We are going to give you in this article 3 very powerful hand-coordination exercises that will give you amazing results.
Hand coordination can be quite tricky. You probably have seen yourself struggling with some of the patterns of a track you really want to play.
Or maybe you realize that accents make a huge difference in the musicality of a drum part and you want to improve that skills.
Don’t worry, you are not alone. Hand-coordination is one of the hardest things about playing the drums and it can easily be the number one thing keeping you from playing different grooves.
Also, musicality represents a significant part of a drummer’s personality and perceived value from other artists.
So identifying it as something to work on definitely puts you on the right track. Plus, you don't essentially need to own a drum set to do it.
At Vikory we have the chance to work with some brilliant drummers who are currently endorsing our brand.
Some of them have a teaching experience, and one of them in particular really wanted to share these exercises with you.
Enter our favorite Belgian drummer: Jonathan Roseleth 🇧🇪
Hello fellow drummers!
Today we are going to do Paradiddle-diddle accent change exercises
Before we get started with the exercise I just want to say that the paradiddle-diddle is one of my favorite rudiments and it helped me to develop speed in my doubles!
This exercise is really good to “upgrade” your internal metronome since only one of the 6 combinations has an accent that starts/lands on the downbeat.
It’s very important to start playing all the exercises really slow.
When you start to get the hang of it you can gradually push the tempo. I would suggest playing the pattern without a click a few times.
In the exercises, I start playing at 75bpm, the second tempo is 95bpm.
Now, let’s start with the exercise:
I play the paradiddle-diddles as 16th note triplets.
As you can see on every exercise chart, we always play two measures:
- The first two measures we play each pattern for one bar
- The third and fourth measure we alternate per two beats
- The fifth and sixth measure we alternate every beat
There are 3 main exercises in which we always combine 2 different accent patterns.
1. When we want to accent the first and second note we play Paradiddle-diddles: Rlrrll and rLrrll
2. When we want an accent on the third or fourth note we play a diddle-Paradiddle: rrLrll and rrlRll
2. When we want an accent on the
3. On the fifth and sixth note, we play a reverse paradiddle-diddle: rrllRl and rrllrL
4. Bonus: The dice exercise
As a bonus, I included a 4th exercise in which I rolled a dice 4 times. The resulting number will determine the pattern you have to play.
For instance: If you get a 1 you have to play R l r r l l; if you get a 2 you have to play r L r r l l etc…
Just look at the video and the sheet below as it will make it clearer.
Have fun!
Jonathan
