Dude you have just save my life. I'm leaning a four mallet piece for my Jr recital and this grip is killer on my hands. Thanks for opening my eyes to a lot things I didn't know and needed a reminder of.
Ok so this is awesome. I have been learning the stevens grip for about 4years or so and my tutor never really showed this little "secrets" you brought up from the book itself. Thank you!
Hey man, you really helped me out with my mallet technique when I started learning Steven's for Indoor percussion. I've put a great deal of effort into my playing now and will be auditioning for McM this fall, partly because of these videos!
@@pugmygudboi I was young and meant MCDC. Not mystique. And no, lol I did not make the cut. I kind of had an awful experience, the culture of the front ensemble was not great, there was a culture that promoted self-injury and bullying. If your hands were hurting, you were to push through it (a lot of us from that ensemble have tendinitis now, and one of them will never be able to play again). If your hands were bleeding, it was seen as a sign of success and earned you bragging rights. In the same way that DCI is experiencing a wave of people outing the abuse they received from staff and other members, MCDC also has some respect and boundary issues. I tried out every year for a few years. The final year I auditioned, I did get a contract. However this was during the time when MCDC would regularly have hundreds of people audition for their percussion section, and to thin out the candidates, they sent an email out 1 week before their next camp requiring all percussionists who received a contract to have both that month's payment and next month's payment ready. Being a working class individual from a not well off family, I couldn't afford the sudden change in $ expectations, even with my fundraising efforts paying off decently, and subsequently had to decline my contract. At that first audition I met someone who I despised at the time for their attitude. A couple years later we met at college and became best friends. Someone I genuinely loved and spent a lot of time with as friends and as a fellow musician in a few ensembles. The last thing we did together was play in a community orchestra for a few years. Last thing we played together was Mendelssohn's 5th and Beethoven's 5th. Today I am a freelance percussion instructor and a father. I teach masterclasses at the high-schools and middle schools in my area. I'm currently working with 1 high school and 2 middle schools. I have taught with an indoor ensemble 3 separate times now, have been caption head and composer for a marching band percussion section a few times, directed several chamber percussion ensembles. We are currently preparing for All-County auditions at the high school. My my precious memory (music related) in the past 7 years was my first group of middle schoolers I worked with. I worked full time with that band and was there multiple days a week. The final concert at the end of the semester, where our month's of work paid off, touched me so much that I cried when it was over. It's been a long 7 years...
This made me realize that I have always used piston strokes without ever knowing it, and the way I slightly turn my hand is like Mark Ford. Now I'm glad I taught myself for the first few months of playing marimba. (Your videos are amazing and are a gold-mine of info, thought I'd let you know) :D
been away from playing for about 4 years though i still teach every august which is really fun, glad i came by your videos they are really helpful and will freshen me up for this up coming august :D thanks
I haven't specifically noticed this, but I'm not surprised. It really falls in line with what most artists do, which is practice piston strokes when working on technique, but being more fluid in performance. If artists do piston strokes all the time it can look rather robotic and rigid!
@Marimbalogy Thanks for the advice! That cleared it up more. By the way, your videos are extraordinarily helpful and informative, keep up the amazing work! :)
I've only seen a few people do this (the end of the inner mallet is closer to their ring finger instead of middle finger at normal intervals. What I noticed is that they could not do an octave correctly and they got a lot of sores on their hands. I would reccomend that the tip of the shaft to contact the tip of the middle finger and the "crease line" of your palm. For more pics, see Steven's Book "Method of Movement"
I wish you had spoke of the history of four mallet playing arrived at by Claire Musser, which is basically where Mr. Stevens arrived at the grip he currently uses. I realize that this has to do with the heredity and age of the generation speaking, but it really started back in the late 1920's when Mr. Musser began creating marimbas for the J. C. Deagan Company of Chicago, Illinois. With age, we lose the knowledge of the past and with the past we are poorly associated with the present and the future. JW
Hello there! Maybe at some point we'll do a history video. Most of my videos are strictly for helping beginners. When I was growing up we called the grip "Musser-Stevens Grip" but I think now most people just say Stevens so they may not know the origin. There are a few players that still use Musser grip, especially on vibes like Joe Locke. Have you read Rebecca Kites biography of Keiko Abe? It has a pretty awesome history of the instrument itself.
@drummachine8 Hello there! If you have the stevens book there are some good pictures but it's still confusing, Basically there are two ways to do it. You can roll it out there or "pop" it there. It takes a lot of practice, but basically you push down with the 1st joint of the thumb which pops the base of the shaft away from the palm, then roll the shaft to the base of the middle finger :) I hope that explained it well enough. I am going to talk about it in my next video :)
It seems like today a lot of DCI front ensembles are not teaching piston strokes anymore and teaching a sort of "fluidity stroke" technique to fill in the duration of all space between notes with fluid mallet movement. I get it and all but obviously just doing piston strokes is a whole heck of a lot more efficient. Do you have any thoughts?
Are you supposed to move the pinky and ring finger in order to lift and lower the outer mallets or are you supposed to always use a tilting wrist motion to move the mallets?
@ARandomGuitarist Sweet! Thanks for the comment! I had a hard time with piston strokes at first because I started out on marching snare drum where everything is downstroked. You probably saved a bunch of time by doing it naturally!
quick question - ive just switched to stevens from traditional - im 14 and have got some blisters on my middle fingers from independent strokes - any tips
Your outside mallet may be moving too much! When you start out this happens as your fingers get tired. You can always put a piece of electrical tape around that part of your middle finger!
Hi there, I'm kind of new to Stevens grip, and am having some problems with shifting to large intervals. I try to roll the inside mallet to the base of the middle finger as you explained earlier, but it seems like the butt of the mallet keeps getting blocked from getting there by loose skin below the fingers, and my thumb and forefinger just can't seem to "extend" enough to roll the mallet all the way. It seems physically impossible. Any tips or tricks you know of to help? thanks a bunch!
I'm not saying that popping that joint would do anything, Nobel prize winner Donald Unger popped the knuckles in one and not the other for over 60 years with no found differences.
Hola que tal, me encuentro aprendiendo marimba en estos momentos de manera autodidacta, podrías ,emocionar el título del libro que presentas en el video..
I far prefer the traditional cross grip as the most natural grip, by far. It partly gets back to what one gets used to, and there is not a right or wrong grip. But for me it is far more natural grip especially if you view a mallet instrument like the piano, with the mallets as extensions of your fingers. Both the Stevens and Burton grips feel highly unnatural and awkward to me.
Mallet Heads vary in material for the core. Most mallets use Yarn to cover the core, but not always. Sometimes you can have latex mallets. These are great for middle school because you don't have to worry about the yarn fraying.
