Double Paradiddle Solo Ideas

Recently, I’ve been working through some of the ideas in John Riley’s book/DVD “The Master Drummer.” The section on creativity deals with solo ideas.

Riley presents a number of useful licks and phrases based on ideas from drumming greats such as Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, and Roy Haynes, that I am integrating into my soloing.

One particular idea centred around accenting the right-hand single strokes of a paradiddle in sixteenth notes and voicing them on the kit. It sounds great.

This idea sprung from that, but here I’ve used a combination of two double paradiddles and one single paradiddle, which turns into a two-bar phrase.

Exercise A simply deals with the underlying pattern and the accents.

Exercise B then voices the accents on the toms.

Exercise B1 echoes the Riley idea. In the first and third bars the accents are played on the snare drum, and in the second and fourth bars, the accents are played on the toms.

Exercise C (in the PDF) changes the accent pattern to only the right-hand single strokes and then voices them on the toms.

Exercise D (in the PDF) follows the same idea but with a different voicing.

There are plenty of ideas to be developed out of this.

Played as they are these figures are reminiscent of Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones solos, dense sixteenth notes. But, you might want to think about adding more space and mixing the figures up with other licks and ideas.

Of course, you can switch the order of the paradiddles too.

Here I’ve written out double, double, single (2:2:1). Single, double, double (1:2:2), will also work well. And, double, single, double (2:1:2), will be interesting as well.

Have fun. Make music.