What's A Rudiment For? Part 2 - Displacing Paradiddles

The Paradiddle is one of the most adaptable rudiments around, and yet in many exercise books it only appears either on beats 1 or 3 of the bar. What this lesson will show is that it has far more potential  when moved around the bar, one groove and one fill can become many. Once you have familiarised yourself with the following exercises any Paradiddle combination can be inserted, making the possibilities almost endless!

Download the PDF here:

What's A Rudiment For? Part 1 - The Five Stroke Roll

The five stroke roll in it's basic form is a very militaristic sounding rudiment. This may be one of the reasons why many drummers get put off by rudiments, they can sound old fashioned, and seem to have no place in modern music. However, in this infrequent series I hope to show that there's plenty of life in the old dogs yet!

Download the PDF here:

Philly Joe Jones & The Four Bar Break

Philly Joe Jones had many wonderful four bar patterns, which he used to great effect on Miles Davis' Blues For Five. The track was recorded in 1955 and appeared on the album Cookin'.

It features numerous Philly Joe signature fills and tricks, so I used it as part of my 1st year Jazz degree solo study.

Below is a video of the solo along with a link to the PDF transcription. 

Download the PDF here