Let’s get groovy with paradiddles in groove of the week #26

Did you spot the paradiddles in this week’s groove? Instead of being played between the hands, they were played between the bass drum and the left hand. Let’s see if we can figure this one out!

Get The Groove

This groove is based around this sticking pattern:

That’s an inverted/inward paradiddle (RLLR) followed by a regular left paradiddle (LRLL). That’s all we need for this groove… except… We’re going to replace the right hand with the bass drum.

Once you can play that smoothly, we need to add the right hand back in. For most of the groove the right hand is playing regular eighth notes on the ride cymbal. Let’s try that first.

To really make the groove move we want to accent the snare drum on beat 2 and play the other notes as ghosts. Try performing a rim-shot on beat 2 so you accent it without too much effort.

For the final beat of the two bar pattern the right hand plays on the Stack cymbal together with the bass drum. If you don’t have a stack, hit the bell of the Ride instead or a China or Splash. Let’s practice that.

Once you have that pattern happening try to add in the ghost notes and rimshot as we did with the first pattern.

The complete this groove puzzle we just need to fit the parts together to create 2 bar pattern.

Taking It Further

The easiest way to take this further is to re-orchestrate it around the kit.

This first version just moves the ghost notes up on to the first tom-tom. I’ve moved the ride cymbal up to hi-hat line for clarity only, still play the ride cymbal.

Our next variation does the same thing, but adds the floor tom into the mix.

The third variation provides a powerful low end groove by having the right hand play the floor tom instead of the ride cymbal while the left hand moves between the snare and the high tom – as it did in the first variation. Don’t hit the the toms too hard, we still want to be able to hear the bass and snare coming through.

Our final variation move the right hand to the hi-hat and changes the stack to hi-hat barks. This is probably the trickiest variation. Take your time and try to get all the hi-hat barks sounding the same.

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #26. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.