We’re gearing up for Christmas here at the Clark household, and we're super excited for our 5-month-old daughter's first Christmas! :)

If you’re blessed this Christmas with cash gifts you’d like to use on quality gear investments, I’ll give you some good ideas today.

Whether you’re new to the drums or a few decades into the instrument, make sure you own these 7 important tools for success. Of course, this is isn’t an exhaustive list because I could just as easily send you another email next week with 7 more things. But these are the most essential, most important physical items that will contribute most directly to your personal growth on the drums. Here we go!

[1] Metronome

Seems pretty obvious. However, plenty of players fail to regularly practice with a metronome either because they’re lazy (I’ve been guilty too!) - or they feel it might damage their “natural, organic feel” on the drums. The latter is false, by the way,...

You probably caught the video a couple of weeks ago about “why we drop sticks” and how to avoid it. I started thinking, though, about some additional tips that I didn’t mention…

Have you ever dealt with thumb fatigue?

…that kind of pain in your thumb joint that often results from squeezing too tightly on the sticks when you play? This was something that I began to realize I was facing regularly. One time it got so bad that my hands ached for two days after a gig. I knew I had to do something…but what? I began to find some solutions, some mental and some physical. I made a video about this last summer, which I encourage you to check out if you haven’t seen it. (I’ll throw a link down below!)

If you feel like there’s a grip issue behind your dropping sticks, one of the thumb-fatigue solutions might help.

I noticed that the only time I had bad thumb pain while playing was when my hands were cold or dry. If they...