Sticking

Grip & Sticking

Also called stickings, stick fingering.

Sticking is the pattern of which hand plays which note. Writers mark it with R and L, right and left, above the notes. A stroke with the right hand followed by the left is RL. A double on one hand is RR. That two-letter notation is all there is to it, and it's as important as the notes themselves.

Why does it matter? Because sticking decides how a groove feels under your hands and how it sounds. The same eight notes played RLRL land as an even roll. Played RLLR they get a lumpy, propulsive push that many funk and rock players love. Change the sticking and you change the feel without changing a single note.

Written stickings on rudiments and exercises are the accumulated answer to thousands of hours of experimentation. When a book says a fill is RLRL, follow it. Your hands are learning coordination, not just accuracy, and arbitrary sticking teaches them nothing.

My advice for beginners: write stickings into your own fills and keep them consistent day to day. Once a pattern lives in one sticking, it's locked in. Flip the sticking on a familiar pattern and you'll hear, instantly, why drummers care about this stuff.