Stewart's Techniques
"In fact, my
playing technique is very, very orthodox. I have orthodox grip, any drummer
will know what I'm talking about, and I practiced my rudiments growing up,
the paradiddles, mammy daddy rolls, my technique is very by the book. All
the stuff I do with that technique is as creative as you like, but the way that I
do those things, the way the muscles work, the way the sticks works, is all
very correct orthodox technique."
1996, Discovery Interview on AOL
SC: Well, the whole point to using traditional grip is because it's the most efficient way to use
your hand to hit a drum. You can hit 50 times harder with traditional grip than you can with
matched. Matched gives you no power; you use only the muscles on the top of your forearm with
matched instead of the big muscles on the bottom of your forearm with traditional. You can get a
much stronger stroke that way. If you just look at the construction of the arm it's obvious. The whole point of technique
anyway is to have the most efficient way of
getting to the notes. I've found for me, traditional
grip works the best.
April, 1990 Modern Drummer
CD: What do you practice at home? On the road? To warm up with?
SC: For real practice, just to keep my muscles happening the way they should, I practice
monotonous grooves, just get into it and stay there. Good for the muscles and a great
meditation technique. On the road I practice music theory, just writing notes, scribbling notes,
practising using the musical language with greater facility. Playing gigs keeps my drums
happening. Before a show I'll do some callisthenics, shake my hands around.
May, 1984 issue of Downbeat Magazine
"I don't practice particularly hard. I can't think of anything I've done that other
people haven't done. I mean a lot of drummers practice much more than I do, but don't get as
far as I get. I think either you're born with it, or not - it's not a question of hard work."
August, 1983 issue of Music UK magazine
On some tracks Stewart stopped playing the snare drum and just held the beat on
bass drum and cymbals for a few bars. "I do that quite a bit because of the back beat, which all
drummers are brought up on, is important, unless you can provide another pulse which is
understandable. It’s easy to do. There are other things that will provide a pulse, a rhythmic hook
to hang everything else on. The back beat has always done it in rock and roll up to now, but the
watershed in drumming, which West Indian music has brought about means it's no longer so
important. Alternatives have been discovered, such as bass drum four in the bar. Boom, boom,
boom, boom. And instead of a back beat on two and four, a rimshot on three."
Stewart says he can get off on playing a 4/4 beat for hours and does a lot of it on the road. "It's
something that requires more practice than rolling round the kit. That’s just icing on the cake. You
have tokeep the beat and keep your ear s tuned. You have to lock in to a beat, dum-cha,
dum-dum-cha," says Stewart began to vocalise a ferociously solid beat. "I can play that for hours, but speeding up and slowing down are
weaknesses of mine."
"I suppose most drummers suffer from it, but I worry less about it. A lot of our tracks speed up
and slow down, which makes the later editing stage more difficult. I usually speed up. Well it’s
organic innit. The echo gadgets I use on stage
have done a lot towards improving my consistency of tempo. But if I get excited, I tend to speed
up."
October, 1980 issue of Musicians Only magazine
Where does this take me?