most authoritative around

Try playing the 3/2 Clave on top of your favourite groove, do like Horacio does and play it using the Hi-Hat pedal.

This lesson is inspired by Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez

This is a simple one, each limb plays a double (two strokes with each limb)

L R L L R R L R – The hands

R R L L R R L L – The feet

The hands are over lapping the feet by a note (or Quaver)

Remember build it up slowly, the counting for this is in 8th notes (1&, 2&, 3&, 4&), when you could put it into Triplet form (1&a, 2&a, 3&a, 4&a, you can over lay a para-diddle, double par-diddle… whatever you feel. Great for co-ordination. Enjoy!!

1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a (counting)

L R R L L R R L L R R L (hands)

R R L L R R L L R R L L (feet)

a)
right hand on toms (high and low only)
H L L

right foot on bass
B B *

Left hand on snare
* * S (*= a pause)
so on notation

The aim is to have two notes overlapping.
Direction – right hand, is played across two drums, high and low tom, the bass and snare play a standard groove.

This is the exercise with the notes overlapping each other.
H L L (right hand)
* * S (left hand)
B B * (right foot)

b) with this simple exercise the limbs can be swapped in order

H L L (right hand)
* * S (left hand)
B B * (right foot)

c)
L L H (right hand)
L * * (left hand)
* B B (right foot)

one last addition to the exercise is to move the right hand around the kit, e.g. low tom to crash. I’ll post a video soon to show this short exercise with a long explanation