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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'm a mighty fine player




"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?