After posting my video about my
one-month left-handed drumming experiment, I've been getting a lot of
questions from people wondering whether it would be worth it for them to invest
in learning how to play open handed or to switch their kits backwards for a
given period of time. So in this video I want to take a look at some of the trade-offs the various pros and cons of different approaches and give my best
estimations for how long it's going to take you to learn any one of these
approaches.
Now there's a lot of ways we could take this video: I've gotten
questions from right-handed drummers who are interested in switching to playing
open handed. I've got any questions from left-handed drummers who are just
starting out and wondering whether they should play on a right-handed drum set
for practical reasons. But the overarching theme here is "is it worth it?"
And this is a question that I've pondered a lot myself and that's what I
want to address here. So for something to "be worth something" that implies that
there's a value exchange happening there. It's a sort of transaction, and in this
case we're exchanging our time and effort in the practice room for some
sort of hopefully musical benefit at the end of the road. So my intention with this
video is to as clearly as possible lay out the benefits of various
approaches as well as my best estimations for the cost of those and
then you can make your own decision based on what you want to do.
So in the
big picture I'd say we have three main categories of approaches to look at. You
have sort of the standard approach that most of us have been taught, which is to
cross over our hands and we play predominantly with one side: either fully
righty or fully lefty. The second category would be what we call "open-
handed drumming" which just means simply not crossing over to play the hi-hat
and not really crossing over in general. Instead you hit the stuff on the left
side with the left hand and the stuff on the right side with the right hand, and
you have this open position with the hands.
Now within this category there's a
few different flavors of open-handed drumming. There are those for example
that always lead with the left hand but still play on a right-handed kit. So, many
left-handed drummers that I know play this way where they still play on a
right-handed drum set, their feet are righty, but they play their hi-hat with
the left hand and they also have the ride cymbal on the left hand. The second
flavor of this would be to switch sides and this is more the category that I
fall into, of what I would like to do, and that is to still play on a standard
right-handed drum set, but be able to switch both sides. So I play the left
hand on the hi-hat and I play the ride cymbal with the right hand and I
would like to be able to switch back and forth.
And then I suppose the third
flavor of open handed drumming would be something more like what Harry Miree does
and talks about in his video about open handed drumming and that's where you
actually move the kit parts around to fit the way that you already play. He has
a cable hi-hat and a double bass drum pedal and he plays essentially
right-handed on a left-handed drum set. The third and final category would be
complete ambidexterity where you're switching not only the hands but also
the feet. So you're playing fully righty and fully lefty on the same kit and
switching back and forth between them. So first let's talk about this [crossing over].
Why would… I mean why would we ever do this? Why would we ever cross our hands
over to play something on this side of the drums with this hand? It makes no
sense at all. The only reason you would ever do this, well actually I can think
of two, the first reason is not a good reason and that is that that's how
everybody has always done it before us.
There's a lot of problems with this
approach: it's awkward, it's uncomfortable, it doesn't make any sense — I mean you can
definitely get used to it, as most of us have, but try switching your drums lefty
for a month and see what it actually feels like to do that as a beginner. it's
extremely awkward and I really never really got used to it over my month-long
challenge. Now the actual benefit of this approach, in theory, is that you can use
the same vocabulary from your ride cymbal and move that over to your hi-hat.
And you have to remember that when the drumset was invented there actually was
no hi-hat, so there wasn't even anything to cross over to.
The original drum sets
had, you know, just a ride cymbal, kick, snare, and the hi-hat came later. So
actually the first hi-hats were something called the Charleston pedal and
then that developed into something called the "low boy" and then when you took
the "low boy" and put it up high, that was your hi-hat. But anyway, my point being
the original drummers would have developed their vocabulary in the
absence of a hi-hat pedal and then once that was introduced it does make sense
that you would want to take this vocabulary from your ride and
snare coordination and you'd want to be able to move that over
on to the hi-hat and that way you don't have to practice anything extra to play
on this sound source.
So that's probably the best argument for why you should
cross over is that you can keep all the same coordination and vocabulary and you
don't have to practice anything extra to play all these different sound sources,
which does make sense on the surface, but it does come with the disadvantages of
less dynamic control — it's much harder to play a loud note on the snare with a
quiet note on the hi-hat which is a really important skill to have, by the
way, because most drummers play their hi-hat way too loud and once you hear
that recorded, you'll notice that you really need to play the hi-hat very
softly anhd the snare drum quite loud to get a good, balanced sound.
So you have
that disadvantage, you have the potential to click your sticks, accidentally and
it's awkward to reach around and play the toms while you're playing the hi-hat.
But the other assumption here is that it's going to take too much work to play
with a more practical approach that makes more sense, like open handed
drumming, which may not be the case depending on the situation.
Now let's
look at open handed drumming. To me this feels like a much more natural approach,
and a much more intuitive thing to do. I think if you sat somebody down on a drum
set for the first time that maybe grew up in a cave, and had never seen the drums
before, they would instinctively play the stuff on the left side, including the
hi-hat, with the left hand. There's no reason they would cross over unless they
saw somebody already doing that before them. So open handed drumming has that
going for it. It's much more natural in a way and it's much more comfortable.
That's a definite direct benefit. So you've got increased freedom of motion,
it just feels good to play like this and you've got increased dynamic control,
which as I mentioned before is a really really huge advantage. So you're gonna
get all of those benefits even at the base level, even if you don't want to
switch sides.
Now, if you do want to switch sides, which is what I would like
to do — still play on a standard drum set but switch left and righty lead with the
hands — then you get some extra benefits which is that you're more likely to have
equal physical ability with both of your hands, which is a big plus right? And you
get the added benefit of additional coordination. If you learn how to play
things two different ways then you've got more musical options. And then finally
you've got the fully ambidextrous approach if you want to go all the way
with this thing.
And that's where you switch the feet as well. That just gives
you even more musical options and perhaps, most importantly, it gives
your left foot a lot more to do if you're gonna be playing the kick drum
with that. And I do think that the left foot for most drummers is the most
underdeveloped limb, so there is a huge advantage to giving that left foot
something to do. This can also give you the option to have more sound colors to
play with, like you look at somebody like Mike Mangini or Travis Orbin, they've got
a mirror-image drum set and you have more sound options to choose from.
Or you
might stagger your toms like Mangini and then you can play a certain kind of
melody… …that you can't do in the same way, using
the same stickings on another drum set. And so there are absolutely musical
benefits to having that extra skill beyond just having extra technique for
the sake of technique. So now you might be saying, "wow, this sounds great, Shawn. I
love the sound of these benefits. Sign me up!
I just have one question though. How much is it gonna cost?" And that is the million
dollar question — well maybe not a million dollar but it's it's an expensive
question nonetheless. So it seems to me that the cost is the key part of this
equation in our cost-benefit analysis because I think the benefits are rather
obvious. If the cost were the same for all of these approaches I think there's
no reason you wouldn't choose the maxed- out fully-ambidextrous one just to have
the extra firepower, so to speak. But of course the cost is not the same, so if
it's gonna take you an extra, I don't know, 23 years of your life to
achieve this, most people will probably say, "nah, I don't really need those extra
skills and pretty happy with this awkward crossing over." However, if it's
just like 10% more time, okay, now I think a lot more people would be
interested.
So knowing the true cost of this in terms of hours spent in the
practice room is really the key to this whole equation for figuring out whether
or not it's going to be worth it to you to take any of these approaches. So for
the rest of the video I will give my best estimations for what the cost of
these various things are and I want you to take all of this with a huge grain of
salt because this is extremely difficult to know what the true cost of any of
this is. The main reason for that is we don't have enough data. You would have to
do a massive study with hundreds of drummers over multiple years to really
compare fairly how much work it takes to do, I don't know, to play fully righty vs.
fully lefty vs. open-handed vs. ambidextrous and compare all of those in
a clinical environment. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of data, so it's
going to be nearly impossible for us to do this really in a scientific way — the
way that I would like to — so in the absence of a large data set the next
best thing we have is the stories of people that have done similar things
before.
So that's a very small data set but it's better than nothing. So the
first thing that seems to be true is that it doesn't matter whether you're a
righty or lefty in the rest of your life. Like, if you write things with your right
hand, it has very little to do with whether you're going to be
better at being a righty drummer or not. And the reason is that drumming is such
a specialized skill that requires so many thousands of hours to develop that a
little bit of advantage from throwing a football or something is not really
gonna help you in your drumming. I know many left-handed people in their daily
lives that decided for practical reasons to play the drums right-handed and it
didn't take them any longer to achieve that. And I do think there are some
convincing arguments for playing on a right-handed drumset regardless of
whether you're righty or lefty, and I want to be careful with how I word this, because I imagine that left-handed people are kind of marginalized and
they're probably tired of hearing people like me, who are right-handed, telling
them to do things right-handed, but I would just say, first of all, I'm not
telling anybody what to do, and I think you should do what's best for you, but I
do want to give you as much information as I can so you can make a good decision.
And from my point of view here's the advantage to playing on a right-handed
drum set: you can sit down at any drum set anywhere in the world (if it's a
standard drum set) and play.
So going to a jam session — easy. Going to a studio where
the engineer is used to miking things in a certain way. They might have the mics
already kind of pre-staged for a right-handed setup. If you're sharing a
kit at a gig you don't have to switch things around. If you live in New York
City, please dear God, play on a right-handed drum set, because every club
and venue has their own drum set and most of the time there's a million
different bands playing on the same night and you've only got five minutes
to switch everything, to swap your cymbals, adjust your seat height and then
go.
Now if you've got your own kit all the time and you're always driving to
the gig and setting up your drums then you can do whatever is comfortable for
you. You can bring all your own gear you can bring cable hi-hats, you can do
whatever you need to do. But if you do want to share kits or just be able to
play on any kit that's not your own, which happens a lot as a professional,
then I do think it's really practical to play the standard kind of drum set, just
like it's practical to play a standard right-handed guitar. And keep in mind
this is speaking mainly to those who have just started or haven't been
playing the drums for very long because you know, if you're this early in your
journey then you can take any path you want and it's gonna take you about the
same amount of time, you know, to become a righty or a lefty.
So whatever hand you use to — I don't know brush your teeth or open doors — has
almost no effect on your ability to play the drums in the grand scheme of, say, 10
years of practicing.
Even in one year of practicing. I think, I mean maybe, maaaybe it
would give you an advantage for the first few weeks or one or two months, but
after that I really don't see there being a huge advantage to favoring one
side over another based on what you do in the rest of your life. So I don't
think that should be a major factor in your decision, and keep in mind that
whether you're a righty or a lefty, you still need to play well with both hands.
You have to have good technique and play in time with both hands, so like if I
play a groove, I can't just like have a horrible left hand.
I mean my right hand is
a little bit better but I can't get away with a huge disparity and ability,
otherwise it throws the whole groove off. So you do have to have some skill with
both sides, and since it's gonna take you the same amount of time from being a
beginner to becoming a proficient lefty or righty drummer, then I don't think it
really matters which one you choose. Now here's some food for thought for
righties and lefties alike, is that since crossing over is… awkward and stupid, in
my opinion. Then I think it actually might make more sense to just play
open-handed leading with the left all the time and that way you can still sit
down on a normal right-handed drum set and all you got to do is move your ride
cymbal over to the left side, which i think is a pretty good compromise. You
don't have to do any extra work to lead with multiple sides and all you have to
do to change your kit is like move one cymbal over to the other side.
Now we've
spoken a lot about beginners, but where this situation changes is for those of
us that have been playing for a long time, and this is where it actually does
take a significant amount of time to switch sides. It's much easier as a
beginner with a blank slate to form new habits than it is for us you know old
dogs to learn new tricks, so to speak. And so in this case my prior experience
actually interferes with my ability to learn a new skill, whereas if I had
started switching from the very beginning, it wouldn't have taken as much
time. I actually know a handful of drum teachers who started teaching their
students to play open handed from the very beginning and these students pick
it up very quickly. Once they are used to switching,
that becomes, you know, not such a big deal and so it doesn't take them that
much more time to learn the mirror image of a certain pattern.
It's like, I feel
like I'm in a similar place with, say like snare drum kind of stuff, because I
spent a lot of time in my youth doing you know, rudiments and playing things
off the right and the left sides and so now I don't really feel a huge
difference if I have to play something based on rudiments starting with the
left side. Now I do notice that when I'm playing grooves and I'm playing fills.
Like, if I'm playing on one drum it's not a big deal but if I have to spread
things out or play fills backwards, I can't do that. I don't have the
vocabulary for that.
And grooves, I'm much more limited. I'm limited to what I've
practiced and it takes me a little more time to learn how to switch sides on a
groove because I'm not used to doing that as much as I am, you know, switching
rudiments. So that's a case where your prior experience actually gets in the
way and makes it harder for you to learn than a beginner who has no drum
experience. However there are areas of skill that do transfer over and that do
actually save you time, so that kind of works to cancel out some of that.
For
instance, you know, during my lefty challenge this last month, I already had
been playing drums for forever, and so I already knew the kinds of things that I
wanted to play, and so I didn't have to like invent a new vocabulary. I simply
had to learn how to execute the vocabulary I already had in my head. A
lot of other things transferred, like my hand technique, my timing, my musical
sensibility, what I would like to play where and when. Now I think the hardest
thing you can do is to completely switch and learn how to play lefty if you've
been righty your whole life. And so I think switching the feet is an enormous
challenge and it's significantly more difficult than just switching the hands.
We use our left foot so little, even in jazz where it's, you know, perhaps more
active than in other styles, playing different rhythms, it still is not
something that we use a whole lot and so it takes a lot of time to get used to
playing the kick drum with the left foot and having the same kind of abilities.
I
feel like my hands are more or less physically equal, like I don't have all
the same coordination patterns on the left side, but in terms of actual speed
and power and precision, my left hand is pretty much the same as my
right, and it's been like that since I was like 18 years old because I focused
on that. But my left foot is another story. The right foot is so much better
than the left foot and I know that it's gonna take me years to get my left foot
caught up to the right, so probably the most well-known example of an
ambidextrous drummer is Mike Mangini and he has said in interviews that it took
him six years to get comfortable playing a gig on a left-handed drum set.
Six
years is a long time and not everyone's gonna be willing to put in that much
work, but if we step back and look at the larger picture of Mike's career and I
don't know exactly how long Mike had been playing before he started playing
lefty, but if we consider he was playing for perhaps 20 years before that point —
he started at a very early age — six years is 30% of the time it took him, you know,
to get to where he was playing righty. Now that's a best-case scenario.
I would assume that Mike was comfortable playing gigs rightie much earlier than
that. Let's cut that in half. Let's suppose he was comfortable playing gigs
righty after 10 years. This is closer to a worst-case scenario where it takes you
60% of the time to learn to play lefty. Now the absolute worst scenario would be
that it takes you the same amount of time to play lefty but I highly, highly
doubt that that's gonna be the case.
I mean, based on all my experience and all of
those that I've talked to, the teachers I've taken lessons with, it seems to me
that you are going to learn to play the second way faster than it took you to
play the first way. But the question is just "how much?" I do not believe that if
it takes you 10 years to play righty it's gonna take you 10 years to play
lefty, because a lot of those skills will transfer over. And I would put the cost
of becoming ambidextrous on the drums somewhere roughly between 30 to 60
percent of the original work you did and to be safe let's say 50 percent. Now,
becoming ambidextrous is the most difficult scenario. If you only want to
switch the hands, like me. Actually I don't really care about switching the
feet other than I do kind of want my left foot to be better for double bass
playing, but I don't do a whole lot of double bass playing. So for me it's much
more important to only switch the hands and that's going to be significantly
less work.
Now if you're a complete beginner, you're in luck, because all
this stuff becomes much easier if you start doing it this way from the very
beginning. So I would say if you want to — not switch your feet — but if you want to
switch your hands to play lefty and righty, that is not gonna take you that
much extra time. I mean, yes, you do have to actually spend the time literally to
practice the coordination patterns with the other side. But conceptually, once you
get used to the idea of switching, the act of switching itself becomes much
easier and takes much less time to do.
If I had to bet, I would say that if you're
a beginner and you want to learn how to play open handed leading with both sides
and being able to switch it's only gonna take you maybe five to ten percent extra
work. I really don't believe that it's a huge commitment. I know, you know, like I
said before, I know teachers who have begun teaching their students to play
open handed from the very beginning and they pick it up very quickly. It's only
difficult when you've been playing a certain way to change your habits. So to
recap, based on everything I've learned, everything I practiced, and everyone I've
spoken to, I would estimate that for a beginner to learn how to play righty or
lefty would take the same amount of time regardless of whether you're righty or
lefty. I also think if you're a beginner and
you start to play, say, lefty open-handed on a right handed drum set, that's also
gonna take the same amount of time. If you're a beginner and you want to become
completely ambidextrous from the very beginning it's gonna be easier for you
now to do that then later.
It's still gonna be more work than switching just
the hands. Now for those of us that have been playing for a while I think to
switch only the hands is gonna take again probably 30% more work maybe a
little bit more, and if you want to switch all of the feet and everything
that's gonna be more like 50 or 60 percent extra work. So those are the best
estimations I can give. Those are my current beliefs and obviously they're based
on limited data, so I would very willingly change my opinion if I saw
some convincing data that proved me wrong, and I would love to do these
studies by the way, but knowing what I know now, these are the best guesses I
can give and I think that the numbers are gonna be roughly in these ranges, and
I hope that this helps you make your own decisions.
I want to thank my Patrons for
helping to make this video. We're having a lot of fun over there so if you
haven't checked it out there is a special going till the end of the month
so I want to thank you for watching. If you do have more
specific questions head on over to my Patreon and we can chat about this in my
Discord server, or in one of my monthly Q+A's for Patrons only.
So I hope this
has been helpful and I hope that one day we can be a bit more scientific about it,
and I hope that by having the cost and benefits a little bit more clearly laid
out you can better make your own decision on this stuff. So thank you guys
for your support, thank you for watching and see you in the next video..