The Three Camps in Double-Paradiddles

The other day I played The Three Camps (and some variations thereof) for the first time in ages, and ended up coming up with a few variations of my own that I'll post in the coming days.  I'm not going to do a whole post about The Three Camps as it's been written about so many times.  All you need to know right now is that it's a really old and famous drum solo that you should know (because that's just what you do), and people often create variations of it.

The first variation is with double-paradiddles.  I've always leaned more heavily towards paradiddlediddles than double-paradiddles, so I've been trying to drive the latter into my playing more lately, which is how this variation came about.

The sheet below is a perfect example of why you should know this piece.  It's a mess to look at.  I've written it all out in case you don't know it, but if you do have it memorized all you need to do is play any beat with an accent on the beat or no accent at all as a double paradiddle, like so....

....and play any beat with an accent on the upbeat with this sticking:

It would probably be a little more true to the original if those upbeat accents were on the fifth 16th note instead of the sixth, but I just felt this had more of that Philly Joe soloing kind of vibe to it.

Try the whole thing off the left hand, too.  More variations to come soon.  Have fun.

Triplet Double-Paradiddle Study w/ Accents and Diddles

Here's a little snare study that developed out of an improv session on the pad in the back yard yesterday.  I was playing double paradiddles in triplets and moving the accents around while trying to vocalize the pulse, which in itself can be difficult and we will chat about in a future post.  After adding some diddles my OCD took over making me want to organize it into some sort of system and symmetry.  Once I conceptualized it and wrote it down I found that parts of it were deceptively difficult for two main reasons:

1. the change in double stroke speed between the 16th notes and the 8th notes of the double paradiddle can be tricky depending on where the 16th notes fall.

2.  the "strokings" (not stickings; see this post) are not always natural in the various permutations found in the study.

Maybe it goes without saying, but I'd recommend slowing this way down and really working out the proper strokings, ala Accents and Rebounds.