Happy Friday! I’ve dubbed this weekend a "bye-week" on the channel. (Maybe some of you astute viewers happened to notice that a video didn’t go up today!). So instead I’d like to shoot you a sneak peak of an upcoming lesson in the works.

I’ve been getting questions about drum stool height... How do you know what your ideal stool height is? How does this factor into your height, playing style, and foot technique? Let’s dig into this. (Stay tuned to the channel, because the full video on this will be up soon.)

I’m just under 6’4” tall. For you metric folks, that’s roughly 193cm. I measured both drum thrones that I use often and found both to be right at 22” (56cm). If we do the math here, that gives us a 3.45 to 1 ratio - or 29%. My throne height is 29% of my physical height. So take that for what it’s worth, and use this as a starting point if you’d like. But there are other factors to...

We’ve all had those days where we sit down to play, and nothing feels right. The groove we practiced the other day just won’t come together, and the fills we practiced end up sloppy. Nothing FEELS right, and we’re not comfortable playing for some reason. Something’s clearly wrong…but what is it? Let’s dig into this a little more and see if we can find some possible solutions.

• #1: You may have just set up your kit weird. What I mean by this is that maybe your snare is too low, or your hats are too high. Maybe your kick drum is too close…or too far away. Maybe you’re having to lean in too far because the snare and hihat are too far away. Any number of weird little setup issues can cause enough discomfort to give you a bad day at the drums. Take the time to evaluate your setup, and video yourself playing if possible. Play around with adjusting different elements of your kit, because you might suddenly...

 When you’re setting up your kit, don’t set yourself up so far into a corner that you don’t have sufficient leg room at the kit. This is huge for someone 6’4” like myself, but this is an important piece of advice for any drummer. I’ve made the mistake before of not allowing sufficient space behind my kit, which results in having to have the kick drum too close (so that it stays on my drum rug), which in turn results in me sitting too close.

Of course, the simple remedy for this is to sit farther back, right? Well sort of.

As I realized this leg room issue, I began setting my throne farther back to allow ample leg space. I suddenly began experiencing back pain at the drums, which I had never had to deal with before. This was becoming very frustrating...until I realized my mistake.

Even though my arms are pretty long, I was actually having to reach out too far for the rack tom and cymbals. What I didn’t realize at first was that I...