Hula drummers perspective .. don't be to cocky, learn with one drum stick first!
Hula drummers perspective .. back then I can remember watching my uncles and cousins drumming for hours, sometimes for up coming shows, sometimes just to beable to catch up as a family. They would play their log drums (pate, pau, kaara, bongo and base drum) with such passion, and for all acounts it also looked like they were challenging each other, but in a way it seemed like it was about, who could make the other laugh hard out, to nothing but a blank gaze and a roll of the eye's to indicate .. "ah no" .."it was funny to watch" As I grew older and became more interested in drumming my hula drummers perspective was being created. And with this I noticed it was obvious that some of them only used one stick on the pate(log drums) and the base, where the kaara and the bongo did require two sticks anyway.
Hula drums
They told me .. "you" had to master playing the pate with one stick before even trying two, when you had done that, then and only then should you progress onto two, this was a professional
Hula drummers perspective
well that what my cuz thought anyway. To really get the one stick drumming action down, like anything you had to practise, practise and more practise, and the more I practised with one stick on my strongest arm, the more I noticed my fore arm getting bigger and toned. So I made sure to swap arms as regularly as possible .. (not good on the left ..actually pretty bad). This would like they said, "help with using two sticks", and like doctors who can tell you if you are sick or not they were right .. and they would let me know when I would practise with them, If I was getting better or not, well that's what I thought, but like family they seem to mean the opposite of what they really say. Well the big day came for me to graduate to two sticks .. "yeah that's what I am talking about", but the stick given to me to make my duo was pretty worn and cracked in some places, but I had to start somewhere, and as usual the joke was on me the new double stick pate wannabe. So it was time to show my tutors that I was a good .. "no" .. a great pupil who did listen and learn about the fundamentals of drumming, and that i had agreat sense of a hula drummers perspective to share now. Firstly the old and the new drumming styles which were, the more you could make them laugh the better you were, don't be to cocky to begin with, use insulation tape to fix your cracks on your sticks and lastly two is better than one. Now adays drummers use two sticks more frequently on a wooden log pate lead and second large drum than one, only because of the tripling up on beats that can be generate with both sticks, and to be honesty you do look better using two sticks at once, than one.
Return to hula-with-me "Home Page"

|