Another "Puh-Duh-Duh" exercise

As promised, here's some more pad business to enjoy outside.

We did one of these "puh-duh-duh" exercises awhile back.  I like this sticking.  It rolls off the hands nicely and makes for a relaxed warm-up.

This time though, we're going to add some paradiddles into the fold, making it more difficult on a few levels.  Not only do we have to deal with the gear change between triplets and 16th notes in general, but often we're moving swiftly between double strokes at the triplet rate and 16th note rate.

Play the whole thing as written, with no accents.  Then for a few variations, try keeping everything low, but accenting the single notes of the puh-duh-duh's, like so:

And also, with an accent on every beat, regardless of the sticking, like so:

That Triplet Drill

Here's a little triplet sticking thing I was fooling around with today when a student didn't show.  Back in my drum corps days the kids used to call these "pub-duh-duh's".  Regardless of what they're called, they feel nice to play and make a good warm-up.

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Four Limb Triplet Warm-up

This exercise had a huge impact on my playing.  It was shown to me by a fantastic drummer in Pittsburgh named Lou Ross.  He is also a pro at refurbishing drums and he builds some beautiful custom sets.  Check him out.

Coming out of grad school I was feeling quite confident about my playing.  I had been studying hard, practicing for hours on end, reading, writing a thesis, and came out the other side with a piece of paper declaring me a MASTER of music.  Riiiight.  Less than three months later I was on tour in Malaysia and Singapore with pianist Cher Siang Tay, and bassist Jon Cavendish, with whom I had worked a lot in school and had great musical chemistry.  We put together a lot of new repertoire, played gig after gig, and recorded an album.  It was the most satisfying period of my musical career up to that point.  Then, before I knew it I was back home, in Pittsburgh, saying to myself “now what?”