Jacobsen-Stick It to Your Chops (Online Audio Access Included)

Stick It to Your Chops is an exhaustive sourcebook containing challenging, effective, and enjoyable exercises for advancing technical skills on the snare drum. The book is divided into three sections: Warm-Ups, Expanding Accents and Rhythms with Rudiments, and Combinations.

Pre-knowledge of snare drum rudiments like the double-stroke roll, the single paradiddle, the flam tap, and the flam accent would be advantageous in approaching this book. The “Combinations” section contains every right-left sticking pattern engendered by groupings of three to eight notes; if the book’s rhythm charts were applied to these patterns, the equivalent of over 5,800 pages of exercises would be generated.

The book’s patterns and rudiments focus on developing consistency and evenness of strokes, dynamic control, and dexterity. All exercises in this book are written in standard percussion notation with both right-hand and left-hand leads. Online audio examples are provided for select exercises from each section.