German grip, which German?

tamadrm said:
Larry...I love you...but ....sometimes you over think stuff....kidding......:) be well my friend :)And ...winter is almost over............how great is that?

Steve B
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This has already been established, and yes, I do over think stuff. Damn proud of it too lol. Come to think of it, where did the term over think come from???? Hmm....

I really just started it for a laugh, but I learned that tympani had a lot to do with it.

I don't mind being the idiot. Even though it is a little bit of a stretch lol.
 
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toddbishop said:
French and German are the names of timpani grips, and the way those things tend to go, each one was probably named by the opposite country, because it was something they hated. I know there's a type of paint that is kind of ugly, and is a real PITA to work with-- French painters called it Prussian Blue and German painters called it Paris blue. They probably did the same thing with venereal diseases.
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That's true: Syphilis is called the "french disease" over here.
But actually the Italians gave it that name way before we did, when the French invaded Italy back in 1500.

toddbishop said:
The first place I ever heard the term "American" grip (which was never a timpani grip) used was in Jojo Mayer's video-- which makes sense. It's an appropriately European thing to a) name an informal, bastard grip after an informal, bastard people, and b) to need to have the thing be made officially OK by giving it a name in the first place.
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I first heard the term "American Grip" in Ed Soph's video, but there were always plenty of Germans down in Texas.
I'm pretty sure Jojo didn't invent that name.
 
Griener said:
I first heard the term "American Grip" in Ed Soph's video, but there were always plenty of Germans down in Texas.
I'm pretty sure Jojo didn't invent that name.
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Well, it was a nice theory... it's still kind of fitting, even if it's BS.

I was kind of BSing with rest of my comment, too-- I always understood that French and German grips are so named because they were actually used by Fr and Ger timpanists.

larryace said:
OK so timpani predates snare drum then I'm assuming?
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Yes, I believe timpani is an older instrument, and the grip names applied to the snare drum/drum set are borrowed from it. I've seen things from the 70s in which people refer to French/German grips in re: drum set, but they still say the names come from the timpani-- today everyone uses the words without mentioning that. It's kind of a picky thing, but people shouldn't think that there are a lot of elite French snare drummers running around playing a thumbs-up grip. People are now developing the grip on pad for use on the drumset, and have given it that name for convenience, but it's still not a "correct" alternative regular snare drum grip. Like, if I played that way in a lesson with Charles Dowd, or a drum corps rehearsal with Allan Kristensen, I would've been made to change my grip to some form of "German" grip. For all I know there could be a trend of concert snare drummers playing that way, but if so, it would be a new thing.

Swiss Matthias said:
Pretty sure Jojo is above such things as racist thinking, given that he's
already lived all over the world in his childhood...
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What I was suggesting was kind of a cultural subtext-- I wasn't trying to read Jojo's thoughts.
 
I like to think that the american grip stems from holding KFC drumsticks.
 
toddbishop said:
French and German are the names of timpani grips, and the way those things tend to go, each one was probably named by the opposite country, because it was something they hated. I know there's a type of paint that is kind of ugly, and is a real PITA to work with-- French painters called it Prussian Blue and German painters called it Paris blue. They probably did the same thing with venereal diseases.
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That makes me think of the Cor Anglais/English Horn (neither a horn nor English), and also some factoid (maybe apocryphal) that said the French Horn is from Germany.

larryace said:
OK so timpani predates snare drum then I'm assuming?
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I think the snare drum dates from the 16th century...but the timpani was definitely a common orchestral instrument before the snare drum.
 
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