So me and the rest of the battery are competing in a Solo & Ensemble competition. Our solo is Yellow After the Rain, and our ensemble piece is Head Talk. Head Talk has given me no trouble. Yellow After the Rain however is killing me. I have no experience with 4 mallets, and my percussion director expects us to learn within the month. I am a fluid sight reader so it's not the music that hurts me, it's the technique. Any tips to holding and growing comfortable with 4 mallets would be greatly appreciated.

Please bear with me, as this might sound a tad like teaching a small child. I realize you are not a small child, since you can post complete sentences and march on a battery. This is, however, how my college professor teaches 4-mallets to percussionists in his studio. Kinda strange, so it's easy to remember.

Excess pressure hurts you, and hinders the speed at which you will learn the music. I'm sure that you have made a "gun" with your hand before. We've all played cops and robbers or made a shooting gesture at the end of a stupid hand shake. If you ignore that the outside mallets are sticking out of your hand, you can now bend the barrel. You dont want to bend it too much though. Make your gun shoot the people beside you, not you. With your mallet in the center of your palm, it should now have the perfect place to rest with your thumb on top. Your hand should always look like you're correctly holding a gun, not like some thug would hold it. I would be lying, though, by saying that i hold my gun correctly at all times, or that I don't tend to shoot myself on small intervals. It's okay to deviate a tad, but you should try and engrave that into your mind.

My instructor made me go a couple of days without playing on bars. He had me play on a table 'til my hands felt better with holding all four mallets. This will give you a chance to get good double lateral (alternating strokes in one hand), single lateral (repeated single mallet strokes), and double verticals (both mallets playing together in one hand). While your working one the strokes, you can also work on spreading and thinning the intervals of the mallets. try and get the velocity out of your wrists, not your arms. Using too much arm causes you to downstroke more often, which slows down how easily you get to your next note. I personally do not believe in pulling the sound out of an instrument, but if you move from C to the G above it, downstroking would require you to go down, up, over, and down, as opposed to down, over in a slightly arch-ish fashion, and down. Less energy, better sounds, more fluid.

When we finally touched a marimba, we worked on holding intervals, usually in fifths or fourths (which is great help with Yellow After the Rain). Play 8 notes with all four mallets and then move up half a step and repeat (C G C G, C# G# C# G#, etc...) and come back down after your done going up. It's not only a great way to get comfortable with moving the mallets/enforcing a better technique, but its a good warmup to start with even when you've advanced farther along.

This is stuff that became written into my mind by repetition. I realize you only have about a month, but this is a good way to start improving (at least, it was for me). If you can get the basics down, YAtR should be a breeze. Its a great beginner solo, though of the thirty people in my studio, a couple of us did not have to play it as our rite of passage. I hope this helps!

This was a huge (and will continue to be) asset to me today! I was able to show the rest of my line the correct technique as well! The gun-finger analogy was funny and very helpful. Tell your professor that I thank him, and both of you have just helped my line gain a bit more strength in our percussion capabilities

I'm glad to hear that! Techniques and methods can vary from person to person, so keep your mind open to other approaches. That was an issue with me when I got to college a few years ago, but by giving other people a chance to impress their views upon me, I have become a much more proficient player for it. You can start combining all these things into a technique that is most comfortable to you/the individuals on your line.

A word of advice that has helped me tremendously, if I may. This applies to the Stevens Grip. In Stevensībok it says that the outer mallets (number 1 and 4) should be pushed out pretty far, so that only a tiny bit of it shows from out the back of your little finger. For beginners I (and Mr. Stevens himself!) recommended pushing it a little bit further back (so that approx. 0.8 inches show), which I still do even though Iīm definitely not a begynner anymore. This gives you more support from the "meat" of the hand. This support helps me relax more, so much so that Iīm not even holding the outside mallets, they just kinda "float" and stay there no matter what. This makes my whole hand more relaxed, thus helping interval changes and general stroke technique to become completely tension free. Which bears itīs fruits both in terms of power, stamina, cleanliness and a more open, enjoyable sound. However the length of mallets 1 and 4 is now slightly shorter than before compared to 2 and 3, but this can be compensated for by keeping your elbows out just a tiny bit further.