Mastering The Moeller Technique: Beginner’s Guide
While practice and experience are the keys to mastering the drums, there are also techniques and methods you can learn that will rapidly transform your drumming. The Moeller technique is one of those methods. If your current drum teacher does not know the Moeller technique then you should probably seek a different teacher.
The Moeller technique uses a whipping motion for faster and more powerful drum playing with less physical effort from the drummer. The technique does this by combining three different types of drum strokes in a single arm motion with the assistance of gravity. It requires a relaxed control over the drumsticks and can be used for fast-paced rhythms and to master accented notes.
History Of The Moeller Technique
The Moeller technique is named for an early 20th-century American drummer, Sanford A. Moeller. He picked up the technique from watching drummers who had fought in the Civil War and who used this approach to play their drums loudly and for long periods of time without getting tired.
Moeller taught the method to the American jazz drummer Jim Chapin in the late 1930s, and Chapin did a lot to popularize the approach. Eventually, Moeller would define the technique in a publication that he called The Art of Snare Drumming, which became so popular that it was soon known just as The Moeller Book.
Fundamentals Of The Moeller Technique
Fundamentally, the Moeller technique works by making a waving motion so that you can hit the drum on both the downward and upward motions of your arm.
In classic drumming, you use the downward motion of your arm to strike the drum, and the upward motion is a recovery for the next stroke. This eats up valuable time between beats, and playing fast music will tire your arms out quickly. The Moeller technique takes advantage of the upward motion as well as the downward.
Most players of the Moeller technique use the German grip. For this method, hold your hands out in front of you with your palms facing down. Curl your index finger and place the drumstick between your index finger and thumb. Try and balance the stick so that you can move it between your index finger and thumb like a fulcrum. Let the rest of your fingers curl around the stick to provide support. When you are playing, keep your hands parallel to the drum heads. This usually means pointing your elbows outwards to maintain a good wrist angle.
Moeller Strokes
The Moeller technique is sometimes described as using four different strokes.
The Full Stroke is a powerful downward stroke and is usually the first stroke in any Moeller series. The stick should go from its initial vertical position, down to the drum head, and back up to its starting position, setting you up to play the next stroke.
The Down Stroke is very similar, but the goal of the stroke is not to return the stick to the initial position but to keep the stick close to the drum head. This sets you up to play the upstroke and the tap stroke.
The Up Stroke is the hit achieved when you pull your wrist upward. This means the sticks are hitting the drum head at a more vertical angle, which means a lighter hit. This leaves your wrists in a good position to follow up with a full stroke or a down stroke.
The Tap Stroke is played from the position when the stick is only a few centimeters above the head. It strikes quickly and returns to a low position. It produces relatively gentle notes so is mainly used for ghost notes and accents. These are sometimes called rebound strokes, played on the rebound from the down stroke.
Moeller Exercises For Beginners
When you start to work on the Moeller technique, there are a number of exercises you can do to improve your mastery. These are mainly exercises considered useful for applying the Moeller technique to the most important drumming rudiments.
Three-Note Moeller
The three-note Moeller is an exercise to work on triplets, and it uses the down, tap, and up strokes. With the three-note Moeller, the strokes should appear in that order: down stroke, rebound, and up stroke.