In this online drum lesson, I’m going to explain Joe Morello’s arm accent technique. I never did get to study with Morello, but I did study with Dave Divis, one of his drum students. This drum technique will enable you to play with more speed and power than if you use just your wrists and fingers.

For those of you who are not familiar with Joe Morello, this was a drummer who’s chops were on par with Buddy Rich. He was also a great drum teacher.

Joe’s method of teaching drum technique was to develop the wrists first, then the arms, and finally the fingers. Before practicing this arm accent technique, you really need to master full strokes, which will develop your wrists. Here’s a lesson and explanation on full strokes.

The best exercise for learning the arm accent technique in the beginning is to simply play triplets with each hand. Accent the first note of each triplet. Later you can do the same with 16th notes. You can also fill in between each note with the other hand once you’ve really mastered the technique. This will become very fast and powerful single strokes.

You’re going to use your arm for the accents, with a whipping type of action, which gives you more power. You will absolutely be able to play these patterns faster by adding the arm motion than you could using just your wrists, once you really master it. It’s impossible to explain in writing, so here’s a video demonstrating the technique.



Try to mimic the motions you see in the video. In the beginning, you want to smack the pad or drum pretty hard. When you start really working your speed up, you won’t hit the accents as hard.

Notice that I really don’t lift my arm at all. The elbow just moves out to prepare for the accent like a chicken wing.

I mention in the video that when I was a kid, I owned a bull whip that I brought back from a vacation to Mexico. Getting that whip to make a loud crack was a similar feeling or motion to this arm accent technique.

Another thing that might help you is to think about throwing a baseball. I’m a terrible baseball player, but some of my students who play baseball say that throwing a baseball is also a similar motion.

In the beginning, this drum technique feels very unnatural, at least it did for me. Practice with your dominant hand first to really figure out how it’s supposed to feel. Then use that hand as a model for the other hand. Mimic the same motions and feeling.

It’s definitely beneficial to practice in front of a mirror. A mirror will reveal things about your motions and posture that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

Another important point is that this technique only works for single accents. It’s a very efficient motion for single accents, but it’s not designed for 2 or more accents in a row. Don’t try that with the arm accent technique, as it will just slow you down.

Practice this technique 10-15 minutes a day. It may take several weeks to really get the hang of it.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.





