I do my practice pad work using marching sticks. Big huge heavy things. I like them a lot. They’re easy to hold and rebound easy on the practice pads. But I’ve been asking myself are these the right sticks to be practicing my strokes with? After doing some reading online, I still don’t know the answer. There are pros and cons. But I got the feeling that I really should try the practice pad with normal sticks. I have a pair of 5A’s. And immediately failed. They’re so light and small it feels nearly impossible in comparison. I have another pair of sticks, the Vic Firth Swinger SD10’s. And I absolutely do not have a clue where I got these from. I don’t remember buying them or even hearing about them. But they are thicker than the standard stick, but also very light. So I did today’s left hand stroke practice using them. At first it was very awkward, still seemingly difficult and close to impossible. But after about 3000 strokes, I started to get the feel for it. I’m up to 7000 today so far, and I’m starting to get the hang of it.
It reinforces to me, that I really should go out and get some more sizes to experiment with.
