The Stack Is Back!

I’m not sure where this groove came from. I was messing around with inverted paradiddle grooves and orchestrating them around the kit and some how it morphed into this groove which uses double paradiddles, paradiddles and an inverted paradiddle. It sounded good to me, so here it is!

Get The Groove

Let’s start by looking at the sticking pattern we’re using for this groove.

Take this slowly at first. Use a metronome and count out loud. Once you’ve got it in your hands and can play it repeatedly without mistakes, then you can move on to the next step.

The next step is to orchestrate the pattern between the hi-hat, ride, and snare drum. We’ll leave the stack and bass drum out of it for now. The left hand is going to play the hi-hat and beats 2 & 4 on the snare. The right hand will be on the ride cymbal. Here it is.

Once you are comfortable with that, we can add in the bass drum. The bass drum pattern is fairly simple and plays together with all the Right hand Single Strokes except for beat 3 of the 2nd bar. Let’s put it in.

The final step is to add the stack, if you have one. If you don’t have a stack, use the bell of the ride cymbal instead. The stack is played together with every bass drum.

Taking It Further

If you’ve been working on grooves based around paradiddles then hopefully this will inspire you to experiment with your orchestrations. You never know what groove you’ll stumble onto. Hopefully you’ll find something you like the sound of.

As always with new grooves, we need to be able to add in drum fills. Here’s three ideas for this one.

Our first variation just plays the last two notes of the second bar on the snare drum

Our second variation is just a single stroke roll around the kit starting from the stack/bass drum on the “&” of 3.

The final fill uses the stack, bass, and snare drum with a RLLRLLRL sticking pattern.

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