From the depths of your memory, go back to senior year of high school. Or, if you aren’t there yet, fast forward to senior year of high school – and imagine something. You have been playing drums for several years now, and have just decided to go to college and study music. This is a huge step in your musical journey, after which, every concert you see in the next few months starts taking on a greater significance.

That is the exact situation I was in when I first saw David Garibaldi perform. I had studied his grooves, watched his DVDs, heard him on albums – and now I finally got to see him play live. It was truly and honor to watch David play with Tower of Power and the night I saw him play affirmed my decision to study music full time at the college level. So, when I say that I love David’s playing, you know I mean it.

When thinking about a lesson to teach on something David has done, naturally many of his iconic grooves came to mind. But, for this lesson, I felt like expanding on something I haven’t heard many people talk about. It is an idea of David’s called the “seven a diddle”. It is a groove based on adding a kick drum to the end of a paradiddle diddle, making a group of seven, and playing that twice. The way David teaches it is an awesome over the bar line idea, but I wanted to see if I couldn’t find a hip way to round it out and make it more easily applied to 4/4.

I hope you enjoy the lesson and remember – I barely scratch the surface of this idea, and I hope you expand on this starting point. I’d love to hear what your favorite album/video/DVD/etc of David Garibaldi is your favorite, so leave that down in the comments. And if you want the sheet music for every example in this lesson, you can find that download below.