What's up with my 'brain'?

MrWriter

Active Member
Anybody else have this issue?

I consider myself fairly ambidextrous but with certain hi-hat kick patterns I find I lose the timing and rhythm of the kick due to my right hand crossing over my body to the hat. However, if I play the same lick with my right hand out to the right on the ride I don't have an issue, but when I move my right hand across my body to do the pattern on the hat it screws up the timing and rhythm of my kick pattern. This only happens with certain types of kick/hat/share patterns, but not usually difficult ones.

There are two examples that screw with my mind, very similar (if not identical) beats. First example is the pattern that comes in at around bar 13 of the Rage Against The Machine track ‘Wake Up’ when he shouts ‘Come on!’ There 8 bars of this pattern before singer starts, these 8 bars, when played on the hi-hat, mess up my kick technique, but, again, if I move hat pattern to the ride over on my right, just the action of my right arm moving out solves the problem.

The other example is from Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ where the same pattern comes in at 2:06 in this video:


Anybody else experience this strange brain screw-up phenomena and how do you fix it?
 
Muscle memory. Your body is used to doing it one way but not the other.

Try putting the pen/mouse/fork in your other hand and watch the same thing happen.

Just keep working on it.
 
It’s a body balance thing and muscle memory combo. You sit slightly off balance to the left while your right side fights the imbalance and play at the same time! So sit comfortably balanced and play on the hats and slowly bring up the tempo.
 
Sorta the same here. I can HH chick steadily through a pattern with my HH foot heel down. Switch to heel up and now my balance changes and my right foot forgets what it’s been playing and things like double strokes become singles. I’m trying to get my left to play heel up also, because HH splashes are just easier if I start heel up.

Training and time….and some frustration and it’ll eventually come together.
 
It’s a body balance thing and muscle memory combo. You sit slightly off balance to the left while your right side fights the imbalance and play at the same time! So sit comfortably balanced and play on the hats and slowly bring up the tempo.
Like that. Makes sense. I must admit, I had a problem playing due to the uncomfortable feeling that I was going to fall off my drum stool. My old stool was only 20 inch across and with my heal up kick technique I felt like I would slip off the right edge of the stool. I've since bought a Roc N Soc 'round' thrown that is about 26 inches across and not being a leather top I grip to it better and don't have the feeling like I'm going to fall off anymore. This has massively improved my kicks and double kicks, especially the heel/toe technique, but I suppose there is a little 'mental' thing left behind from my old small crap stool. I suppose I have to train my brain and convince it that I'm not going to fall off the stool ;)
 
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