Asymmetrical stickings

Greetings,
Lately I've been experimenting with odd numbered stickings.
The resource material has been trusty old Stick Control. I started with stickings of 5 notes simply by taking the first 5 notes of any sticking on page 1.
The first example as is: RLRLRLRL RLRLRLRL
Turned into a 5 note sticking: RLRLR RLRLR

This can be applied in a number of ways.
1) Play 2 measures of the 5  note sticking to give us one measure of 5/4.
2) Play the 5 note sticking in 4/4, keeping track of where you are in the "home" time signature.
( A good way to practice this is while singing a standard tune. I'm partial to "Invitation" these days).
Also play around with what surfaces your hands are playing the sticking on.
3) As 2) but play the 5 note sticking in triplets.

You can do this for any length of sticking you like. 7, 9, 11 etc.
Some of the later stickings on the first 3 pages of Stone's book can be a little strange once they're put in to an odd length, so take your time and play them for a while to get them feeling comfortable.
Have fun.

More compound rudiments

Today I'd like to talk briefly about something I was working on the other day. It involves playing a paradiddle (RLRR LRLL) and putting a deadstroke (pushing the stick into the drumhead) at the beginning of each side of the paradiddle. In other words, if I capitalize only the deadstrokes, it would be Rlrr Lrll. This sounds good divided between two toms because we can really hear the pitch difference between the dead and regular strokes or it's cool to have one hand on a cymbal because we get a dramatic difference between the muted and unmuted sounds. Experiment with where you're putting your hands. Also, we can put the deadstroke on the 2nd note of the paradiddle or the last double of each side. rLrr lRll or rlRR lrLL. When I was working on this, I didn't bother separating the doubles between dead and regular strokes. I'll leave some of you young geniuses to work that out. :)

There we have it. Deadadiddles (sorry, that's sort of a morose name!)

Have fun!

Rudiment of the moment!

Hey everybody,
Today's rudiment comes to us courtesy of Alan Dawson's Rudimental ritual. I think I've mentioned I never have actually memorized this particular etude or played it from start to finish (bad, bad Ted!) but I have used it as a huge amount of source material.

Anyway, here's the rudiment.

For those of you keeping score, it's at the top of page 8 of the ritual.

So as usual, I started by playing the rudiment as is, then displaced it. In this example I start it on all 3 parts of a triplet.

Then I started voicing it on the kit in different ways. I didn't notate any of these examples, partially because you should figure out your own variations. Thanks and have fun!

Rudiment of the moment!

Hey everyone,

I while back I started the idea of examining a rudiment a week, then life interfered again! Now I'm calling it the rudiment of the moment so I have some wriggle-room!

This is the current one:

I got this from Alan Dawson's Rudimental Ritual (those of you who don't have that can find it here. It's interesting, the standard way to approach the ritual is to memorize it and play it without stopping. I've found, however, that I've gotten a lot out of it by isolating rudimental ideas I don't use a lot, and trying to adapt them to my playing. I rarely use double paradiddles, and adding in the flam gives it accents in interesting places. I have so far:

1. Played the triplet version on snare or one hand on one tom the other hand on another tom, hi-hat on 2 & 4 and played the melody to "Oska T." or "Milestones with the bass drum.

2. Played right hand on bell of cymbal and left hand on snare to play a sort of 12/8 groove. (Again I'm playing the triplet version.) That's all I've done so far but I'm going to stick with it a while and see what I come up with.

Now here's the man himself.....soloing on "There will Never be Another You"

Mr. Dawson apparently had back issues and stopped touring as a result. Hence he's much more known as a teacher rather than the great performer he was. It's interesting, Tony Williams was always very cagey when he talked about his studies with Alan Dawson. I sometimes think he got more from him than he let on. Regardless, serious inspiration!

Thanks!

T.