Quickly sketching an idea to be developed at the drums here. We do a lot with right hand lead type stickings here— the right hand playing a mixed rhythm, accented, with the left hand filling in the spaces. It’s a natural function of our normal lead hand. It’s a very economical way of playing, and everybody should be good at it.
As a practice room philosophy, we normally want to be able to do all of our stuff leading with either hand, which I never bothered with here, because it doesn’t really connect to anything I do. But I’ve been hitting a lot of left leading stuff on the pad, and I’ll find myself thinking that way on the drums, coming off the ride cymbal. Again, its a practice room thing, I don’t think that way when playing.
So I noticed, hey, an easy way into that while practicing out of the book is just to switch leads when there are two accents in a row. The page here has some examples of that:
As you can see, you can switch leads on any adjacent accents. In a couple of examples, that led to entire measures being played RLRL vs. LRLR— an incidental thing, but interesting.
I am happy to help you with any of the materials on the site, and with anything else drumming related— contact me for private lessons, online world wide, or in person in Portland, Oregon. All levels of players, and all people, are welcome.
Email Todd | Call or text +1(503)380-9259 | Chat on WhatsApp
