Two minutes of focused warm-ups before a practice session does more for your playing than ten minutes of cold attempts. The exercises below are a quick vocabulary tour: singles, doubles, a sticking switch, paradiddles, triplets, and a density swell. Each one wakes up a different motor pattern.
Run them in order, all at the same tempo you can play cleanly today — slow if you're tight, faster as the hands loosen. Volume should be even between hands; stick heights should match. If anything sounds rough, drop the BPM and play it twice before moving on.
Exercises
1 — Singles (Eighth Notes)
Sticking: R L R L R L R L. The simplest warm-up — alternation, even volume, matched stick heights. Don't rush; the point is to feel both hands waking up to the same height and the same loudness.
2 — Doubles (Eighth Notes)
Sticking: R R L L R R L L. Wrist motion warm-up. Both notes of each pair should be equal volume — the second note shouldn't die. If it does, slow the bpm until they match, then build back up.
3 — Singles → Doubles
Sticking: R L R L · R R L L. First half is singles, second half is doubles. Switching mid-bar reveals where your hands lock up — if you stumble at the transition, that's the spot to drill.
4 — Sixteenth-Note Paradiddles
Sticking: R L R R · L R L L, twice per bar. The paradiddle mixes singles and doubles in one phrase — wakes up the coordination between the two hand types in the same gesture. Accents (the > marks) naturally fall on counts 1, 2, 3, 4.
5 — Triplet Singles (8th Triplets)
Sticking: R L R · L R L · R L R · L R L — three notes per beat, lead hand alternating each group. Triplet feel wakes up separately from straight 8ths; this gets it under your hands before you need it inside a groove.
6 — Density Swell
Single-stroke sticking throughout: R · L R · L R L R · L. Density swells then settles: quarter → 8ths → 16ths → quarter. Use this as the last warm-up to find today's clean ceiling — if the 16ths on beat 3 sound rough, drop the BPM and run the routine again.