Chocolate Mitchells 2015 was written for a specific context of show music, hence the overly-specific height definitions when the different rudiments are all put together. "Chocolate Mitchells" were our name for the rudiment you get when a paradiddle or paradiddle-diddle figure gets an extra note that is accented, and it is filled into the same amount of space. Mitchell Barnard wrote quite a few of these figures for WSIP's 2015 production, so we used this exercise to build the rudiment and then apply it to the musical context.
Upstroke March
Upstroke March is an étude for working on comfort and consistency with the quick upstrokes you will encounter in various flam and singlestroke patterns. Often, with quick upstrokes, you either lighten up the taps before the upstroke, and they sound weak, or you smack the crap out of the accent after it, and it sounds more harsh than other accents in the phrase. By putting even more taps and accents around the upstroke, you have something for your ears to compare it to, which should help you to develop better habits with quick upstrokes.
Disjunct Motion
Disjunct Motion was written in contrast to Weber State's Conjunct Motion exercise, which used doublestops to work on legato fundamentals. In this exercise, the rebound/cushion dichotomy is explored with the non-lead hand in different contexts that will depend on tempo for clear definition. The point is that sometimes it is best to rebound, sometimes it is best to cushion, and in some cases it is best to allow the stroke a slower rebound to fill the time up between strokes.
Beedlabop
Beedlabop was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line to work on cold roll attacks, four-stroke rolls, fulcrum pressure consistency, and second-note timing. One objective is to maintain proper velocity and rebound through the four-stroke rolls; even though there is a lot of space between doublestroke attacks, the second note of each doublestroke should still rebound, both for the sake of endurance and for ensuring a big, open sound on both notes of the doublestroke. The split part in measure 5 is a fun way to check timing and sound quality in a group or line setting. It is like the common trick of having half the line play a triplet roll while half the line plays eighth notes; however, in this context, everyone is responsible for multiple isolated attacks to create the overarching barrage of 24th notes.
Sloppy Jessee
Sloppy Jessee was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line, initially to work on two-accent paradiddles. The rudiment does not appear in music especially often, but this will still be a beneficial exercise to work on for the control over doublestroke quality and accent-tap contrast it can facilitate. The challenge added by the second accent is that each hand must upstroke quickly after playing a low doublestroke. This challenge is like what appears in paradiddle-diddles; however, paradiddle-diddles have a longer space between the doublestroke and the following accent.
So a figure that looks fairly trivial on paper ends up looking (and sounding) sloppy in practice, because the demand for an open and legato second accent interferes with the demand for a low and well-timed doublestroke. Having the control to realize a quality doublestroke, an aggressive upstroke, and then a relaxed and legato accent (without doing unnecessary work or adding unnecessary tension to your grip) will pay off across a range of rudimental contexts.
Floppy Ernie
Floppy Ernie was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line in order to counter bad tendencies with technique on paradiddle-diddle figures: particularly, the tendency to achieve the second note of the doublestroke with a very weak bounce as you lift the lead hand for the next accent. Players with this tendency look "floppy" on paradiddle and paradiddle-diddle figures, and there is a lot of uncertainty in second-note timing on the doublestrokes.
The doublestroke should consist of two powerful taps (even if the tempo precludes the use of two equivalent wrist turns) that occur completely before the upstroke for the accents. This exercise aims to establish the approach by starting with bucks (focus on a strong tap before the upstroke) before adding diddles that are more closed (requiring more fulcrum pressure) than the ones in the paradiddle-diddles. As the doublestrokes open up from the 16th-note diddles to the paradiddle-diddles, you should be able to apply more wrist turn to the doublestrokes, leading to a more deliberate rhythm, as well as the follow through to finish the doublestroke before worrying about upstroking to the next accent.
Movin' Diddles
I came up with Movin' Diddles during a hack session in Saint-Faustin–Lac-Carré, QC, on a summer road trip I took to the Atlantic provinces of Canada. While I may not be the first to formulate this grid, I have not seen it anywhere else. It starts with double paradiddles and moves the doublestroke backwards through the rudiment, creating a challenge for maintaining strong and precise doublestrokes and relaxed accents as the spaces between doublestrokes, taps, and accents vary.
Painkillers
Ready to reef some fast beats? Painkillers presents three variations for pushing your speed and relaxation at the same time, with fours, paradiddles, and singlestroke rolls. The demand eases up as the exercise goes on, but you should not take that as an excuse to lose quality or precision. The pattern is inspired by the drumming of Scott Travis on the ripping opener of Judas Priest's 1990 Painkiller album.
Tap-Couple-of-Diddles
Tap-Couple-of-Diddles takes the tap-five rudiment and pushes the doublestrokes around the beat in different ways. Doublestroke spacing remains the same throughout, while the initiations of the diddles are varied.
Huevos Huackos
Huevos Huackos is an eggbeater exercise that works the rudiment in the context of straight 16th-notes before adding 5:4 and 5:3 tuplets and ultimately throwing in backsticks.
Backsticks in eggbeaters are a little tricky, but they can be a lot of fun. The secret is to relax the left-hand fulcrum (where you clamp the stick in the web of the hand between the thumb and forefinger) and let the stick slide out a little bit, so that your fulcrum consists more of the actual thumb and forefinger gripping the stick. This allows you to still get the diddles with the bead of the stick while being able to flip to the butt and engage the back fulcrum to get two quality backsticks. Backsticked diddles generally require a back-fulcrum approach, because the front fulcrum doesn't have enough stick in front of it to get a good rebound. By moving the fulcrum for the non-backsticked diddles, you make it easier to make a quick switch to that back fulcrum to get diddles with both grips (see photos below).
Grace-Notes Under Pressure
Grace-Notes Under Pressure is an alternative to hardcore gridding as a means of getting comfortable with different grace-note and diddle combinations. It's a basic 7/4 pattern with a systematic walkthrough of flam and drag combinations. The juxtaposition of flam-paradiddle variations with flam-accent variations should challenge you to stay loose and relaxed as you add the "ornaments" (grace-notes and diddles) with variable amounts of fulcrum pressure.
Hucka Dig Deep
Hucka Dig Deep is a fulcrum teaser that challenges your mastery of diddle speed control. Varying diddle speeds as well as varying spaces available for upstrokes will expose your shortcomings in the complicated marriage of accent/tap fundamentals and doublestroke fundamentals that paradiddle rudiments demand.
Cheese-5 Gritty
Cheese-5 Gritty is an exercise for building precision and consistency with flam-fives... and getting down to the nitty gritty of flam-fives. It focuses on the second diddle releasing on an eighth-note upbeat and works on the slight contrast between grace-note height (tacet height, or "1/2 inch") and tap height (often called "3 inches"). While achieving this contrast is infeasible as tempo increases, it is an important ideal to understand, build on, and strive for.
The analogy I use is that, with doublestrokes, we strive for two completely equal motions at slower tempi, even though that becomes infeasible as tempo increases. And even at the quicker tempi, by thinking about those two equal motions and getting more sound out of the second note, we get more doublestroke quality without actually reaching that ideal of "two equal motions". Flams are the same way. Oftentimes, by simply thinking about that grace-note being "underneath" the taps, we control it just that little bit more to get it low enough and early enough to create a good-sounding flam.
Lead-Dubs Chuggada
Lead-Dubs Chuggada is an exercise inspired by the 5/8 Chuggada which runs through three rudiments that all have [roughly] the same lead-hand breakdown: Swiss triplet, off-hand Swiss w/ kick, and hertas. The idea is that most of the brain-work happens with the off-hand, although there is slight variation in timing and stick height with the double-beats on the lead hand as well.
Flam Factorial
Flam Factorial is something to work on flam/cheese inverts in a fun way. As you walk down the number of notes in a bar, the even-time bars have inverts, and the odd-time bars just alternate hands. There is a strong tendency to approach accents and diddles differently when you're having to upstroke quickly, versus when you're playing comfortable, alternating sticking patterns.
There's an extra layer of difficulty, too, in throwing inverted flam-taps or cheeses into an otherwise open and comfortable check pattern... a lot of invert exercises (Susie, for example) allow you to maintain a base level of tension in your hands without noticing how it affects tap sound quality, because it's a lot of inverted flam combinations. Throwing contiguous taps in between the cheese inverts should open your ears to how much the invert motion can cause tension that distorts the tap sound and diddle quality.
Sick-Stroke Roll Schops
Sick-Stroke Roll Schops is a chops builder or just a good way to get pretty warm pretty quick. It has really basic construction (other than the 5-bar tag) so you can just dive right in.
If this website had a theme, it would be juxtaposing different interpretations of rudiments. The rationale behind this practice is usually given as "building understanding and control of the space between notes", but in the context of this exercise, it's also just a good way to warm up the muscles you'll need. It's common to play a bunch of kinda fast rolls to get the blood flowing... now you can play a bunch of fast rolls with some slightly slower double-beats thrown in there, as well as accents and taps... and you have to switch between them... a lot.
Diddle Control
Diddle Control is a short, seemingly-simple pattern that juxtaposes several different diddle speeds and requires the lead hand to rapidly switch between them.
Invert Roll / Fortepianos
Invert Roll and Fortepianos are two exercises that I used with the 2014 WSIP snare line in order to work on doublestrokes, with a silly fill to mash the two together. I like using inverted rolls to work on doublestrokes because it puts the second note of each diddle on the eighth notes, where weaknesses will be more obvious to the ear. The focus of both exercises should be matching comfort and sound quality between the forte diddles and the diddles at the tap height.
Swiss Pugida
Swiss Pugida is an exercise I used with the 2014 WSIP snare line to work on diddle interpretation: if the slurred and "straight" interpretations can be understood as separate rudiments, then the correct interpretation can be called upon in the right context.
Two on a Hand
Two on a Hand is a double-beat exercise that will really stretch your understanding of time, as well as your stick control on doublestrokes. I always meant to write this into an ensemble warm-up, but I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think it would pay off much to try and get a whole line to play it. This is a very challenging exercise to get right, but I think it is worthwhile for individual practice.
