Shuffle Diddles...

Today's drum lesson features a brief but fun little ditty that I came up with the other day while driving to a gig and waiting at a red light (does this qualify as distracted driving???)

Anyways, the pattern resembles this and combines one single paradiddlediddle followed by a single paradiddle combination:

You'll notice that the pattern switches hands every second bar, going back and forth between the right and left hand leads.

Ideally you'll want to work this two-bar pattern up to a very fast sixteenth note pace or even 32nd notes. This is because if you do, and if the accents are properly articulated, you'll start to hear a slow 12/8 shuffle pattern emerge from the accents.

You'll start to hear something like this:

You could also experiment with substituting double paradiddles in the beginning of each bar (leading with both the right and left hands of course).

I've also been having fun experimenting with this pattern, orchestrating it around the drum set.

This is a fun little phrasing exercise that gets your hands going, combines rudiments and also illustrates the concept of hearing larger accent patterns/phrases amongst denser rhythmic combinations.