Thanks for the kind words, I checked out your channel and really enjoyed your music as well!

Hey man! Its a little bit of everything for climbing the tempos. I practice the technique very slow using different fingers as the video shows, also practice endurance with the comfort range (moderate) tempos, and then really push top speed as well. I do it about 2-3 times a week to maintain it now, but when I was learning it was everyday for about 45 minutes total (lunch breaks well spent haha) I think honing the technique and talking to the right muscles slow, working on endurance, and redlining speed are all part of a good practice routine. For getting really fast speeds I do notice my thumb goes further forward than my index finger, which creates a free floating pivot point instead of a fixed fulcrum between the thumb/index. There's another video on my channel showing this in slow motion where you can see the thumb positioning. Cheers from NZ

I lied in the title a bit, this is actually SD3's hihat/crashes, and knockout's ride+china. I usually run a JST kontakt patch of a z custom megabell(stacked on top of navenes meinl+the SD3 one) I used SD3 for the hats specifically because scripting in kontakt intimidates me and SD3 has a pretty great triggering preset/options for my module. I believe knockout can do everything like chokes and opens in kontakt I just haven't done the deep dive into the features. Totally agree though the shells, snare in particular, are the best sounding sampled drums I've ever heard and they play great! The china is epic too. I stack the 2 kontakt instruments+SD3 into a summing folder track and then trigger all 3 at once with the same set of midi data off the e kit.

couple reasons for that could be: -too much pressure on the index/thumb fulcrum -youre coming it at an angle where the stick wants to bounce in random directions -too much elbow/wrist movement causing the same problem as #2

I believe you can yeah, each technique has its advantages and hurdles, so context is everything, but at the very top end of the metronome both are viable. It depends what you wanna do musically. In general, push/pull is more ergonomic as it is a 2 stroke motion that splits the work between different muscle groups. However, having different movements for each of the 2 strokes can create an uneven sound on acoustic drums like an accented moeller stroke. This can make a blast feel slower because you feel the quarter note instead of the 8th note pulse you get without the accent in there. French I find its a lot easier for me to get an even sound and more power, but harder to sustain for long periods of time past about 280bpm. Which is fine because most songs are slower than this, and usually have fills/different blasts to break up the technique past this speed. However, if someone handed me a 300bpm black metal tune and said blast over these chords for 5 minutes straight, I would probably need to think about push/pull to avoid my hands exploding. Of course there's outliers, like Wanja gets a very even push pull sound, and Lord Marco sustains unbroken French singles for 5 minutes at a time.... and both are doing that well above 300bpm. Its worth experimenting with both and seeing which one works best for you. Hope this helps!

I do read comments when my phone tells me to, so I'm happy to answer any questions/provide more info in the comments

@@FerretPercussion I like your technique. Is it possible to have a your video where you explain each part step by step, very slowly? Starting with the fingers but with the closest shot, show the left hand as well? Thanks

They're cheap knockoffs of the Evans Real Feel pads that the school I worked for bought in bulk. Truthfully any pad will do, but you can't go wrong with either the real feel or the red Vater ones if you're picky.

@@FerretPercussion awesome thanks 🙏

Thanks for the kind words man, and my thumb is mostly between parallel and 45 degrees but offset a bit, so its just the outer corner of my thumb on the stick instead of the whole thumb pad. Thats tricky to describe in text, but the idea is less skin on the stick = less friction, and I can put more pressure on it without killing rebound. Hope this is what you were after, cheers.

That would be the alesis dm5 trigger module using the "speed metal" kick sample, and yes that piece of gear was industry standard for a long time in death metal production! Thanks for the kind words.