How To Play Paradiddles Around the Drum Set

When I was younger, I never felt that anyone told me WHY to practice rudiments, but rather that I needed to. It wasn't until later that I realized they are the building blocks of drumming and how important they are. All those "crazy patterns" I heard drummers doing that I couldn't understand were almost always rudiments!

To help you not make the same mistake that I made, I will teach the the basic Paradiddle, give you examples of how to play them around the drum set, and finally give you real world examples of how famous drummers used them!

Here is the basic Paradiddle: Practice this slowly and start on your snare drum or practice pad.

Next, lets take the paradiddle and play it four times on each drum around our set. Start on the Snare, then move both hands up to the Rack Tom, and the move both hands to the Floor Tom.

Now, try putting the first note of the paradiddle on the toms and the rest of the notes on the snare drum.

Now lets look at how some drummers used this rudiment in the real world!

Let’s look at David Girabaldi from the song “What is Hip”. This is a basic pattern of the groove he plays - you will hear him use fills and different variations however. We have a paradiddle with in the groove - he plays the RIGHT HAND on the Hi Hat, and LEFT HAND on the snare. You will see the paradiddle in beat 1 and beat 3, and a variation in beats 2 and 4.

Moving on! Here is an example played by Vinnie Colaitua. He simply plays 4 paradiddles (starting with the LEFT HAND) and plays the RIGHT HAND singles on the floor tom.

And last example comes from the great Alan Dawson. This is a RIGHT HANDED paradiddle over 8th note triplets. He plays the double using a cross stick, and then adds a double on the bass drum.

I hope this helps you learn the paradiddle, give you some creative ideas to practice, and shows you real world examples from different drummers! For more check out my Youtube video where I demonstrate all these examples here.