The Drums - Learning Paradiddles

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Transcripts

Wes Crawford: Hello! I am Wes Crawford.

Now, that we have learned our single-stroke roll and our double-stroke roll and we have those techniques that we know about and we have learned our basic two beat and some rock beats, lets 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, thats 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 a Diddle youll see how this works, its says itself.

Paradiddle, ParadiddleSo, you want to practice this combination of singles and doubles into a single exercise. Listen on two different sounds and youll see why this can be valuable.

So forth to get that same pattern using single strokes and to get the same sound look what youd have to do.

Much easier if you can learn this pattern and you dont have all this motion going on. So, paradiddles are valuable.

I say, Paradiddles because they are of different types. If you remember this language role 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 paradiddle, so we will gopara para diddle, para para diddleAlways say these lines as you play them and youll connect it more efficiently into the brain down through the muscles on to the drum.

So, well go para para diddle over-and-over.

para para diddle, para para diddleAs move to a second drum so you could hear the pattern better. We can also do the triple paradiddle. Its a same thing, same concept.

We are now going para para para diddle, para para para diddleParas are single strokes, right-left, right-left, right-left, right-right, left-right, left-right, left-right, left-left.

para para para diddlePractice 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 rightleft, right-right, left-left. Rightleft, right-right, left-left. Para diddle diddleSo, thats 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 thats how we sometimes learn long patterns of coordination.

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