Rudimental Reed: paradiddles

Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed's Syncopation, this time using paradiddles. Here's that well-known opening line from the first long syncopation exercise in Reed, p. 37 in the old editions, as written:

First, play the quarter notes (or the equivalent) as 16th note paradiddles. On the longer values/rests, play a paradiddle with an unaccented ending note, as on beat three of the second and last measures:

Next, apply an appropriate paradiddle-type sticking to the longer values/spaces— double paradiddles / paradiddle-diddles, or triple paradiddles / paradiddle-diddle, diddles as I'll call them (there aren't enough commas in rudiment names for my taste) since that rudiment doesn't exist to my knowledge. I chose the latter rudiments:

With that last, we arrive at something pretty similar to an interpretation in Ramsay's Alan Dawson book; the one additional step there is to play the 8th notes as two alternating 16th notes, with an accent on the first.

Another example after the break:

On the varieties of stickings

Here's a nice geekish piece at by E.W. Flack at The Drumslingers, in which he goes in depth on the history and usage of the three basic sticking methods in US drumming and its derivatives-- rudimental, natural, and alternating; and I would add to that something I call pseudo-alternating. I've included some largish snippets of Flack's text, along with a few of my own comments and examples, but definitely go read the entire piece.


Natural

This is the sticking method I learned through drum corps, but it's also very drumset friendly. Basically the lead hand (usually the right) play all notes landing on the 8th note grid, and the left hand plays any e's and a's:

Much of what Flack says below is borne out by my own experience:

The natural sticking method... does not rely on the complex rudimental patterns of military drumming, although a mastery of basic rudimental technique is still important.

The concept behind natural sticking is based on the observation that most people are right handed and therefore the strongest beats which are the “pulse” beats should be played by the strongest hand which is the right hand. All subsequent up-beats are played by the left hand which results in naturally flowing sticking patterns throughout.

In his book, Championship Concepts for Marching Percussion, Thom Hannum wrote that the natural sticking system, “negates any awkward doublings of one hand or the other.” Hannum then prescribes a series of 16th note timing exercises based on duple and triple beat check patterns. To explain their sticking he says, “All stickings are derived by eliminating the stroke of the note which is rested. Then play the remaining values in the sequence of natural sticking.”(1)

Natural sticking is generally easier for most people to learn; it enables less experienced players to more readily produce an even and consistent quality of sound. Natural sticking is an excellent option for marching band drum lines because the simple sticking patterns facilitate the ability to play at faster tempos while presenting a visually uniform style. Drum lines using the natural sticking system can more quickly adapt to changes in musical scores, requiring less rehearsal time.

Much more after the break:

Sight reading drum music is easier when using the natural sticking method compared to rudimental sticking because reading becomes a matter of visual pattern recognition which does not require anticipating and controlling unpredictable sticking patterns.

Probably the earliest American advocate of natural sticking and the man who best explained and helped proliferate that system was Edward B. Straight (one of the original 13 founders of N.A.R.D.) Ed Straight wrote several books on the topic of modern drumming. [...]

Ed Straight’s strong influence in popularizing natural sticking is why it is often called “Straight Sticking.” In the introductory pages of his book, Straight lists the following points to explain the foundation of his Natural Way System.(2)

[...]

The downside of natural sticking is that strong hand dominance means the weak hand tends to stay weak. The antidote to that risk is to invest time practicing natural sticking exercises with a left hand lead.

Alternating

A strict alternating sticking was something I learned studying concert snare drum in college (it seems strange now that I would've picked it up so late!). As a general rule phrases start with the right hand and alternate after that, regardless of the rhythm:

There would be exceptions-- a phrase starting with a pickup or pickups might begin with the left:

Or certain very exposed or very delicate parts might be played with repeated notes on the same hand to insure absolute consistency. Here's an example from my copy of Tony Cirone's Portraits in Rhythm, with stickings penciled in by my professor, Charles Dowd:

Here's Flack:

Alternating sticking is just exactly as the name implies: every stroke is alternated from right-to-left, or left-to-right regardless of what the rhythm is. In definition, it is sometimes confused with natural sticking because the two methods share a foundation that depends on alternated patterns between right and left hands.

The difference is that when using the natural sticking method, the strong pulse always falls under the right/lead hand but when playing the alternating sticking method, sometimes the strong pulse beat will be played by the right and sometimes the strong pulse will fall under a left-leading stroke.

This can make alternating sticking feel somewhat awkward to play and it can make sight-reading more difficult because repeated rhythmic patterns can occur with the opposite sticking sequence. By contrast, when using the natural sticking method, any time a particular rhythm is repeated it is always played the same way.

Alternating sticking is very conducive for drum-to-drum, or key-to-key movement which makes it a good fit when applied to tympani and to mallet percussion instruments such as marimba and xylophone. On those instruments the sticking sequence is dictated as much by where the stroke is to be played as it is by what rhythm is called for.

Pseudo-alternating

That's my own term, and it's probably bad Latin, but what the hell. If you like quasi-alternating or mostly-alternating better, use them. What I mean by it is to use an alternating sticking, but starting every measure (more or less) with the right hand:

Another option when playing in cut time would be to begin every other measure with the right hand. This is a handy sticking for the drumset-- where the hands are often on different instruments-- and you want an alternating sticking for how it makes a rhythm lie on the drums, but you want to come out on the right hand frequently, and avoid turning the sticking around so the left hand is on the strong beats for extended periods.

Here's the above example played on the drumset with the right hand on the cymbal, doubled with the bass drum, and the left hand on the snare, first in natural sticking:

Then in strict alternating sticking:

Then in "pseudo-alternating":

Rudimental

Flack actually went pretty short on this subject-- I guess because Drumslingers covers it on a daily basis:

American military drumming is a pure rudimental style in the sense that all drum beats are composed and arranged entirely of military drum “rudiments” as they evolved during the 1800s. 

The idea of using open-form rudiments as the basis for sticking ordinary rhythms is kind of interesting to me, and I'll be exploring it a bit with this "rudimental Reed" series. It's a very old-fashioned method, but has never been a foundational part of my own playing. I think it can be somewhat limiting; the method can begin to dictate the musical content somewhat, and I feel there's a certain sameness in heavily rudimentally-based playing. Here's a very crude, very non-traditional illustration of this concept, applying open-form rudimental stickings to the same rhythm as the earlier examples:

Again, go read Flack's complete piece for much more detail and historical background.

Survival chops: accented 8ths

This is never too far from my mind anyway, but playing a salsa gig this weekend it occurred to me how little advanced chops are required in most musical situations. What is usually required is bonehead familiarity with really obvious stuff, because a) when playing unfamiliar music with a band who doesn't know you, it's best to keep it simple, and b) usually it's the best thing musically anyway. Your artistry in this case comes from all of the elements of musical development other than playing more complicated crap; like playing functional but musically powerful parts with great timing, feel and sound, and getting the maximum effect with your dynamics and orchestration of the drumset, to name a few.

So what I'll be attempting to do with this series is identify and present as concisely as possible some key stuff needed for playing regular gigs. We'll start with a simple page of accented 8th notes, played in cut time:

Get the pdf

Practice suggestions after the break:


- Use alternating sticking, starting with either hand.
- Play as even 8th notes in 4/4, or 2/2, or as 16th notes in 2/4 or 4/4.
- Play as swing 8th in a moderate to bright 4/4.
- Play unaccented notes as drags.
- Play accented notes on cymbal, along with the bass drum.
- Play on snare drum or closed hihats along with an ostinato with the feet (like swing w/"feathered" BD, samba, baiao, etc) or just the bass drum (on 1 and 3, or samba or baiao) or hihat (on 3, 2 and 4, 1 and 3, or on quarter notes).
- Vary dynamics; f accents/mp taps and mp accents/pp taps will be most useful, I think.
- Play at tempos ranging from half note = 80 to 150. You may want to practice them slower or faster, but that is a good practical range for most music.

As always, learning any one of those suggestions well is an accomplishment, so don't be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do, and don't be in a hurry to move on to the next thing. Let your immediate musical needs by your guide when choosing a practice method.

Three Camps: all inversions in one

I was trying to work this up on the fly at the drum set, and it wasn't happening, and I needed to write it out-- so here we are. This is a slightly more practical version of my long Three Camps inversions piece; here I've packed all of the inversions into one time through the piece. Hit the link above for practice suggestions.

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Inversions of Three Camps

So I have basically a one-track mind. Maybe a two-track mind. Three closely-related tracks. Right now it's all  the Elvin waltz and Three Camps. What we have here is a little thing I improvised while playing the latter on the drums- it's an easy way to get a little more mileage out of it. What I've done is simply to offset it by one 8th note (or one triplet partial, if you're thinking of it that way) each time through; so the first time is the piece in its regular form, then it is displaced so the primary accents fall on the middle note, and then the last note of the triplet:

I've written it with the modern fp long roll at the end, rather than with the traditional ending. I think this is most effective played on the drumset, with the hihat on 2 and 4, and the bass drum either doubling the accented notes, or playing (lightly!) on 1 and 3, or on all four beats. You can also play the accented notes on the cymbals. This is easy enough that you should be able to toss the print out after two or three times through it.

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Three Camps round up

I recently picked up a stack of Mitchell Peters books, one of which contains several variations on this classic, and it seemed like a good time to round up the various sources and variations on it. In case anyone doesn't know, Three Camps is a military drumming piece over 200 years old, based on rolls and accents in a triplet rhythm. I've been playing it since drum corps legend Ghost (known to his mother as Bill Linen) taught me an unusual (possibly mis-remembered) version in 1982. Since at least Charles Wilcoxon's day, drummers have been using it as a template for working on other things- accented singles, paradiddles, ratamacues, etc. Here's what I could find online and in my own library: 


Books

The Moeller Book, and Haskell Harr Drum Method, book 2
Each of these has it written out in the archaic notation, with an unusual ending in Harr- two 5-stroke rolls plus release. Due to the notation they're pretty useless to modern users readers.

Rudimental Swing Studies for the Advanced Drummer by Charlie Wilcoxon
In traditional form, paradiddles, and ratamacues. Unfortunately both the original edition and the typo-riddled Sakal edition present it with the old-fashioned notation, though it's marginally more readable than the Moeller version. (To be fair to Mr. Sakal, I think there are many more typos in his edition of Rolling in Rhythm than in RSS. Still looking for an original edition of RIR to confirm that...)

Intermediate Snare Drum Studies by Mitchell Peters
Includes the usual triplet roll form (in modern notation), and in rolls with a 16th note, quintuplet, and sixtuplet pulsation.

Variations on Three Camps by Marvin Dahlgren
This was an unexpected find. I was continuing my so-far-in-vain search for a copy of Dahlgren's Drum Set Control, and came across Really Good Music, which publishes his books- including DSC. According to the site: "The first half of the book is designed primarily for Snare Drum. The second half is designed for use with Drum Set. As usual with Marv Dahlgren books, one can easily spend the rest of your life perfecting these patterns. This 61 page book is in easy to read manuscript with sticking patterns indicated." Naturally I ordered a copy- along with DSC and a book I had never heard of, Complete Text for the Rock & Roll Drummer. I'll let you know when I get them.

Variazioni in Three Camps by Daniele Sabatini
Never seen this before. Ten different variations. No information on what they are, but the preview has it written in flamacues. Available through a German site.

Online versions after the break:

Online

Snarescience.com
Written as triplets, no rolls, with a modified ending- two beats of accented triplets plus a release, instead of the traditional triplet figure with a ruff, or the four-beat fp roll which is the way I learned it. The Accent Percussion Project has an identical version.

In the snarescience.com forum there's also an unusual polyrhythmic version- the first page of it, anyway- someone who calls himself teh_guardian has changed the note values to 8th notes, while keeping the same actual number of notes, giving a 6/8-within-4/4 feel.

Rudimentaldrumming.com
Here's an otherwise conventional version written as sixtuplets in 2/4, using Berger notation.

Robinengelman.com
The image above is from a c. 1784 book mentioned on Engelman's site- it's not complete, so I include it here as a curiosity. You could write him and ask for a scan of the complete piece.

And there's my screwy old version, which has the 3rd camp in the middle, and no restatement of the second camp. There was a period of years from the late 80's to the mid 90's when I never played it- I might've remembered it wrong when I recovered it. I think I'm right, though- I remember it being substantially shorter than the traditional version. And it's hard to forget these things once you've played them hundreds of times.

Finally, I saw Elvin Jones perform it on the drums in a clinic c. 2000; he doubled the accents with the bass drum, and played a two measure drum solo at the end of each time through. I was hoping there would be video of that (or at another clinic) on YouTube, but no.

You knew this was coming...

Here's the latest stupidly-named iteration of my basic paradiddle exercise, this time using 16th note 7s, septuplets, or whatever you want to call them. As always, play through the entire page, then play combinations of exercises in 1, 2, or 4 measure repetitions. The sequence I use for combinations is 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, etc... 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, etc... 3-4, 3-5, 3-6, etc... and so on.

Get the pdf.

Paradiddles with 16th note triplets

Here's a companion to the other pages of paradiddles I've posted, this time using an embellishment used in Wilcoxon occasionally- a 16th note triplet in place of the double. Playing the triplet starting on an 'e' or an 'a' is a little strange, so I've presented this in RLRR and RRLR positions only.

Get the pdf.

Have you been using the labels (at the bottom of each post) to find related items? You should be! Hit 'paradiddles' for related items.

Swiss triplets exercise

Here's a fairly challenging swiss triplet exercise we used to play in my advanced practice pad group. The trickiest part seems to be the fourth line, with the 5/16 groupings comprised of a swiss triplet plus a flam tap:

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Matt's paradiddle thing, pt. 2

As I've mentioned, I've been working a bunch with the paradiddle page I wrote up for my student Matt F, usually combining single repetitions of each exercise, as described in the post. Last night I played through it combining single beats, which is fairly easy to do on the fly, but I thought I would write it up anyway. I'm trying to keep it on one page these days, so I've just given some examples. If you want to be a nut about it, go ahead and play through all of the 16th note combinations from the original pdf.

Lately I've been all about playing through a lot of patterns- my idea of a lot being a single page- so unless you're really struggling, try not to get bogged down in repetitions (or variations, if you're applying some creativity). Playing the entire page RH and LH lead at maybe two different tempos- moderate and bright- a few repetitions per exercise is plenty.

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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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Matt's paradiddle thing

This is a straightforward paradiddle exercise I wrote up for one of my students. It ends up a pretty robust page of stuff when you run it in the sequences.

Practice each measure individually, then play them as follows:

Two or four times each:
1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4... 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 5... 3, 4, 3, 5, 3, 6... etc

Two-pattern sequences, one measure of each, repeated 2-4 times:
1-2, 1-3, 1-4... 2-3, 2-4, 2-5... 3-4, 3-5, 3-6...

Note that the sixtuplet patterns will reverse stickings on the repeat, which will make some interesting things happen when you get to the sequences. You can of course add variations to include accents on the doubles; I just wanted to keep it to a manageable size.

Download the pdf

Best books - Chop Busters by Ron Fink

OK, the title is a little goofy- a lot goofy- but this is an excellent, fun book of snare drum exercises written by North Texas State University instructor Ron Fink to "uncover weakness in basic technique" and to "develop a) coordination of finger, wrist and forearm motions, b) sticking accuracy, c) speed, d) dynamics, and e) rhythmic recognition." They're organized by meter (2/4, 6/8, 3/4, 4/4, 2/2, and 12/8) and target tempo, and do not follow the usual mathematically logical sequence, running each idea well into the ground before proceeding to the next one. Exercises are not strictly rudiment based- they primarily deal with singles, doubles, accents, paradiddle variations, rolls, four stroke ruffs, and dynamics. Notably there are very few flam exercises.

There are a number of things I really like about this book. Any single page covers a number of issues, making it good for warming up, or for just giving yourself a break from some of the more mind-numbing technique books (cough *STICK CONTROL*). While challenging, you never get a sense that you are being asked to do something pointlessly difficult- the goal always seems to be to develop practical facility. There is a clear musical intelligence at work in writing and selecting exercises. It has something like the feel of a professional manual, focusing on vocabulary that will be useful in the field, rather than technique in the abstract.

And the price- it's 48 pages long and costs $4.50. A great value. Very fun and very nice to have around.

Get Chop Busters from Steve Weiss Music.