Hello! I am Wes Crawford.
Now that we’ve learned our single-stroke roll and our double-stroke roll and we have those techniques that we know about, and we’ve learned our basic two-beat and some rock beats, let’s expand the hand patterns and show eventually that they can be used in beats, too.
If we combine the single strokes and the double strokes into a single exercise or pattern, that’s called a Paradiddle. So a paradiddle is two single strokes followed by a double stroke. If you think of a language whereby two single strokes are called paras and a double stroke is called diddle, you’ll see how this works, it says itself. Paradiddle, paradiddle.
[Demonstration]
So you want to practice this combination of singles and doubles into a single exercise. Listen on two different sounds and you’ll see why this can be valuable [Demonstration] and so forth.
To get that same pattern using single strokes and to get the same sound, look what you’d have to do.
[Demonstration]
It’s much easier if you can learn this pattern and you don’t have all these motion going on. So paradiddles are valuable. I say paradiddles because there are different types. If you remember this language rule where paras are two single strokes or strokes with opposite hands and diddles are two strokes with the same hand, we can do a double paradiddle. A double paradiddle is actually a double para-diddle, so we’ll go para-para-diddle, para-para-diddle. Always say these lines as you play them and you’ll connect it more efficiently into the brain down through the muscles on to the drum. So, we’ll go para-para-diddle over and over.
[Demonstration]
And as you move to a second drum so you could hear the pattern better. We can also do the triple paradiddle. It’s the same thing, same concept. We’re now going para-para-para-diddle, para-para-para-diddle. Paras are single strokes, right-left, right-left, right-left, right-right, left-right, left-right, left-right, left-left.
[Demonstration]
Practice these slow to fast to slow also.
The final paradiddle in the paradiddles group is the paradiddle diddle. Remember diddles are double strokes. So, paradiddle diddle would be para-diddle-diddle, para-diddle-diddle or right-left, right-right, left-left, right-left, right-right, left-left, para-diddle-diddle.
[Demonstration]
So, that’s four paradiddle types. You might want to review all of those and say them as you play them. We can combine those into longer chains. So see, drummers find these discrete packets of coordination and then can chain them into longer patterns. And that’s how we sometimes learn long patterns of coordination.
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