How do I hold drum sticks correctly?

In this article

If you are new to drumming or an experienced drummer looking for tips on improving and developing your grip, you have come to the right place.

• Why is it important to hold drum sticks correctly?
• What's the best way to hold a drum stick for beginner drummers?
• What's the difference between traditional grip and matched grip?

Like most areas of drumming, grip is subjective.

As you would imagine, we are often asked for advice on the best way to hold drum sticks. Like many other areas of drumming and music, this is quite a subjective topic. The reality is that you could go to five different drum teachers and come away with five different answers on the best grip. Matched grip, Traditional grip, German, French, American? What's the difference, and why does it matter? Read on, and we'll share the resources available to answer these questions.

Why is it important to hold our drum sticks correctly?

Simply put, we need to develop full control of our playing if our goal is to play the drums competently, and how we hold our sticks is a big part of that.

Most importantly, you will have a lot more fun with this instrument when you spend time on this because control is the key to musicality, dynamics (how hard or soft we play), speed, and efficiency.

Now, don't let this overwhelm you. Working on your grip is a long-term work in progress that you will naturally develop over time and fine-tune with the proper guidance. The reality is that you can have a lot of fun learning beats and drum fills without too much initial exposure to this.

Which grip is recommended?

Don't worry! Drum Ambition is here to do what we do best - break this down into understandable, realistic, and manageable nuggets for you.

The good news is that our Founder and Presenter has taught thousands of hours of lessons throughout his private teaching career and was once himself, albeit many years ago now, a beginner drummer.

Simon has also had many drum lessons with many qualified and gifted teachers, all of whom had different opinions on what seemed like a simple key fundamental. Over this time, he recognized that while there is no actual right or wrong in this discussion, one grip, in particular, helped him immensely and has helped just about every student he taught over his twenty-year teaching adventure. We show you this grip and much more in our free course preview.

Are there any free resources available?

Absolutely! Before the advent of online videos, we had to rely on pictures in books or hope that we had been correctly practicing what our teachers showed us in our drum lessons.

Diagrams and photographs have their limitations, so there is a video that we have created to help you through this, and you can watch it here, absolutely free.

This video covers everything from grip, how to position your drums, the recommended posture to use, and a couple of useful techniques for using the bass drum pedal. If you find this video helpful, you might want to view our complete courses and consider if a Drum Ambition subscription might be a good fit for you.

Where to buy drum sticks.

In our videos, Simon uses the Vic Firth 5A wood tip model. We've included links below so that you can purchase these sticks if you can't make it to your friendly local drum store. As an associate of Amazon.com, we may earn a commission if you buy these products here. Vic Firth 5A wood tip. Vic Firth 5A nylon tip.