How Important are Sticking Patterns?

To a certain extent, stickings are a drummer’s vocabulary, somewhat equivalent to the scales of melodic instruments. Different stickings result in different sounds and different rhythms, just as different notes result in different melodies and harmonies. And just as different melodies can be extracted from one scale, different sounds and rhythms can be produced using a single sticking.

I'm rather fond of paradiddles, a sticking we all know. They’re very useful, and they provide a good example for illustration. Take the triple paradiddle: R L R L R L R R / L R L R L R L L. A simple way to vary this is to accent some of the strokes:

 

Or you could change the voicing by playing one hand on the hi-hat or bell of a cymbal, and the other on the snare to produce a linear pattern:

 

There's a lot more that you can do with a simple paradiddle, and then there are the various permutations. What this gives us is many options for a single sticking pattern.

So, if one sticking pattern is so amazingly useful, why bother to learn more?

Well the key word here is ‘learn’. There are some stickings that we want to commit to memory as solidly as we can. These are the workhorse stickings. They're the sounds and patterns we rely on day to day. Then there are stickings that are meant only as exercises. It would be difficult to master all of the stickings in, for example, Joe Morello's “Master Studies” book. These types of stickings are meant to get your hands moving, to develop control and endurance, and also to help defeat some of the habits we might have developed. The objective is not to commit to memory more stickings, but to free the hands to go beyond mere learned patterns. They are also meant to motivate us to practice and to keep discovering.

In between are the sticking exercises that turn out to be really useful. The “King Kong” rhythm is a good example:  RLRR  LRRL. It's a good sticking exercise, but a few clever wags (e.g. Dave Weckl, Phil Collins, et al.) decided to play the R strokes on the cymbal and add some syncopated bass drum shots.

At the other end of the scale, Kirk Covington, drummer for Tribal Tech and Volto, claims he only has two sticking techniques: single strokes and double strokes, which is quite something given what he can do on the drums. Kirk apparently doesn’t put much stock in learning a lot of sticking patterns but he knows what works for him.

Photo Credit: Lyudmyla Raynard

Living With The Curse

Once upon a time, I installed some crown molding in the master bedroom. I managed to put up three sides with aplomb. The fourth one ended up being 1/4 inch too short ... and it annoys me to this day.

Sometimes, when I've shared this story, I've been accused of being a perfectionist*. I'm afraid I can't agree. When it comes to some things -- woodworking, for example -- it’s either cut to the right length or it’s not. And sometimes 'close enough' may be all that the jobs needs. Perfectionism needn’t enter into the picture.

For me it’s just competence and pride of craft combined with the needs of the final result. I would much rather have had the molding the proper length, but that day I wasn’t prepared to drive to the store, get another piece, pay for it, and then redo the entire thing. It was easy to patch it up. All it needed was a wee bit of filler and a few minutes work -- cheap, easy and perfectly adequate.

True, I will sometimes edit a blog article 10 times, but that's just my compulsiveness. Or maybe refining the text is practical. For a time I specialized in résumés, and my editing cycle was typically 10 rounds or more. That's one place where aiming for ‘perfect’ -- i.e free of errors -- really is the only proper way. And so the effort is justified.

Getting back to my crown molding, cutting a piece a quarter inch too short is an easy mistake to make -- human error, a minor boo-boo -- and very fixable. The person doing the cutting is not seeking perfect, just a final result that is as good as time, skill, energy, and budget will allow. Again, no perfectionism involved. I like to do things right, and I like to do them well. But I also want a decent return on my efforts.

At bottom, seeking perfection for it's own sake is both folly and problematic. First of all, perfection itself is speculation, a concept without basis, an illusion. It’s not attainable because it doesn’t exist. For any give task, there is no perfect model to refer to. Moreover, perfection is so often in the eye of the beholder.

There are complicated reasons behind our desire for perfection. Most of them stem from deep-rooted psychological issues and the influence of society. As a result, we often pursue perfection for reasons that have nothing to do with the task at hand. And it inevitably drains our energy.

If you're one of those people who strives for excellence but have no problem saying ‘There, done’ then you’re well on your way to a happy, productive life. If, on the other hand, you're often rendered inactive because of the curse of perfectionism, maybe it's time to try saying “Done and done” once in a while.

* In etymological terms perfect originally meant thorough or, simply, finished.