The Perfect Exercise To Improve Your Diddles - Know Your ABCs!

To me, the exercise known as “ABC” AKA as “shups” or “stanford shuffle” is the perfect exercise to improve your diddle quality!

Need some sheet music context? Well here you go:

Obviously, most musicians will see rhythms and will know to execute the rhythms. As drummers, we have to consider the sticking and in this case, the execution of the rhythms will require double strokes based on the notated sticking. If we are to be good musicians, we have to make sure we execute the rhythms with great timing and spacing.

The fact that we have to execute good time and spacing means we will have to develop good double strokes. After all, the volume and sound quality of each stroke needs to be the same, which is a characteristic of good diddles.

Also, depending on the tempo, we’ll need to exercise good control in order to execute the correct rhythm comfortably if the tempo is slow or fast; you don’t want to do a quick double stroke rebound when it’s too fast or the diddle will be crushed and you don’ want to stroke out the notes too much when it’s fast or else the diddles will be too choppy and you won’t be able to keep up.

To me, this is why ABC is the PERFECT exercise to develop your double strokes! I also love how sometimes the beat is on the first not of the diddle and sometimes it’s on the second. That means that both notes will get equal amounts of attention from the player.

What do you think? Are there BETTER exercises that can improve your diddles?

For further perspective, watch the video below: