About

StickTempo is a practice companion for the sticking exercises in George Lawrence Stone's Stick Control. It exists because the book gives you one instruction — play each rhythm twenty times without stopping — and no tool to do it with.

What it is

Stone's book prints stickings and almost nothing else: no metronome marks, no chapters, no guidance beyond a short preface. That spareness is a strength on paper and a problem in practice. You end up counting repetitions in your head, guessing a tempo, and using a metronome that clicks a flat beat while the page asks for two notes on one beat and three on the next.

So this site does three things the page cannot. The metronome follows each exercise's own subdivisions rather than a fixed pulse, so a bar that changes from duple to triplet is clicked as it is actually played. The repetitions are counted for you. And a cursor moves through the pattern as it sounds, so you can see where you are without reading ahead.

What it covers

Pages 5 to 9 of the book: 105 exercises across 2 sections, arranged into a 35-lesson course. That is the foundation the rest of the book builds on, and it is deliberately part of the book rather than all of it.

Everything you read here — the practice notes on each exercise, the guides, the answers in the FAQ — is written for this site. The sticking patterns, exercise numbers and section names are used as data, so you can practise without the book open in front of you. The book's own text, its layout and its pages are not reproduced.

Its relationship to the book

StickTempo is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the book's publisher or its rights holder, and it does not claim to be. Stick Control for the Snare Drummer was first published in 1935, is under copyright, and is published today by Stone Percussion Books, LLC and distributed by Alfred Music.

This site is meant to send people to the book, not to replace it. If you are working through Stone's later sections — the flams, the roll families, the compound meters — you want the book, which is still in print and inexpensive. Buy a copy.

How it is paid for

The site is free, has no accounts and sells nothing. It carries display advertising to cover hosting and the time that goes into it. Ads never appear inside or beside the practice controls, and they are hidden while a run is playing — what the privacy page describes about advertising is the whole of it.

Contact

For anything at all — a transcription error, a feature, or a question about the metronome — use the contact form. Everything sent through it is read, and anything that needs a reply gets one.

Transcription corrections are especially welcome. Every pattern here was entered by hand and checked, but 105 exercises is enough for a mistake to survive. If a sticking does not match your copy of the book, send the page and exercise number.