Recently one of my friends and occasional students, Doug Birmingham, came over to the house for some sharing of drumming information. We were listening to some Brazilian music which inspired us to come up with some interesting ideas for snare drum technique practice. Here are some of the ideas.

Have fun and please write with your comments and suggestions.

The lesson starts with a phrase in 7/8 time signature. Just count all the 7 notes. (Have your metronome play all 7). Each eighth note is equal to 4 thirty-second notes. Count out loud and you'll get it. (Oops, the sticking is just a little messed up at the end. Finish with a paradiddle-diddle and then a double paradiddle, in each measure.)

We isolated the paradiddle-diddle and double paradiddle.

Then we changed the accent of the double paradiddle.

The last thing we did, actually Doug did this, is devise a phrase using a group of 6 notes followed by a group of 5 notes. These are played as sixteenth notes, in Common Time. The accents will, of course, fall on different parts of the measures until the exercise comes back to beat "one". I have written just the first two measures of the exercise. Try and keep your feet with the metronome throughout the exercise. In fact, do this with all of the hand exercises here. Good luck!!

Use singles for this exercise and also you can play a paradiddle-diddle followed by a group of 5 singles. Either way it's a cool exercise which has a
very unique groove!