Friday, May 29, 2015

Natural sticking timing exercise

This is something I'm working on with some students: a timing exercise using natural sticking, modified slightly from something we used to play in drum corps. Natural sticking, briefly, is a method of sticking hand-to-hand rhythms, in which the right hand always plays the strong side of the rhythm, and the left always plays the off beats; so with mixed 16th note rhythms, as we have here, the right plays all notes falling on the 8th notes, and the left plays any es and as. If it doesn't make sense the way I've explained it, look at the stickings on the page and figure out the pattern. I've included here a shortened version of the exercise in 2/2, since we've been using natural sticking in the half time feel funk series.




On exercises 1-3 and 7-9 the right hand will play a steady rhythm in both measures of the exercises— 8th notes in 1-3, quarter notes in 7-9; on exercises 4, 6, 10, and 12, the left hand plays an unbroken rhythm.

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