Stick Control

[davfrancis]

Just wondering....

Who has worked out of the book Stick Control?

And who has "completed" it? Obviously you never really complete it but who has played all the way through it?

Also I know many people have interesting applications of these exercises involving use of the feet etc. Any cool ways to practice this book?

Its always been one of my essential items and it has probably benefitted me more than any other book... interested to know what other HOD forum readers think.....

[Nikk]

Excellent book, of course. My teacher has me do what he calls "4-bar vamps." I think Morello probably had my teacher do this, so he's passing it along. You look at page six for instance and go through the patterns. Between each of the two-bar exercises, you play 2 bars of eighth notes on the hand the exercise ended with. For instance, I think the first exercise on page six is
rrllrllrllrrlrrl

so you'll play

rrllrllrllrrlrrlllllllllllllllll etc...
you can do each as many times as you like. Great for developing nice big full wrist strokes.

[davfrancis]

furthermore - what do you all think of gary Chaffee's material?

I have worked through the Patterns series for a number of years and feel it has helped me tremendously in all areas.

Also I feel it gives me a small amount of insight into the genesis of some of the Vinnieisms that we all know and love

Is vinnieisms a word?

It should be!!!

love to hear from you all on this subject...

[ashio nz]

I own all the 'Patterns' books which I've also found to be excellently written and valuable regardless of the style of music you play.
The linear methods are so challenging, but worthwhile if you keep at it.
I think he put out a video/audio tape some time back with all this material on.

Does anyone remember the 'Seventh Heaven' thing he wrote for Steve Smith & Vinnie? It was in a MD Sound Supplement years ago and was SO DIFFICULT! A great one to learn though...

[PocketPlayer]

Hey ashio nz
What can you say about some of the paradiddle workbooks? I'm thinking of MD editor Ron Spagnardi's Paradiddle book. If you have used this, email me. I'd like to hear about some of the applications.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 22, 2002 07:26 PM: Message edited by: PocketPlayer ]</font>

[frankw]

I emailed Art Verdi about this book and he told me to do a lot of reps with the short rolls pages. I think it's the page that has eighths to sixteenths to triplets. This dude has the world's fastest drumming record so I respect his opinion.

[davfrancis]

The alan dawson book is a work of art!

totally inspirational and a vast amount of USEFUL stuff.

The rudimental stuff is great with some nice "alan dawson" rudiments, which are very tasty

I love the co-ordination studies though. You can definately see where young Tony was getting some of his stuff from in here!

thanks for your input guys!

[groovinhard]

hello vinnie freaks, ive been working out of alan dawsons the drummers complete vocabulary and man it has realy opened some doors for me, just the rudimenta ritual alone in this book kicks ass.its a bitch to master but once you get you have nice bank of information to call on , he takes all the rudiments and put them in 8 bar phrases, like all the ruffs in 8 bar phrase,and all the drags in 8 bar phrase and so on with all the rudiments , then you have to play them over samba a bass drum
line it somtime boogles my mind!!! but i no one thing im alot more confindent playing snare drum phrases, and thats just the beginng of this book ther alot more stuff , alan was a master dummer who taught tony williams and also at berklee school he was a bad cat !!!!!!

[jonthibault]

Back to Stick Control. Swing all the eighth notes, starting around page 34, play all the written notes with the right hand on the ride cymbal, along with the bass drum, and fill in the remaining triplets with the left hand on the snare. You get some really cool right hand lead swing stuff happening. It also sounds pretty sick to do that stuff on a china cymbal in a rock setting (dare I say Vinnie-esque?).

What you can do then is, keeping the ride cymbal going in the traditional ding-ding-da-ding-ding swing pattern (high-hat on two and four), play all the written notes with the bass drum, filling in the remaining triplets with the left hand. It's tricky. After that, do it with the high-hat, again filling in remaining triplets with the left hand. (These latter two exercises come from the great educator and man-about-town, Steve Holmes.)

It's kind of hard to describe, but another really sick thing to do is, with alternating hands playing triplets, accent every eighth note written in the book. Once that's happening, double every stroke that isn't accented. Put the accented strokes on the cymbals and toms. You can basically accent any rhythm around double stroke rolls, and it sounds ridiculous. It'll really open up your playing and make everything flow together. When people say, "He's got the shit," this is the type of stuff they're talking about. (Thanks, Steve.)