Sunday, February 26, 2023

Paradiddle-diddle game

Everybody Good Knows The Same Stuff, Part 1000:

Another handout from a clinic Russ Tincher at UC Berkeley in 1989— I confirmed that's where it was from. Here he shows how to interpret triplets with Reed or Bellson, and details a practice system for it, based on paradiddle-diddles. Or six stroke rolls, more accurately— that terminology wasn't universal then.  



In John Ramsay's Alan Dawson book there's a similar system he calls “Ruff bossa.” The only difference is in how you interpret a (written) beat of 8th notes. Dawson plays them as alternating swing 8th notes, without filling in the triplet: 


Tincher fills in the triplet, and plays it with an alternating sticking, which you see in the first example below. With certain rhythms that may take the system in a different direction, so it leads with the left hand a good part of the time. With Dawson's system the lead is very consistent, with a simple alternating motion no matter what you're reading. 



This system is probably best for using with the first couple of pages of Bellson, which has just quarter notes and offbeat 8th notes only, but we'll see, I'll play around with it when I have some time to practice. 

2 comments:

Ed Pierce said...

Good stuff; thanks for posting! Jim Blackley covers this type of thing in his Syncopated Rolls Book (circa 1961). Also, Joe Morello has a Stick Control variation (for pages 5-7) that is similar, where you play a Rll triplet for each R and a rrL triplet for each L (he has examples of this written out in Master Studies 2). This has the benefit of ensuring that you're only focusing on quarters and upbeats (as in the first part of the hand out), but the downside of not being connected to a musical line in a reading text. But at least it can get one familiar with a variety of combinations.

Anonymous said...

Jim Blackleys "Syncopated Rolls' books are, for me anyway, the goto books for routines on how to interpret a musical line. It's a colossal book, which for some reason, you don't see it talked about all too much. Which is a real shame.