Ed Flack ©2020
There is no shortage of epitaphs written in remembrance of the traditional grip method. Against the crushing odds of millions of words uttered to pronounce its inevitable doom, the popularity of conventional grip perseveres, literally in the hands of some of the world’s most accomplished drummers.
Why has this awkward-looking, ancient technique remained so appealing to modern drummers? Here are some reasons cited by drummers who use traditional grip:
• To preserve a tradition.
• To partway from the rest of the herd by being different or unique.
• A sense of accomplishment. The pride of mastering a technique others consider too difficult to learn.
• Aesthetics. “It looks cool.”
• To change the “feel” of things played by adopting a counter-balanced, asymmetrical feel.
• To alter thinking. To seek inspiration and new ideas gained by using asymmetric techniques.
• Personal preference. Many drummers are more comfortable using traditional grip.
What other reasons might there be to play traditional grip? What if the left hand is neurologically inclined to respond positively to a grip that is the complementary inversion of the right hand? What if we had not only two hands but also two brains?
The human brain has two separate cerebral hemispheres (left and right), with each half exhibiting observable dominances in various functions.
Modern science has debunked the popular idea of attributing personality traits to “brained-ness.” The old presumption was that creative, artistic people were “right-brained” and that analytical, logically minded people were “left-brained.” Granted, we cannot attribute personality to brained-ness; however, our divided brain biology may explain other fascinating phenomena.
Individuals who suffer a stroke or other traumatic injury to the brain’s left side can become paralyzed on the body’s right side. Other symptoms of a brain injury affect speech, sensory perceptions, and a wide range of cognitive performances, depending upon which part of each hemisphere is damaged.
Our two brain hemispheres communicate across a connective network called the corpus callosum. Without it, the left hand can literally not know what the right hand is doing.
The study of separate left and right brain hemisphere task dominance is known as the “lateralization of brain function theory.”
During the 1960s at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Roger W. Sperry and his colleagues conducted extensive studies on epileptic patients treated for their condition by having the two brain hemispheres surgically separated at the corpus callosum.
Sperry observed, “Both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.”1 For this brain lateralization research and findings, Dr. Sperry, received a Nobel Prize.2
An art educator, Dr. Betty Edwards, developed visual perception and drawing techniques based upon Sperry’s research. In 1979 she published her theories in a drawing method book titled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
The Edwards drawing method operates on the premise that the left brain is the source of logical and sequential thinking where abstract ideas translate into symbols, numbers, letters, and words. By contrast, the right brain recognizes patterns and relationships to form a holistic interpretation of what is perceived. Edwards believes the right brain does not express ideas as symbols or words. The right hemisphere is the source of intuitive understanding, things we readily understand without the words to express them.
The drawing method that Dr. Edwards developed involves using exercises to “shift the mode of thinking” from the left brain (L-mode), which sees an object and wants to represent it with a symbol, to the right brain (R-mode), which sees what it sees and draws what it sees.3
According to Edwards: “In order to gain access to the subdominant visual, perceptual R-mode of the brain, it is necessary to present the brain with a job that the verbal, analytic L-mode will turn down.”4
BRAIN LATERALIZATION AND TRADITIONAL GRIP
Within the context of brain lateralization, traditional grip reveals itself as a natural, balanced, and complementary approach to drumming.
When right-handed drummers use a matched grip, the left brain takes the lead using the right hand. The right brain must then mimic whatever the left brain and the right-hand do. Relegating the right brain to the mundane “monkey see, monkey do” task of imitating whatever the left brain does will not fully exploit the right brain’s natural potential.
To ignite the right brain and get the left hand more engaged in the creative kinesthetic process, it responds best when it receives a different way of doing things.
When the right brain hemisphere is allowed to complement in an asymmetric capacity, what the opposite side does, a significant shift in the thinking process occurs — once released from the assignment of imitation, right-brain activity shifts to the endeavor of creative problem-solving.
By inverting the left hand from an overhand grasp to an underhand position, the brain’s attention changes from visually matching the hands to seeking the best way to play and control the strokes.
The balance point of the drum stick does not change with an underhand grip. The types of drum strokes required to play a specific pattern do not change, and the laws of physics and gravity do not mysteriously reset. The only change is that the left-hand is moved under the stick where the forefingers can push down ahead of the fulcrum while the right hand is above the stick where the fingers pull up behind the fulcrum.
That simple change is all it takes to tranquilize the left brain’s demanding insistence to be copied and gives the right brain the sense of independence on which it thrives.
Once the right brain has discovered for itself what the strokes are and how to control them while using the underhand grip, it can then successfully transfer that understanding to a left overhand grip when desired.
NOTES
1. Sperry, R. “Some Effects of Disconnecting the Cerebral Hemispheres.” Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science, September 24, 1982. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/217/4566/1223.
2. “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1981.” NobelPrize.org. Accessed March 19, 2020. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1981/sperry-article.html.
3. Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Los Angeles: Penguin Putnam, 1999), 38.
4. ibid., preface xiii.
