Various stickings for “Scheherezade”.

Various stickings for "Scheherezade"

Sometime ago I showed you a one-handed way to play the third movement of “Scheherezade”. That article was “Snare drum technique. One-handed Scheherezade”.

After recording that video I tried a few stickings to play that excerpt. You can see the result here:

These are the different options (in order of appearance):

Obviously, these stickings can be reversed if you are left-handed and convert rights into lefts and vice versa.

I decided to play the last three eighth notes with my strong hand (right one) in order to get the best rhythmical and timbrical homogeneity, but they can be played with different combinations: RRL, RLL, RLR… (and all their right/left inversions).

Every single sticking showed on the video produces a different phrasing, providing us with many different options when it comes to making music. That, and no other, is the purpose of technique: a mean to get to a musical solution that suits best a particular context.

Which sticking are you using for this famous excerpt?

…et in Arcadia ego.