Stick Control with a backbeat

Another little oddball Stick Control related item, for drum set: some Stone-type sticking patterns with accented unisons added, on beats 2-4, and on beat 3. Introducing the idea— if you like it, you could obviously go a lot further working out of Stick Control itself. 

Play the right hand on the cymbal, left hand on the snare drum. Ghost the non-accented LH hand notes, play all the RH notes at an even volume. Add bass drum however you like— a particular kind of nut case could use the reading in New Breed for that.  

See also this other oddball item, and the right hand lead with a backbeat Syncopation system. Similar minor items. These things exist in the cracks between the actual major drumming vocabulary items, to create openings for other things to happen. 

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Chaffee-esque right hand lead stickings

Lots of quasi-Chaffee activity lately, getting into a sticking system derived from his— as covered in his books Odd Time Stickings and Patterns vol. 2 - Stickings. Similar to his linear system, his sticking system is based on 3-8 note patterns. Both systems are designed to be easy to play fast. 

Many of his stickings don't have a non-alternating form— which I want— so I've put together some 3-8 note stickings that maintain a right hand lead. This is the outline, we'll have some combinations and practice phrases coming up: 

There are two basic types: one has a double up front, after the leading accent; the other starts with alternating strokes, and ends with a double. 

Or not— the four, six, and eight note patterns all have a form that is just alternating singles. Which is kind of lame, but we do want to be fluent switching between singles and combination patterns, so that will be a function of this.

Obviously there are other possibilities, that don't follow the same patterns— like a paradiddle-diddle for the six note pattern. And there is one oddball pattern, the four note RLLR. It can't be helped. Some people might want to include some other things: 

RLR
RLLRLRL
RLLRRLLR

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Stickings a la Funky Primer

This is part of why I write so much stuff— you never know what a particular student is going to need, and in what form. For whatever weird reason, somebody will do really well with one thing, so I want to take it further than the original material. 

Like one younger student responded really well to this obnoxious looking page of sticking patterns from A Funky Primer: 

Hence this, taking it a little further: 

In the lesson we did this with his lead hand on the cymbal, other hand on the snare drum, with bass drum added on some or all of the cymbal notes, and the 32nd notes played on the snare or toms. He plays left handed, and we did just the patterns starting with the left hand. 

I'll be playing through it in a right handed orientation all the way— RH on the cymbal on all patterns. You could also do it in a reversed "open-handed" orientation by playing the starting hand on the cymbal.

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Sticking patterns for drum set - basic

An item for one of my students— an adult student who is new to reading music: a page of sticking patterns, based on this 2018 post reorganizing the first pages of Stick Control. I could just circle the appropriate patterns in Stone, but I'm trying to be a nice guy and not make people flip around and go cross eyed looking at a page jammed with 500 sticking patterns when they're just starting to read.

These mostly start with the right hand, and are relatable to normal drum set stuff when played with one hand on a cymbal. See also my page of sticking patterns for jazz from a few days ago. 

Play with right hand on a cymbal, plus bass drum in unison / left hand on snare drum. Repeat many times.  Do it with music to stave off boredom. 

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Stick control in 12/8 - “Afro logic”

Here's what that page of 6/8 sticking patterns was setting up— and that funny joke photoshopped page from Stone: sticking combinations in 12/8, oriented like the Afro “short bell” rhythm, with one pattern on beats 1 and 4, and another pattern on beats 2 and 3. This is for people like me, who do a lot with that Afro groove— it's one of my major personal things.   

I'll be playing through this on the drums, with RH on the cymbal, possibly with the bass drum in unison,  and with the left hand on the snare, playing around with some of the usual moves around the drums. Probably with dotted quarters played with the left foot. 

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Stick Control with short bell logic

Another one of my little photoshop gags— I edited a jpeg of the first page of exercises in Stick Control to follow the logic of the Afro “short bell” pattern*, which has beats 1 and 4 the same, and beats 2 and 3 the almost the same. The page is written in cut time, so each beat is four 8th notes long. Look closely and you'll see what's happening: 

* - That page is due for an update— maybe I'll do that soon. 

I got the idea when I was teaching a student that linked Afro 6 page above, and was curious to see how it would play out when written out. I haven't decided if this is actually worth practicing, but this logical orientation is a real world thing— notice that if you play pattern 1 with your right hand on a cymbal, you'll get something very close to a partido alto rhythm— and I won't be surprised if it develops into something creatively useful, with some different stickings.  

Izquierdadiddles

Tenue des baguettes

I've got 6 hours of driving to do a 90 minute gig today, gang, so I'm going to leave you with this:

I spend a good part of my life singing stickings in rhythm, for students. We're very lucky in the English-speaking world that we have nice one-syllable words for left and right, and for many of the other possible four-way stickings— bass, kick, hats, hands, feet, both. Others— Spanish-speaking people, for example— are not so lucky. To tell someone the sticking for a paradiddle, you have to say: 

derecha izquierda derecha derecha
izquierda derecha izquierda izquierda

It's only possible to do it at baby speed, with a giant space in between words. Derecha. [Whack]. 

Italian is almost as bad, they shaved off a syllable:
 

destra sinistra destra destra
sinistra destra sinistra sinistra

If you say it fast you have a Bulgarian rhythm.

German is acceptable, with rechts (or rechte?) and links. French droite and gauche are a mouthful, but sound cool, especially the word gauche has a good sound for percussion, like a Pinstripe on a snare drum. Goosh. Drummers speaking most other languages are burdened with extra syllables. I don't know what they do, call stickings by their letter name? Assuming the letters themselves are only one syllable?

Sidebar, step into my office: Where the hell did the Danish get venstre for left? It's similar to das Fenster in German, meaning window. We can only speculate on that etymology, remembering that usually words meaning left are derived from weird, dirty, evil, weak, clumsy, suspect. The left hand is out the window, like the rotten herring seems the likely word source.  

[...] 

Fellow drumming blogger Ted Warren suggested you could have a whole new rudiment if you played a note for all the syllables in that Spanish version. We have the choice of keeping the beat the same, or keeping the rate of notes the same: 

That first one will give you a little left hand workout. I imagine in a parallel Star Trek universe where I speak Spanish, I say izquierda in a lesson, and the student says so I hit it four times, IZ-QUI-ER-DA? [whack whack whack whack] and I say NO! It's quite simple! etc endlessly.

Lots to think about.   

Bothadiddles

A small item for your consideration and experimentation.  

On a drumming forum, a user was complaining that practicing paradiddles didn't seem to improve his hand independence— he was working on some Chapin Advanced Techniques patterns, and was hoping the paradiddles would improve his facility with that. The answers given were all over the map, and largely based on misconceptions stemming from the use of the word independence. Aided, I think, by the notational convention of writing drum patterns as separate rhythms, as if they're played by multiple performers. 

My answer was, sure paradiddles are independent, you're doing two totally different rhythms with each hand; the right hand plays 1 &a e and the left hand plays e 2 &a. You may say psha those are just backward versions of each other... and I arrogantly retort: that means you're playing the same rhythm forward and backward at the same time! Sounds pretty independent to me. 

Like, look, independence:

In fact, independence = you playing one thing. 

Whatever people's theories about how independence works, we're dealing with one controller— you— playing one rhythm— that of all the parts combined— using sequences of  Rs, Ls, and both hands in unison. That's 100% of what hand independence is. What else is it?  

If paradiddles aren't independent-seeming enough, add some unisons— play the following patterns with your right hand on the hihat, left hand on the snare. B = both hands at the same time. 

RLRR LRLL

BLRR LRLL
RBRR LRLL
RLBR LRLL
RLRB LRLL
RLRR BRLL
RLRR LBLL
RLRR LRBL
RLRR LRLB


Those are all at least as hard as the patterns in Chapin, and they sound independent, but done this way, they're easy to execute. So what's the difference? Mainly, they're non-mysterious, and there is no misguiding notation or language tricking you into thinking about it, and doing, it the hardest way possible.

I'm interested in other things right now, but this may be a productive way of practicing for someone: Go through the first pages of stick control and play each note of the patterns as Bs. People who have their flam rudiments together may find it easier to think of the both-hands notes as flams.  

I suggest starting with: 

RRRL
RLRR 
RLRR LRRL 
RLLR LLRL
RLLR RLLR
RLLR LLRL LRLL RLRL

RLRR will be very helpful with those Chapin exercises— try replacing two and three Rs with Bs, and you'll have most of those patterns covered.  

At the very least, a little bit of this kind of practice should be good conditioning for other systems of independence coordination, and for completely resetting your approach to this topic. 

Velocity stickings for Syncopation, Lesson 10

For a couple of my students I've written a set of velocity stickings to use with Lesson 10 (pp. 22-23) in Syncopation. They're designed to be played fast, hey? These will be a godsend for everyone trying to do that hyperactive contemporary thing with the super fast embellishments— like if you have your eye on some hihats with giant holes in them, and are really digging super high, dry, white noise-like percussion sounds... what every single drummer in the world under ~ age 30 is into right now.     

This should really be expanded into a new e-book, so I won't overdo it writing a maximal number of patterns. I've given my suggested release note(s), but any sticking ending with a single R or L can release on either hand; stickings ending with a double should release on the opposite hand. Some stickings will start with the same hand every measure, others will switch lead hands every measure.  

Play the 8th note portion of each measure however you like. I suggest starting with all R hand, all L hand, alternating starting with R, and alternating starting with L.

To simplify the first measure of each drill, on exercises with 16ths crossing the barline (lines 8, 12, 13), I play 8th notes until I hit the first full two or three beat run of 16ths, starting on beats 3 or 4. Or just use my example rhythms below. Interpret these in cut time, so the 16th notes function as 32nd notes— the eight-note subdivision.

1. One beat of 16ths - lines 1-4, 14-15

RLLR  R/L  -  LRRL  L/R
RRLR  L  -  LLRL  R
RLRR  L  -  LRLL  R

2. Two beats of 16ths - lines 5-8 

RLLR  LRRL  R/L  -  LRRL  RLLR  L/R
RLLR  LRLL  R  -  LRRL  RLRR  L
RLLR  LLRL  R/L  -  LRRL  RRLR  L/R 
RLLR  LLRR  L  -  LRRL  RRLL  R

RRLR  LRRL  R  -  LLRL  RLLR  L 
RRLR  LRLL  R  -  LLRL  RLRR  L 
RRLR  RLRR  L  -  LLRL  LRLL  R

RLRR  LRRL  R  -  LRLL  RLLR  L 
RLRR  LLRR  L  -  LRLL  RRLL  R
RLRR  LLRL  R  -  LRLL  RRLR  L 

3. Three beats of 16ths - lines 9-10, 12-13

RLLR  LRRL  RLLR  R/L  -  LRRL  RLLR  LRRL  L/R
RLLR  LRRL  LRRL  R/L  -  LRRL  RLLR  RLLR L/R
RLLR  LRLL  RLLR  L  -  LRRL  RLRR  RLLR  L
RLLR  RLRL  LRRL  R  -  LRRL  LRLR  RLLR  L

RLRL  LRLR  LRRL  R  -  LRLR  RLRL  RLLR  L 
RLRL  RLLR  LRLR L/R  -  LRLR  LRRL  RLRL  R/L
RLRL  RRLR  RLRL R  -  LRLR  LLRL  LRLR  L
RLRL  LRRL  RLLR  L  -  LRLR  RLLR  LRRL  R

RLRR  LRRL  RLLR  L  -  LRLL  RLLR  LRRL  R
RLRR  LRRL  LRRL  R  -  LRLL  RLLR  RLLR  L
RLRR  LLRL  LRRL  R  -  LRLL  RRLR  LRRL  L 
RLRR  LRRL  LRLL  R  -  LRLL  RLLR  RLRR  L 

4. Four beats of 16ths - line 11

I'm skipping this for now. Try repeating any of the two-beat stickings that release on the same hand they start with. 

Perhaps we'll see a new e-book on this topic in the coming weeks/months! In the meantime see my e-book 13 Essential Stickings, which is designed around this basic premise of stickings that are easy to play fast, as well as my page of velocity stickings in 3/4 and 12/8. 

Another set of patterns for improvisation

File this in the same category as the recent “extended shuffle” stickings page— it's a unified set of patterns based on a simple idea, organized to make them easy to improvise with. They're not new patterns, but we haven't seen them collected as a single idea before. 

These are right hand-accented, alternating stickings ending with a RRLL— or a RRL with the odd-numbered patterns. Get a feel for the premise by playing the first pattern on the first five lines— they all lean heavily on the strong beats. The last three patterns are really just inversions of the extended shuffle patterns, but I've included them so you can play them as an extension of this basic idea. 

Practice tips:

• Play them as 8th notes, 16th notes, or triplets in any time signature. 
• They are for soloing, for playing texturally, or for playing an ECM-type feel. 
• It's easy to play them fast, but they're meant for all tempos. 
• Play the hands on different instruments/sounds, and improvise moving them around the drums.
• Play with the RH on a cymbal, with the bass drum in unison.
• Add/vary accents with the left hand.   
• Try other stickings with the same accents, as in my harmonic coordination method. Best to start with straight alternating, and single-handed. 

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Extended shuffle stickings

This is just a little exploration of a special set of stickings for drum set. I wrote it to practice myself, and see if it's worth developing as a concept. A lot of what we do here is play around with different approaches to ordinary ideas, to see if it helps us use them creatively, or practice them productively. That's all. 

You could call these extended shuffle stickings, after the RH rhythm of the three note pattern. They're mostly-alternating, and starting and ending with a single right hand. Sometimes we have to add a double left near the end to make them come out right. 

Three notes: RLR
Four notes: RLLR
Five notes: RLRLR
Six notes: RLRLLR
Seven notes: RLRLRLR
Eight notes: RLRLRLLR
Nine notes: RLRLRLRLR

Clearly this is not about playing shuffles— these are all common, useful stickings in other contexts. On this page I've written them as 8th notes in their native meters, and in their closest opposite type of meter— simple (straight 8th) and/or compound (triplet feel). The tick marks on some of the examples show where the pattern begins. 

Play the right hand on the cymbal, left hand on the snare drum. Add bass drum on some or all of the cymbal notes. Add a simple rhythm with the left foot. Vary the dynamics with the left hand. 

You don't have to play these only in the written time signature. The 5/4 and 15/8 versions of the five note pattern, for example, are just to show you how that odd sticking lays in a straight 8th or triplet feel. I'll be playing most of them in 4/4, 3/4, or 12/8. 

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Stick control exercises, mixed rhythm in 2/4

A page I'm using with some of my students, to learn to fill, and develop basic facility on the drum set. We've been doing a lot with parts of my harmonic coordination method— which is proving to be a lot more of a universal thing than a mere advanced coordination system. You could do these on snare drum as in Stone, but I think that would be a little dull. They're written to be played on drum set, en masse.

Play the exercises a few times on the snare drum, then move the accent(s) to a cymbal, with the bass drum in unison, then improvise moving the non-accented notes around the drums. Speed is not important; timing, sound, and movement around the drums is.

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Three voice / four note patterns

Continuing in the vein of the recent three voice/three note patterns item. Let's call this series “things I have always been against writing that I am now writing.” I've been playing around with an online combination generator, making some Stick Control-type patterns for the drum set, including combinations of limbs. I'm trying to do it in a rational way; it would be easy to produce an insane collection of patterns that would be totally unusable.

This is a practice-able collection of four-note patterns, written for three drum set voices, including single notes and RH-LH and RH-RF unisons. It adheres to my usual rules for what makes something very playable: no more than two SD or BD hits in a row, and no more than three cymbal hits. It's similar to things found in Dahlgren & Fine, and Chaffee, but different.

So: what is this good for, and how do we practice it?

1. There are 120 patterns, so you have to move as quickly as possible. Try to cover all of the patterns in 15-30 minutes.

2. Use to develop an ECM-type texture, or as conditioning for breaking up a normal funk texture. Could also be played with a swing feel, addressing some possible coordination/timing gaps.

3. The patterns are written as 8th notes in 2/4, but you can play them on a four note or three note subdivision, as 16th notes or triplets. Doing them as triplets, it helps to know how the cymbal portion of the pattern lies in 4/4— a separate cheat sheet for that is coming soon...

4. Try these moves:

• Play the written cymbal/snare unisons as snare/tom unisons, or as flams on any drum— I suggest doing them left-handed, meaning the right hand lands first.
• Play cymbal/bass drum unisons on a different cymbal than the plain RH cymbal notes.

Doing those moves makes this very similar to what I do with my harmonic coordination improved system, except with more potential for speed.

5. Add hihat in unison with the left hand only notes, or the right hand only notes, or the bass drum only notes. Or add hihat in any basic rhythm suitable for the style you're playing.

5. Combine patterns from different sections to make linear funk grooves. Play patterns starting with a bass drum first, and patterns starting with a snare drum second. I arranged them on the page to make that fairly easy— sections A and B combine well, and C and D combine well. You can also do A/D and C/B. Section E could come first or second. That creates a vast number of combinations, which... there may be better ways of working on that sort of thing. I'm not a proponent of endless systems. But it's a possibility.

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Three voice / three note patterns

The sort of thing you write when you're under quarantine— a library item strictly for maniacs, in the same ballpark of extremity/uselessness as Gary Chaffee's jazz patterns, from Patterns vol. 3. In fact that's exactly what I'm working on right now, and what led to this.

I've written some three-note sticking patterns for three voices: R, L, B. Then I wrote them out for drumset, with R on cymbal, L on snare drum, and B meaning either Both hands or Bass drum. Then I did some additional patterns including right hand/bass drum unisons; and some more patterns including both hands unisons. 

Like Chafee's thing, these are ordered by a mathematical logic, not the way a rational person would use them. Very useful patterns are mixed in with not very useful ones, and normal vocabulary items are mixed in with not at all normal ones. It limits how fast you can do the complete system, and doesn't lead you directly to normally-useful material. So the only people who should be using this are hardcore practicers, or lifers like me who can already play, but who want to fill in some gaps. It should be helpful for developing a triplet-feel version of a ECM feel, or a ballad in the manner of Tony Williams playing Fall, maybe. 

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Alternating singles vs. other stickings

This is an elementary question I often get from students, when learning different ways of playing 16th notes: why learn to play a paradiddle when you can do the same thing with alternating singles? They both sound the same, right?

It's not a bad question, if we were just playing snare drum. Different areas of drumming use different sticking methods. Concert snare drummers, for example, basically always alternate and rarely use rudimental stickings. They certainly practice them, but they don't use them in performance.

On the drum set, stickings directly affect what you can play on the instrument, and how.

Try this:

Very easy.

The right hand plays accents, the left hand plays very quietly, and each hand plays its notes on a single conveniently placed drum.

Now try doing the same thing with the same dynamics using an alternating sticking.

Uhhh...

Apart from how the sticking looks on paper, that's a much more complicated affair. It's an extremely difficult way to play that idea, and in fact if you only used alternating sticking, you would never play that. You could conduct a similar experiment using the patterns from the beginning of Stick Control. See how many things that are easy to do with a simple mixed sticking, that are just about impossible to play alternating.

There's also a natural drum set orchestration where the right hand plays the cymbal (often with the bass drum in unison) and the left hand plays the snare drum. Obviously that would be pretty dull with just a RLRL sticking. Try the paradiddle sticking again, with your right hand on the hihat, or the ride cymbal, with some added bass drum:

And again try to do the same thing with an alternating sticking:

It's rather awkward doing this using the hihat, and it's quite impossible to do it with the ride cymbal.

As a rule: Stickings with combinations of singles and doubles are easier to play fast, and there are vastly more possibilities for moving around the drums. They'll naturally have a little texture to them; they have built-in accents, and the doubles will tend to sound different from the singles. It takes developed technique and deliberate execution to make them sound as even as straight singles.

Alternating singles are good where an even sound and solid rhythm is desired, where you want to reinforce the rhythmic grid, like in pop, rock and funk. When playing faster, singles are better when you want perfect evenness... though that takes developed technique, too. Many under-developed players habitually accent with their right hand, a la Wipeout. Drags and rolls are naturally associated with alternating singles.

Stick Control - CSD! version

UPDATE: Download link working. You'd think I'd have that part of it down.

Everybody and his literal dog practices the first page of the book Stick Control, as do I— at least I teach it, and use it on drumset for certain things. I've said before the reasons I'm not that in favor of it, but so many people use it, and understand drumming this way, I'll work with it. It has its uses. The following item takes the most useful 36 exercises of the 72 in the book, and puts them in the order in which I teach them. I think these are the patterns that are either good for your hands in a specific way, or that apply well to the drum set.

If you're just getting your technique together, do these on the snare drum or practice pad, two to four repetitions, or up to one minute of each exercise. I think you should do them at an easy tempo and a slightly challenging tempo. The first, easiest drumset application is to play your left hand on the snare drum, and your right hand on any cymbal, with the bass drum in unison. See my Funk Control series for clues on other ways of doing this, or contact me (see the sidebar) for a Skype lesson about it.

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(h/t to Andrew at The Melodic Drummer, who did this before me)

Countermanding the tsunami

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the new e-book, 13 Essential Stickings, and I hope you're pleased with it. As you can see, there's nothing in there you haven't heard of— it's really a case of you paying (only!) $4.95 for me to select the most useful stuff that is the fastest to learn. I feel like that's 90% of why I'm on the internet posting stuff— to countermand the tsunami of bad, time-wasting drumming advice.

As soon as I can complete it, we'll have an accompanying study guide, with solo exercises to help you use the patterns creatively in your practicing and playing— look for that in January.

Anyway, thanks for buying, and please review it on Amazon... and any of my other e-books you've purchased, actually.

NEW E-BOOK: 13 Essential Stickings

Here's part of what I've been up to other than writing new blog posts— I'm releasing a new e-book today: 13 Essential Stickings for the Modern Drummer. If you ever get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is to practice, this is the book for you. It's a thorough introduction to sticking patterns that I consider to be essential for filling, soloing, and modern playing in general on the drum set, in a variety of rhythms and meters. They're easy to learn, easy to use in actual playing, and easy to play fast. You don't actually need a heck of a lot else.

The book is in e-book format for Kindle, but it can be viewed and used on any device— Kindle, tablet, laptop, smart phone (this book is very friendly to small screens), or desktop computer.

34 pages. Price is $4.95.

Also see my other e-books.

Natural sticking timing exercise

This is something I'm working on with some students: a timing exercise using natural sticking, modified slightly from something we used to play in drum corps. Natural sticking, briefly, is a method of sticking hand-to-hand rhythms, in which the right hand always plays the strong side of the rhythm, and the left always plays the off beats; so with mixed 16th note rhythms, as we have here, the right plays all notes falling on the 8th notes, and the left plays any es and as. If it doesn't make sense the way I've explained it, look at the stickings on the page and figure out the pattern. I've included here a shortened version of the exercise in 2/2, since we've been using natural sticking in the half time feel funk series.

On exercises 1-3 and 7-9 the right hand will play a steady rhythm in both measures of the exercises— 8th notes in 1-3, quarter notes in 7-9; on exercises 4, 6, 10, and 12, the left hand plays an unbroken rhythm.

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RLB sticking applied

This is that previous right/left/bass sticking applied to Exercise 9 from Ted Reeds's Syncopation (p. 45 in the old edition). The entire piece follows that sticking, except for a couple of spots. I've written in the stickings where the reading is more difficult, and at the couple of spots where we deviate from the pattern.

Feel free to learn this one line, or shorter phrase, at a time. The hand parts can be played on any drums; maybe start with the right on the high tom and the left on the snare.

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