Snare Drum Sticking: Keep Time Through Your First Paradiddle

By Tissimo Team

Published October 29, 2026 · Updated November 5, 2026

Play eight evenly spaced taps while saying “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &.” Say & as ‘and.’ Now keep those exact spaces and change the hands from R L R L R L R L to R L R R L R L L. Your rhythm stays the same; your sticking changes. That is the central job of your first paradiddle.

You need a practice pad, two sticks, a continuous metronome click, and a grip your teacher has already checked. We will read alternating singles, deliberate doubles and a single paradiddle, then add accents. The examples below show all three patterns on the same eight attack times; Same Rhythm, Different Hands puts them on one printable page.

R and L name the hand, not the duration

R means right hand; L means left hand. A letter tells you which hand makes an attack. The note above it tells you when that attack happens. Neither R nor L means “fast,” “slow,” “strong” or “weak.” A repeated R still needs its own place in the rhythm.

Here, the single percussion line represents the pad or snare drum. You do not read its noteheads as different pitches. Read the 4/4 signature as four quarter-note beats per bar. In these examples, a filled notehead with a stem and no flag or beam is a quarter note: one attack per click. A single beam joins the eighth notes in pairs: two attacks per click. The eighth note shows how two eighths divide one quarter-note beat.

Two one-line percussion examples in 4/4, both marked quarter note equals 60. The upper row has four quarter notes with hand letters R L R L and counts 1 2 3 4. The lower row has eight eighth notes beamed in pairs, hand letters R L R L R L R L and counts 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

Four quarter-note attacks above, eight eighth-note attacks below: both bars last four beats. Match the numbers to the click and place each “&” halfway between clicks.

Set the metronome to quarter note = 60, as Tempo & the Metronome suggests for its starting clap exercise. That means one quarter-note beat per second. Our eighth-note attacks are half a second apart. Count one full bar before playing; keep the click running throughout.

Three aligned eight-cell hand-order strips count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &: singles RLRLRLRL, doubles RRLLRRLL, paradiddle RLRRLRLL. Cream cells contain R and pale blue-gray cells contain L.

Different hand orders occupy the same eight time slots. Read across a row to perform it; compare vertically to see which hand changes at a given count.

Try a silent reading check before picking up the sticks. Point to the first note and say “beat 1, right”; point to the second and say “and, left.” Continue across the singles row. Then point across the doubles row: “beat 1, right; and, right; beat 2, left; and, left.” The count positions have not moved. This separates a rhythm-reading problem from the perfectly understandable surprise of seeing the same letter twice. If counting and naming the hand together feels crowded, say the count once and the letters on a second pass.

Keep three questions separate: when does the note happen, which hand plays it, and does it carry an accent? You can get one answer right while missing another.

Three reading checks: note values tell when to strike, R/L tells which hand, and printed accents tell where to emphasize.

Count the rhythm, say the hand letters, then find the accents. Check each layer before combining them.

Singles: switch hands after every stroke

A rudiment is a basic drumming pattern. Singles alternate hands; doubles repeat each hand twice. A single paradiddle combines two singles and a double in four strokes, then switches the leading hand for the next four. We practice both leads together as an eight-stroke cycle: RLRR LRLL.

For right-start singles, play R L R L R L R L. Every stroke changes hands, including the move from the last L back to the first R when you repeat. Vic Firth’s single-stroke lesson provides a dedicated demonstration of this rudiment family.

Keep the eight taps at one comfortable volume. Do not automatically make R louder because it lands on the numbered beats in this version. Then start with L: L R L R L R L R. The numbered beats now belong to your left hand, while the eighth-note rhythm remains unchanged.

Two bars of alternating eighth-note singles on separate one-line percussion staves, each in 4/4 at quarter note equals 60. The first is labeled Right hand starts and carries R L R L R L R L; the second is labeled Left hand starts and carries L R L R L R L R. The lower lyric rows count 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, and neither bar has accent marks.

Starting with L exchanges the hands on the numbered beats and the “&” counts. Keep both versions even in timing and volume.

For a short check, play one bar starting R, stop at the bar’s end, and count a fresh bar before trying the L-start version. These are two separate attempts. Once each is secure, repeat either version continuously for two bars. Do not switch between the two printed rows without planning the boundary: right-start singles end L, and left-start singles begin L, so joining those particular rows creates a double across the bar line. A change of starting hand is useful practice, but it changes the join you must read.

Listen for an unwanted loud-soft alternation. If you hear one, check whether it follows a hand or a count: does the louder stroke move to the “&” when you change the starting hand? That observation gives your teacher a specific issue to inspect. Use the singles row of the handout for this comparison.

Doubles: give the same hand two separate strokes

Now play R R L L R R L L. A double means two successive strokes by one hand. In this slow exercise, make two deliberate attacks; do not squeeze both into the space of one eighth note. R on beat 1 and R on its “&” are still half a beat apart.

Listen particularly to each second stroke. Yamaha’s beginning-drummer exercises ask students to match the second stroke’s volume to the first. Here, check spacing as well: the gap inside RR should match the gap from R to the next L.

Two complete 4/4 bars of eighth-note doubles, engraved on separate single percussion lines with one beam for each beat pair. The right-start bar reads R R L L R R L L, and the left-start bar reads L L R R L L R R. Counts below both bars read 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. There are eight separate noteheads in each bar and no roll slashes or accent marks.

Each same-hand pair takes one quarter-note beat: its first stroke on the number, its second on “&.” Give each stroke its own attack.

Say “right, right, left, left” in the eighth-note count before playing. If your hands hurry through a pair, return to The eighth note and clap its even subdivision. Carry that spacing back to the pad. Work at a slower quarter-note setting if you cannot place two deliberate strokes comfortably.

Check one pair against two spoken syllables: “one, and.” Make the first R on “one” and the second R on “and,” then stop after the pair to inspect what happened. Next play RRLL across “one, and, two, and.” Finally complete all eight strokes without a stop. The pauses belong to these short preparation attempts; they are not part of the printed bar. If the second stroke disappears or turns into several taps, have your teacher watch that pair before adding the rest of the pattern.

These slow doubles are a hand-order exercise. A double-stroke roll needs further technique work with your teacher. Paul Buyer’s snare-roll teaching article discusses buzz or multiple-bounce concert rolls, including the need to hear a clear sound model; it is a different roll lesson.

Assemble RLRR LRLL without adding a pause

Build the right-leading unit R L R R, then reverse every hand to get L R L L. Join them to practice both leads: R L R R L R L L.

Vic Firth’s single-paradiddle lesson and the Percussive Arts Society’s rudiment resources identify the standard rudiment. Our slow eighth-note combinations give you room to read it. Learn the hand order first; the next section on accents will explain how printed emphasis fits that order.

Two constructions: Right lead, R L plus R R; Left lead, L R plus L L. The first box in each row says two alternating strokes; the second says two strokes by one hand.

R L plus R R makes the right-leading unit; L R plus L L makes the left-leading unit. Join the units without a pause.

With one stroke per eighth note in these 4/4 bars, the first unit takes beats 1 and 2; the second takes beats 3 and 4. The first stroke of each unit therefore changes lead from R on beat 1 to L on beat 3. The spaces in “RLRR LRLL” help your eye group letters. They add no silence.

Two single-paradiddle bars on separate one-line percussion staves, each with eight eighth notes in 4/4. The upper bar reads R L R R L R L L, and the lower bar reverses every hand to L R L L R L R R. Both have the same count row and quarter-note tempo of 60. Each row shows the whole eight-stroke cycle, with no rests, ties, roll marks or printed accents.

Right-start cycle above, left-start cycle below. In either version, strokes 3–4 and 7–8 are same-hand pairs; each row fills four beats.

A useful memory check is to predict the fourth letter from the first three. After R L R, the fourth letter is R again; after L R L, the fourth is L again. Then read the full cycle from the page to confirm it. Avoid shortening the instruction to “alternate, except sometimes”: name exactly where the repeated hand belongs. In this bar the right double occupies beat 2 and its “&,” while the left double occupies beat 4 and its “&.” That count map gives you four specific places to watch.

Test yourself before repeating: which adjacent pairs share a hand? Number strokes 1–8, then find 3–4 and 7–8. In the upper row these are RR and LL. The handout’s mini-task asks you to locate those pairs rather than guess from the sound.

Repeat the full bar twice. Its last two strokes are LL, followed by R at the next bar’s beginning. If you stop after the double to remember the restart, isolate the final “4 &” and the next “1 &,” then reconnect the whole bar.

Two consecutive bars of the right-start single paradiddle on one percussion line, with hand letters RLRRLRLL in each bar and counts beneath every eighth note. A normal bar line separates the eight-stroke cycles, and a final double bar closes the second bar. The last two letters before the middle bar line are L L, and the first two after it are R L. No rest appears at the boundary.

Read the middle join as L L | R L on “4 & | 1 &.” The bar line adds no waiting beat.

Change the pattern while keeping the subdivision

Play four bars in this order: singles, doubles, paradiddle, singles. Keep the metronome at quarter note = 60 and give every bar eight eighth-note attacks. The entire route contains 32 attacks over 16 quarter-note beats. Changing the pattern name does not change either total.

Look ahead during beat 4. Say the next starting hand before beginning the route, then watch the last two letters of each current bar. Same Rhythm, Different Hands uses this same four-pattern order, with a printed accent at each bar’s start; first try the unaccented version below.

A four-bar one-line percussion route laid out in two systems of two bars. Every bar contains eight beamed eighth notes in 4/4 at quarter note equals 60. Bar 1 uses RLRLRLRL, bar 2 RRLLRRLL, bar 3 RLRRLRLL and bar 4 RLRLRLRL. Counts appear below each bar and there are no accent marks. Labels above each measure identify bars 1–4 and their patterns.

Singles, doubles, paradiddle, singles: eight eighth-note attacks in every bar. Count through the line break; the handout adds one accent at each bar’s start.

The doubles-to-paradiddle join ends LL and begins RL. So does the paradiddle-to-singles join in this route. The identical boundary is useful: rehearse those four letters once, then notice how each new bar continues differently after them.

Two bar-line joins: right-start doubles to right-start paradiddle, LL | RL; right-start doubles to left-start paradiddle, LL | LR. Counts 4 & and 1 & sit beneath the hands. A bracket spans the first three Ls in the second panel, labeled three L strokes, evenly spaced.

Changing the next bar’s lead changes the join: LL | RL becomes LL | LR. The second case has three consecutive L strokes; keep them evenly spaced.

Make one transition a two-bar assignment. For doubles followed by paradiddle, read RRLL RRLL | RLRR LRLL, count a preparation bar, and play just those sixteen strokes. Do not restart from singles every time you miss the change; that would repeatedly practice the easy bar while giving the difficult join only one attempt. After a correct two-bar reading, return to the four-bar route and see whether the same join holds. Keep the count audible enough to notice a missing “&,” especially when your attention shifts to the next hand pattern.

If the route breaks, identify whether the first mistake is a late attack or a wrong hand. Practice one transition at a time, then play all four bars. Use Tempo & the Metronome to keep the click steady; today’s target is a clean change, not a tempo increase.

The same sticking can be written in smaller note values

A paradiddle is not automatically a bar long. Written as eighths in our 4/4 exercise, eight strokes fill a bar. Written as sixteenths, eight strokes take two quarter-note beats, so two cycles fill the bar. The Sixteenth Note shows the double beam and “1 e & a” counting. Say each beat as ‘one ee and uh,’ then ‘two ee and uh,’ and so on.

Two complete 4/4 percussion bars comparing the same paradiddle hand order at two note values, both marked quarter note equals 60. The upper bar has eight eighth notes with RLRRLRLL and counts 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. The lower bar has sixteen sixteenth notes with RLRRLRLL repeated twice and counts 1 e and a through 4 e and a. The lower bar uses two beams within each four-note beat group. Square brackets mark one cycle across beats 1–4 above and two cycles across beats 1–2 and 3–4 below; restart R points to beat 3.

One eight-stroke cycle fills the upper bar; two fill the lower bar. Both last four quarter-note beats at the same tempo. In the lower row, the second cycle starts with R on beat 3.

Check the difference with a pencil before playing either line. In the eighth-note bar, put a small count under each pair: 1 &, 2 &, 3 &, 4 &. In the sixteenth-note bar, count four positions inside each beat and notice that the hand cycle restarts on beat 3. The restart is still R, even though you are halfway through the measure. Grouping the hand letters and grouping the beats are related reading tasks, but their boundaries depend on the written subdivision.

Read the comparison aloud, then return to eighths for the remaining work. RLRR LRLL tells you the sequence, but you still need the printed note values and tempo to know its timing.

Place the printed accents without changing time

The small > above a note is an accent mark. In these pad exercises, it asks you to make that attack stronger than the surrounding unaccented taps. Keep the attack on its written count and leave the next tap in its usual place. In the upper example, find the accents on strokes 1 and 5: R on beat 1 and L on beat 3. The doubles remain evenly spaced.

Now compare a version with only stroke 1 accented. This is an accent-reading variation: the familiar hand sequence does not give you permission to add another accent on beat 3. Vic Firth’s rudiment poster is a reference for the conventional accented paradiddle; read each practice variation’s actual marks.

Two 4/4 bars of R L R R L R L L in eighth notes on separate percussion lines. Accent wedges sit over strokes 1 and 5 in the upper bar, corresponding to beats 1 and 3. Only stroke 1 carries an accent in the lower bar. Hand letters and count rows match between the bars, and all eight noteheads retain the same duration and spacing pattern. The labels name the different accent locations explicitly. An accent mark callout points to the first > symbol.

The upper bar accents strokes 1 and 5; the lower accents only stroke 1. Keep the next tap in its usual eighth-note position.

Before using the sticks, speak the count with extra emphasis only where an accent is printed. For the upper version, emphasize “ONE” and “THREE”; for the lower version, emphasize only “ONE.” Then play and compare. If a double becomes louder merely because the same hand repeats, you have added an emphasis that the exercise did not request. Return to the unaccented row, settle its volume, and try the marked version again. You are learning to choose emphasis independently of hand repetition, rather than treating every doubled letter as a loud note.

Ask your teacher to demonstrate the movement needed for the stronger stroke and its quieter neighbors. Dave Gerhart’s snare-basics guide treats instrument height, grip and basic stroke as things to teach explicitly. A letter chart cannot check those physical details for you.

Use Sticking Detective: Keep the Hands in Order to separate written accuracy from performance. It has six incomplete eight-stroke strings, four cards with one wrong letter each, and two four-bar playing routes. Cover the playing routes and upside-down key while you complete the written tasks.

Two complete eighth-note bars labeled Target: right-start paradiddle and One printed hand is wrong. The target hand row reads R L R R L R L L. The comparison row reads R L R R R R L L, changing only the fifth letter from L to R. Both bars retain eight attacks, the same 4/4 rhythm, identical count rows and no accent marks, so the deliberate error concerns hand identity alone.

The lower row changes only stroke 5, on beat 3, from L to R. Restore L to recover RLRR LRLL; the rhythm needs no repair.

Without looking back, write eight strokes of left-start doubles, then eight strokes of a left-start paradiddle. Cover the answer paragraph below until you have finished.

Both patterns use four Ls and four Rs. Hand totals alone cannot distinguish their order; check the named rule and starting hand.

Written-check answers: doubles, LLRR LLRR; paradiddle, LRLL RLRR. Say each corrected string with its count before playing.

For the exercise's playing routes, assess even spacing, stated hands and audible printed accents separately. Its synthetic timing tracks can model rhythm and emphasis; equal hits cannot reveal which hand made them.

Three checks: Uneven gaps, Count with the click; Wrong hand, Match hands to letters; Extra emphasis, Compare with the marks.

Check timing, hand order and accents separately so you can choose what to correct next.

A short pad routine and a useful teacher check

Use five minutes as a manageable review, not a deadline for learning the paradiddle. Spend one minute each on counting into singles, doubles, the paradiddle, pattern changes, and accents with review. Repeat an earlier stage when needed. Use the handout for the basic rows and the detective exercise for independent checks.

Five one-minute review stages: count into singles, doubles, paradiddle, pattern changes, then accents and review.

Count into singles, use deliberate doubles, and connect RLRR to LRLL without a pause. Then practice changes and accents. Repeat a stage when needed.

For a final check, play singles, paradiddle, doubles and a left-start paradiddle. Accent only the first stroke of each bar. The last bar begins L R L L R L R R, so its first accent belongs to L. Preview that change before starting.

A four-bar route on one-line percussion staves, arranged as two bars per system. The bars use RLRLRLRL, RLRRLRLL, RRLLRRLL and LRLLRLRR respectively. Each bar has eight eighth-note attacks and one accent above its first note. The final bar begins with L, while the other three begin with R. Count rows run 1 and through 4 and below every bar, at quarter note equals 60. Labels above each measure identify the bar number, pattern and starting hand.

Singles, right-start paradiddle, right-start doubles, left-start paradiddle. Accent each bar's first stroke. At the final join, LL followed by LR creates three consecutive L strokes across the bar line.

Decide what a useful attempt will show before you begin. For timing, all eight attacks must retain their regular places against four clicks. For sticking, every visible letter must match the hand that strikes. For accents, only the marked first attacks should stand out in this final route. If one check fails, name its bar and count rather than calling the whole attempt bad. That gives the next repetition a specific purpose.

Compare the second boundary panel above with that last transition: bar 3 ends LL and bar 4 starts LR. Three L strokes cross the bar line, each on its own eighth-note position. That is correct for this route. A teacher can watch this join, listen for even spacing, and check that your accent does not disrupt the next stroke.

For your last review, ask a teacher or practice partner to compare each hand movement with the printed letters while you listen to spacing against the click. On another attempt, ask them to listen only for the marked accents. A short recording can help you hear uneven gaps or extra emphasis afterward; keep the page beside it so you know which bar you intended to play. To check hand order, someone needs to see the hands or watch a clear video of the attempt. A convincing rhythm with the wrong hands still leaves a specific reading task to solve.

Bring one specific observation to your next lesson: “I keep the click, but change the first L of bar 4 to R,” for example. A Tissimo drums teacher can check the written hand order alongside your grip and stroke mechanics in a live lesson. Keep the score visible so you both assess the same task.

Free worksheets for this lesson

Same Rhythm, Different Hands — singles, doubles, paradiddle, hand-order strips and a four-bar accented combination.
Sticking Detective: Keep the Hands in Order — six incomplete strings, four error cards, two playing routes and an upside-down written key.
The eighth note — two evenly counted eighths inside a quarter-note beat.
The Sixteenth Note — four subdivisions per quarter-note beat and double-beam reading.
Tempo & the Metronome — read a tempo mark and begin matching a continuous click.

Sources

Read this article online: https://tissimo.co/articles/snare-drum-sticking-first-paradiddle