Combining the Single Paradiddle and the Paradiddle-Diddle

Combining different drum rudiments is a great way to make fills, discover new beats, and importantly make playing the rudiments more interesting for the player (and listener). Rudiments, the basic building blocks of the drum set, are great ways to improve drumming skills and are necessary to build the ‘drum vocabulary’ necessary to play effectively and efficiently when behind the kit.

The Paradiddle or Single Paradiddle is a standard drum rudiment, and is primarily an alternate stroke (single Left Right or Right Left) followed by a ‘diddle‘ or double stroke. The Paradiddle is the easiest to remember of all the diddle rudiments and is perhaps the most popular of the diddle rudiments when it comes to creating drum fills.

The Paradiddle Diddle is another standard drum rudiment, and maintains the common characteristics of the other diddle rudiments. Primarily the Paradiddle Diddle uses an alternate right and left hand sticking for two hits followed by the addition of two ‘diddles’ or double strokes. The additional notes added to this rudiment creates a 12/8 or triplet feel lending the Paradiddle Diddle well to Latin, Jazz and other forms of World music.

When combining the Paradiddle and the Paradiddle-Diddle as sixteenth notes an additional two notes are needed to fill out the measure as solid sixteenth notes. To fill out the measure an additional Right Left single hit is needed. In this example the first note of each Single Paradiddle is accented as well as the single Right Left (Single Stroke Roll) at the end of the measure.

Tom pattern – Still maintaining the sticking of the Paradiddle combination the pattern is moved onto the tom-toms resulting in the example below:

Here is the same Tom Pattern with a crash on one and the bass drum on one and three.

There are literally hundreds of combinations and substitutions possible from the combination of just these two rudiments!

Play three measures of the ‘basic rock’ beat and then use a single measure of the combined rudiment. Now make several more changes to the toms, substitute for the bass drum and cymbals.