two sticks, three patterns
Everything a drummer plays is built from a handful of ways two hands can take turns. Here are the first three — singles, doubles and the paradiddle — counted in, played on the real kit, and lit up stroke by stroke so you can see the hand before it moves. Slow it right down. Slow is how fast gets built.
R L R R · L R L L — a repeating pattern of eight.
Two singles, then a double — that is one half. Then exactly the same thing again starting with the other hand. Eight strokes, and then it repeats forever. The name is the sound of it: para is the two singles, diddle is the double. Count the letters and you will find four R's and four L's, so the work is shared perfectly between your hands — which is precisely why drummers have kept it around for two hundred years.
eight strokes — one bar, counted 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & · > means play that stroke louder
Your right hand is on the snare and your left is on the tom, so you can hear the sticking. On a real kit both hands would be on the snare — which is why singles and doubles sound identical there. The difference lives in your hands, not in the sound.
Pick a tempo where both hands sound identical and it feels almost boring. That is the right speed. Move it up by five when four laps in a row come out clean.
Right, left, right, right. Out loud, every time. The moment you stop saying them your strong hand starts taking strokes that belong to the other one.
Its strokes are the quiet, late ones. Give it more reps on its own, and set the tempo by what it can play cleanly — never by what your strong hand could get away with.
spot the sequence
Write it out and the shape jumps off the page: R L R R then L R L L. The second half is the first half with the hands swapped, and after those eight strokes the whole thing starts again from the top — so stroke nine is another R, exactly like stroke one. Four R’s, four L’s, evenly shared. Singles and doubles repeat every two and every four strokes; the paradiddle needs all eight before it comes back round. Once you can see that, you can spot it inside fills you already know.