Whoever says that the rudiments or technique is a waste of time needs to check out this Nasty Lick. NL36 is a right handed paradiddle tap and when played up to speed, it rips. A paradiddle tap is simply a paradiddle followed by one single stroke and repeated. In this case, we have a right handed paradiddle, RLRR, followed by a single left, so the sticking is: RLRR L.
The video included here features me playing example #3.
The worksheet included here provides several ways of phrasing the pattern, either based on triplets (exercises #’s 1A-1C), sixteenths (exercises #2A-2C) or thirty-second notes (#3). When playing the lick as sixteenths or thirty seconds, I prefer to start the pattern with the left hand stroke because of how the phrase works out. The tempos that I think make the lick sound good are as follows. For exercises #1A-1C, shoot for quarter note equals 120. For exercises #2A-2C shoot for 192 to 200. For #3, shoot for quarter note equals 96.
Pay careful attention to the accents and the orchestration on the drums….you’ll find that simply moving the pattern around to different voices on the kit will make the lick sound very different. There are certainly many other ways to play the lick that aren’t illustrated on this worksheet, so feel free to come up with your own ways of playing it. I’m simply showing you some of the ways that I like to play it.
You can download the worksheet here: Nasty Lick 36 PDF
As always, feel free to ask any question you may have.
He first gained attention as one of the winners of Modern Drummer magazine's very first drum solo contest, judged by Rush's Neil Peart.
He's played with Oz Noy, Will Lee, Alison Krauss, Curtis Stigers, Emily Remler, Joel Hoekstra, GE Smith, Andy York, Marshall Crenshaw, Tony Shanahan, The Drifters, The Marvelettes, Big Brother and The Holding Company, and many other artists.
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Great post! I have a quick question though, for exercises 1A-!C, the licks in the second measure seem to add up to more than 4 beats…you have 4 groups of:
(1) 16th note
(1) 16th note triplet
(1) 8th note
4 groups of these adds up to more than 4 beats…or am I missing something?
Thanks!
Hey Paul –
Thanks for checking this stuff out. I just looked at #1A – 1C and I understand why you’d be confused. Each group of five notes is one eighth note triplet grouping. The first four notes of each group are 16ths—within that eighth note triplet. So you could count each group like this:
One and Trip and Let, Two and Trip and Let, etc. I should have put brackets around the “3” above each group to more clearly show that it applied to the entire five note grouping. Hope this clears that up. Thanks again for writing.
Mark F.
Ah gotcha…makes sense now..thanks again.