Drumming in Harmony: Learn to let it go! – How to practice relaxation.

Welcome to my Drumming in Harmony blog series. In this article, I’d like to go over some ways to help you stay relaxed when you are drumming.

1. Learn to recognize playing tension

Your first step is to improve your awareness of tension patterns. A good way to do this is to practice play/relax cycles. Start out by sitting quietly at your drum set. Take a few minutes to really scan your body for tension. Imagine letting any tension that you find melt away. Once you have familiarized yourself with this relaxed state, start playing a few notes or a short pattern. Now, stop playing and release any tension that developed as you played. Work on each limb separately, playing a few notes and then allowing your arm or leg to completely relax. By repeating this process, you will learn to better recognize playing-related tension and start to develop a looser playing style.

2. Add relaxation points into your practice routine

• After playing through an exercise, take a moment to relax your arms and legs and gently “shake loose” any residual tension.

• You can take this idea one step further by adding what I call “micro-breaks” into your repetitions. For example, if you are going to repeat an exercise twenty times, take a short break every five or ten repetitions to quickly release any playing-related tension. 

• Apply this concept to your technique by playing a rudiment slowly and adding a relaxation point in between each stroke or group of strokes that you play. For example, if you are practicing a paradiddle, put a relaxation point between each group of four notes: RLRR (rest), LRLL (rest). Or if you are practicing double strokes, you could add a relaxation point after each double: RR (rest), LL (rest).

3. Stay relaxed when working on challenging material

It’s common to tense up when practicing a difficult drum beat. Learning the new rhythm involves two steps; developing complex hand-foot coordination and playing the pattern at the desired speed. Most drummers start by working out the sticking and coordination, and then focus more on building up to the desired speed. However, if you try to speed up before your limbs have developed enough muscle memory to comfortably execute the sticking and coordination, chances are you’ll use extra tension to reach your goal. Instead of using speed as your main gauge for progress, think about maintaining complete relaxation while playing the pattern. I have found that if you focus more on staying relaxed, the ability to play faster often happens naturally.

4. Practice slowing down a drum beat

Play a rhythm or drum pattern at a moderately fast tempo and then gradually decrease your speed. As you do this, you will find that you naturally use less effort and tension. In addition, you will have more time to think about the placement of the notes and discover where you may need to improve your rhythmic coordination.

5. Practice creeping up the tempo with a metronome.

Start playing at a very slow speed, and then repeat the exercise at each consecutive time increment on the metronome until you reach your tempo goal. It may take twenty minutes to a half an hour to play through the pattern or exercise at every speed, but you will really internalize the idea and stay relaxed!

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