Align your mind and body in this experiential drumming journey with a series of exercises that are sure to challenge, inform, and inspire the way you think and play.
Rich Stitzel, Creator of the DrumMantra Practice System, shares his method for sharpening your concept of time, fine-tuning your accuracy, improving your pulse awareness, enhancing your knowledge of time signatures, deepening your coordination, and informing your understanding of polymeters. The DrumMantra Practice System utilizes rhythmic repetition as a means of developing muscle memory, which allows for a more connected and expressive playing experience.
The Foundational Series exercises are focused on strengthening the practitioner in 6 key areas:
Timing
Reading
Coordination
Polymetric Awareness
Phrasing
Groove
The exercises in The Foundational Series are experiential, meaning the rewards come from actually doing the practice. This is the only way to truly gain the benefits from these exercises.
The book has three different sections (4/4, 3/4, and 5/4), and each section has three features: warm-ups, meditations, and rhythmic melodies.
The Warm-Ups include various “moving click” audio tracks designed to challenge your attention and awareness as much as your stickings and technique. There are 13 warm-ups—5 in the 4/4 section, 4 in the 3/4 section, and 4 in the 5/4 section.
The “Meditations” are exercises that begin to explore the relationship between accent permutations and pulse displacements in the 16th note field. There are six pages of meditations in each section, and each meditation is 6-8min long.
The Rhythmic Melodies will challenge your reading, coordination, and concentration as you play melodies with the feet while playing various accent structures and stickings with the hands. There are eight 4-bar melodies in each section.
The Foundational Series was created for all drummers, regardless of genre, who want to play with more accuracy, depth, creativity, and confidence.
