my first time ever taking a lesson from greg zuber was on april 4th, 2004. it was during my junior year of high school on my college visit trip.
i played:
delécluse 12 from the twelve études for snare drum
delécluse 9 from the thirty études for timpani
(i know because i just listened back to my recording of that lesson.)
we spent most of our lesson talking about warming up on snare drum.
it was awesome.
greg teaches at juilliard and plays at the metropolitan opera, so although the lesson was great and i was super excited to meet him, i thought there would be no chance in hell of me ~actually~ studying with him in college.
well, imagine my surprise getting a letter one year later that i was admitted to juilliard to study with…greg zuber.
on my first day of freshman year, greg hands me a giant 283-page packet of snare drum exercises, charts, grip diagrams, and articles.
thus began my college snare drum journey.
six years later i joined greg in the percussion section of the metropolitan opera orchestra, where we’ve performed together daily since 2011. in the 14 years i’ve known him, i’ve learned a ton from greg about practicing from our lessons and listening to him play. and you need to learn these concepts too.
today’s video is about how greg zuber warms up on snare drum.
a few questions he answers:
what is the purpose of a snare drum warmup?
how long does he usually warm up for?
how does the warmup length change for different situations?
what’s the content of his warmup?
he even graciously allowed me to post a packet of snare drum warmup exercises, including single strokes, rebound control, soft rolls, and long rolls. you can download that here:
