Here, we’re going to see some drummers do some flaming fast singles and you kind of go, “How on earth did they develop that? It must be natural talent.” Well, I’ve seen it before and try to get some pointers with some other teachers and they just say, “You know, be really relax. It will come in time. Be patient and practice.”
My thing is always been, “Well, what do I practice?” You know, you kind of do your singles and, “Okay, well.” I get a little bit faster but I’d like to get a bit more speed. Well, I can give you a little tip to help you get as much speed as you want. I have a practice routine that I’d like to call The Burn.
I cannot overemphasize enough how much you need to be warmed up before you do this. It could be very detrimental to your forearm. It’s kind of based of the principle, “How bodybuilders work?” They work their muscles. They actually end up by tearing their muscles and then their muscles reproduce and become bigger and stronger. Well, with this, we’re going tot be tearing our forearms, so to speak.
When I'm about to say will contradict, I hope bunch of things that I’ll talk about in regards to relaxation, but I just want to treat this as a separate exercise, and not as a rule of thumb. So basically, what you want to do is start at a comfortable speed for the singles. And then you’ll work up your speed from there and you go as fast as you can, but you never sacrifice the evenness for the speed.
You’ll see when I do it, I start at a slower tempo, speed up into it as fast as I can go, and then my strokes will start to get quieter because I'm bringing my muscles to the point of fatigue. And then they will get quieter and quieter until basically the strokes die out. You want to get to that point. And now, as you’re doing that, make sure you don’t squeeze the stick. It’s still always has to be nice and relaxed in there, the burn and the tension will be in the forearm. Try to remember to keep on breathing too. And the longer you can go and the faster you get, the more endurance you will have. So here we go.
[Demonstration]
Hence, the burn.
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