Percussion and Drums Help

Thinking of joining your school orchestra as a percussionist? Heres some tips on what to prepare for:

• Learn rudiments: para-diddles, 5 stroke rolls, doubles, singles. They all help as much you probably think they dont, they do. I reccomend using George Stone’s Stick Control, its a great book for practice for players of all standards.
• Develop a solid understanding of time signatures. Not just the basic ones like 4/4 and 3/4, learn compound times such as 7/8 and 9/8. Understand the different groupings of complex time signatures, this will give you a better understanding and you will play with ease rather than freaking out when you see an odd count.
• Try and play as many different possible percussion instruments as possible to broaden your skill. Play tuned percussion aswell such as xylophone and timpani. Percussionists who can also read tuned music have more choice and are more versatile than just snare and kit players.
• Practice at home with a metronome, use exercises such as setting a tempo then with alternate hands play crotchets, quavers, triplets, semiquavers and then sixes then reverse it, keep repeating this at different tempos.
• Purchase a wide range of sticks mallets, they are always useful. Most rehearsals I attend, I’m never given mallets. They can be expensive but they will be worth it in the long run, just fill your stick bag with the bare essentials such as snare drum sticks, rubber xylophone sticks (medium/hard), glockenspiel sticks, timpani sticks (medium, if youre only buying one pair), marimba sticks (these can also be used as cymbal sticks)