Guitarist asking you drummers about holding your sticks

[Old Steve]

When I joined the school band in 5th grade, we were taught traditional grip. By junior high, the teacher didn't care what grip you used, so I went to matched, and never looked back.

Sometimes I'll screw around with traditional, but to me, it's impractical. Like others have pointed out, traditional grip developed due to limitations of how a person had to strap a drum on to themselves to play it. With modern snare drum carriers, that doesn't even make sense anymore.

Somebody said that you use fewer muscles with traditional...I don't buy it. If the left hand of the traditional grip were more efficient, then why doesn't anybody play with a "matched" grip where both hands hold the sticks palms up and a couple of fingers looped over the top?!?

I remember seeing a percussion workshop about a million years ago where somebody who was apparently an "expert" on the subject was talking about it. His premise went like this:

If you use traditional grip, each hand will develop different sets of muscles, and it's almost impossible for two dissimilar sets of muscles to improve at the same rate. Each hand will, therefore, develop at its own rate. With matched grip, each hand has the same advantages and disadvantages. Since the muscles on each side are mirror images of each other, theoretically each hand has the ability to improve at the same rate. Therefore, if you play with a matched grip and are right hand dominant, with a little work on your left hand, you can pretty quickly become left-hand dominant. Then you can work on your right hand and become right-hand dominant again. In the process, BOTH hands are improving at a similar rate. If you're using traditional grip, one hand will always have the ability to improve more quickly, so if you're right hand dominant, it'll take longer for you to get your left hand to catch up. When it does, it'll take a much shorter time to become right hand dominant again.

Anyway, that was the theory. It makes sense to a certain degree that one hand or the other would necessarily have the ability to improve more quickly because one type of grip would be more efficient.

I personally believe that if you give any idiot a stick and tell them to hit something with it, it'll most likely resemble a "matched" grip rather than the left-hand of a traditional grip. My guess is that it's not only more efficient, but also a more "natural" way to hold and hit something. I don't want to fight evolution, so I play matched.

IMHO, the ONLY reason traditional is still around is because some people (primarily drumlines) like the look of it. Other than that, it makes serves about as much practical sense as having a horse pull your car around.

Still, plenty of guys rock at traditional, so if it works for you or you want to use it, there's nothing wrong with it. As for me, I'm starting to teach Old Steve Jr. a couple of things on the drums, and I'm not even going to bother trying to teach him traditional.

[Rogal]

I hold them matched grip, palms down, but the *real* answer to this (in my opinion) is hold them whatever way is most comfortable for You. As long as you can play I don't think anyone but the die hard critics will say anything about how you hold the sticks.

[1001gear]

A properly developed matched grip is better suited to playing and articulating rhythms; especially over drum kits and multiple percussion instruments. With traditional, you have to work against issues like one way mobility, and real drawbacks like dissimilar stick response, and therefore uneven and one way tone. Granted this is the S**t to most kit drumming but good matched technique will easily go there and far beyond. For the most part, trad grip is mired in the diddles and yada yadas of yesteryear. Now I'm well aware of those who excell at trad, DC, DW, VC, SS, TI, TL, VD, - I could just type letters and find numerous corresponding big names; I think though that by and large their work is highly specialized and pigeonholed; and as awesome as their accomplishments come across, still lacking in the technical and therefore interpretive freedom to perform at the level of todays' musical standards.