[Gus]

Originally Posted by Der Trommler

That is a great site for online lessons.

Susan,

Welcome to the forum by the way, great to have another gal here!

I Don't tend to hear from a lot or females around here.

[Tamas1]

Deffinatly go with a high tuned Tama pretorian, its expencive but top line,. Or a tama titan, just tune them a little higher than they normally are. It gets even more pop sound then revs snare on beast and the harlot, a little more than evans snare on my fears have become phobias from as blood runs black. Ive used both for alot of trash metal, death metal and black metal gigs, If you want a steel sound crack deffinatly go with a porkpie or black beauty.

	Tama Drums Shop for Tama Drums at Musician's Friend

	Evans Drumheads Shop for Evans Drumheads at Musician's Friend

[Cymbals & Snares]

I tell ya what, I had been givin a drum dial as a present 2 years prior to me ever using it. One afternoon I was changing out my Snare heads and was getting frustrated by the ****ty sound I was getting. I spied the drum dial sitting on the shelf virtually in the same place I had put it two years earlier. I broke it our a quick read of the instructions and in 15 minutes I has a snare sound that I could not believe. I looked at my Mapex Mars pro series snare and couldn't believe how great the thing sounded. I have since become a convert to the drum dial. I still need to fine tune the last twist or two of the tunning rods. But it easily and quickly gets you 95% of the way there quickly and painlessly. I highly recommend it. T

	Mapex Drums Shop for Mapex Drums at Musician's Friend

[4BIDEXTROUSDRUMMER]

Personally for me, I would suggest to tune your lug nuts in a rotating motion like you would for a wheel of a car. Turn them as tight as you can on the top head. Bottom head should be as tight as well....so long you are not using a picolo. I did that and the bottom head bottomed out on me. The real key to get that crack is to learn 3 certain strokes. One of them is called a down stroke. It's where you hold your arm out to 1/4" from the drum skin and when you hit the drum let it bounce the height to a 1/4" This will prevent from all the sound from being soaked up through your stick and arm. It takes allot of practice but, when you get you get it your drums will sound like thunder as it does for me. ****WARNING*** Be extremely careful not to hit to hard or you can invert your hand. It started to feel like something is moving through my arm. The next thing I knew my middle finger and ring finger suddenly moved upwards from other fingers and I had to snap it back into place. I then started to proceed with a traditional grip to ease the tension. I saw an interview on a video that DAVE MUSTAIN of MEGADEATH put out. This interview was about MIKE PORTNOY of DREAM THEATER & his experience with it. If you want to see the results please check out my performances,thanx. Hope this helps.

[Tainojim]

Originally Posted by 4BIDEXTROUSDRUMMER

****WARNING*** Be extremely careful not to hit to hard or you can invert your hand. It started to feel like something is moving through my arm. The next thing I knew my middle finger and ring finger suddenly moved upwards from other fingers and I had to snap it back into place. I then started to proceed with a traditional grip to ease the tension.

Sound like you hit a tendon or a nerve. Soaking in with hot water with "Epsom Salts would help allot" .

Must have been holding your stick too tight and the wrong way. Just like holding a baseball bat the wrong way can cause lots of damage. Even a hammer for that matter.

[slingerland]

TRY Bob Gatzen Drum Tuning you can find it from youtube.com

[Luke]

I have a tama 6.5x 14 steel snare with EVANS HD dry, Hazy 300 and 16 strand puresound blasters. I tune the batter really tight and the rezo at a medium tension. Also I keep the snares at a medium tight tension. I get a really nice crack from it now I love the sound.

	Tama Drums Shop for Tama Drums at Musician's Friend

	Evans Drumheads Shop for Evans Drumheads at Musician's Friend

[4BIDEXTROUSDRUMMER]

Does this look like I'm doing it all wrong?

YouTube - A CO-ORDINATED BLISTERCAT IS 2 DRUNK 2...

[Der Trommler]

Looks to me like you play matched grip just fine. I do see that you float your pointer fingers and use your thumb and back three fingers to grip the stick. That might be why you are having trouble with your fingers locking up, but it seems to work well for you.