Stick Control in triplets

Here's a good library companion to my Stick Control implied rhythms piece. This was suggested to me by my friend Steve Pancerev-- I'm not sure if it's something he thought up, or if it was suggested by his old teacher, Ian Froman. The concept is simple enough-- just apply the stickings from the first section of Stick Control to a triplet rhythm-- figuring out on the fly how that lays is more challenging, though, so I've written it out. You might pencil in phrase marks to outline the four note groupings where they're not so easy to make out.

Usually you just run exercises 1-13, but what the heck, I went ahead and wrote up the whole page. The big challenge here is to play the RH part on the snare drum and the LH part on the bass drum along with jazz time on the cymbal and hihat. You could also play the RH part on the cymbal, doubled with the bass drum, and the left hand on the snare drum.

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Stick Control implied rhythms

I hope you dig all of this Stick Control stuff; I just happen to be working with this book a lot right now. One of my reservations I've always had about it- about the way the first three pages apply to the drums, anyway- is that the musical content is hidden behind the sticking patterns. And I don't want to base my playing on patterns of Rs and Ls, I want to base it on common musical language. So what I've done here is give the rhythm suggested by the right hand part of exercises 1-72 from the front of the book; if you drop out the left hand, or accent the right, these are the rhythms that pop out. I've written the more syncopated rhythms jazz style (as in Ted Reed), with long notes on the &s wherever possible. For easy reference, I've put them in the same format as the original:

Keeping these pages handy while working with the Stone exercises on the drumset will get one seeing the rhythmic content behind the exercises in fairly short order. If like me you use Stone and Reed a lot, hopefully making the connection between the two will encourage some different ways of thinking about each. I would be cautious about the way you apply this to snare drum practice, however; hanging everything off of the right hand is a normal thing on the drums, but when working strictly on hand technique you want to be more balanced.

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More Stone on the drums

Here's something timely to the ECM feel post. I've been using Stick Control quite a bit in my practicing lately- particularly my application in 5/4 (and a similar thing in 7/4), and in fooling with it began using this simple but effective variation:

These are most effective in a moderate to bright 2. Definitely experiment with substituting your own fills for the given triplets/roll.

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Stick Control expander - Rhythm, part 1

One of the things I'm working on getting together is an array of stuff to do with Stick Control, that do not make more sense to do by the melody-interpreting Reed/Syncopation method. I know that may not make a hell of a lot of sense to people not deeply involved with both books, but I don't have time to go into it now.

Whatever- our first entry, then, is a series of rhythmic variations for the 4, 8, and 16-note sticking patterns at the front of the book, and for the 16th note flam section- what you do is apply the stickings from those exercises to the rhythms on this sheet. I've written in some sample stickings from p. 5, ex. 5 so you can see how it works.

The notes in parentheses do not get played the first time through the exercise- they complete the pattern on the repeats. Rest during those notes the first time, coming in on the first non-parentheses notes.

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Best Books: Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman

In case you haven't figured it out already, I'm a big fan of Joel Rothman's books. His many, many books- I think he has written about a hundred of varying lengths since the early 60's. Basic Drumming is probably the most widely-owned, and contains more than a little of just about everything, without being in any way dumbed-down. A drummer who mastered everything in this book, with an equal amount of performance experience, would be cooking indeed. So the word "basic" is a little misleading.

Rothman has a unique logic to his presentation, which he follows selectively, with a bias in favor of practicality. Often he will use a common performance pattern as a starting place, and then compose a number of variations based on it, which gives the student a starting place, then a number of musical directions to go from it.


Compare that to many books in the wake of Stone's Stick Control, which follow a strictly mathematical logic through every possible combination, without regard for musicality, burying the user in redundancy. Worse are the books that seem to catalog licks, with little on how to get from one to another (cough *Advanced Funk Studies*).

There is very little that is difficult for it's own sake- virtually all of the materials are oriented towards a practical application, developing ideas to the point of covering 98% of what will ever be needed in a performance situation, or for developing general facility. You could say that the book aims to make you expert rather than virtuoso. The only exception to this I can see are several pages of hihat coordination exercises, which go well beyond what most players ever develop.

The book takes the modern-circa-the-70's approach to rudiments; paradiddles, rolls, drags and flams are covered pretty thoroughly, while the more traditional "rudimenty" rudiments (if that isn't totally nonsensical) flamacues, ratamacues, are dealt with only on the two "40 International Rudiments" pages.

Applying the materials in this book mindlessly, without any musical sense, could possibly come off as a little square- it will not aid in hiding non-creativity by spoon-feeding a lot of bleeding-edge-of-hip stuff. A phrase I use a lot, from the Tao Te Ching via the Church of the SubGenius, "stop sucking on the finger and go where it points", definitely applies here. It's an excellent starting point, but the artistry has to come from the musician.

Contains, among other things:
- Very robust 50-page rhythm reading section.
- 15-page roll section. Terminology is interesting- he calls a 6-stroke roll a 5-stroke roll starting on 'e', and a 7-stroke roll a dotted-8th note roll.
- Several pages of stickings over an even rhythm, similar to the beginning of Stick Control. Mostly they are longer than in SC, and follow different logic; there are several pages of two-measure exercises that are through-composed (the longer exercises in SC just repeat the pattern leading with the opposite hand). They are also applied to a triplet rhythm, and there are several pages focusing on strengthening the left hand.
- Several pages of accent studies. The triplet accent pages are especially valuable.
- Flams are dealt with on two pretty decent pages.
- Robust sections on developing drags, short rolls as singles, four stroke ruffs, "open" three stroke ruffs.
- Pages developing doubles, triples, paradiddles.
- Several stand alone pages of variations on different basic groove styles- 16ths in the bass drum, sextuplets with the snare and bass drum, 6/8 feels, 6/8 with 16th notes, shuffles, 16th note rock ballad, alternating 16ths on the hihat, and on and on. I love these pages- they are concise, masterable(?), and 100% immediately applicable to real life playing.
- Marching cadences in 2/4 and 6/8. I can't say I find these very necessary, but younger students will enjoy them.
- Several big band style drum charts.
- Fifteen pages of "dance" band beats, which will get you through most Elks' Lodge, musical theater, dance band gigs and Bar Mitzvahs.

UPDATE: Mr. Rothman informs me "the newest edition of the book, which will be out shortly, contains an extra 8 pages on linear drumming, which I haven't covered in any other book".


Purchase Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman.