Stick Control Around The Drums

I stumbled across this exercise yesterday while I was practicing and trying to think of interesting ways to split up paradiddles around the drum set (I was listening to Ed Blackwell that afternoon and he inspired me to do so…) I came up with a simple exercise that yielded some interesting patterns and decided to expand on it by using George Lawrence Stone's Stick Control as well.

I'll do my best to explain this simple method without the benefit of notated parts. Wish me luck! (although you can also refer to the first page of Stick Control above…)

"Stick Control Around the Drums (with a nod to Alan Dawson!)":

1) Play each line as eighth-notes with the hi-hat on beats 2&4 (or on all four quarter notes)

2) Divide each bar into TWO equal parts (ie. beats 1 & 2 and 3 & 4) and use the following orchestrations:

Beats 1+ 2+ : R = ride cymbal & bass drum, L = small tom

Beats 3+ 4+ : R = floor tom, L = snare drum

3) Then reverse the order of the orchestration :

Beats 1+ 2+ : R = floor tom, L = snare drum

Beats 3+ 4+ : R = ride cymbal & bass drum, L = small tom


I also found myself messing around with this version:

Beats 1+ 2+ : R = ride cymbal & bass drum, L = snare drum

Beats 3+ 4+ : R = floor tom, L = small tom

(then try the reverse version as #3)

I came up with many interesting combinations that I hand't really considered before (always a good thing!) and I'm sure you could also come up with some more interesting variations of your own based on this as well.

(just wait until you get to the pages of Stick Control that use triplets!)

I hope this makes sense...