Reading George Lawrence Stone’s Technique of Percussion, in a 1953 International Musician column he discusses “compound” rolls— rolls including two accented singles. The six stroke roll is most familiar of that type, the 10 stroke […]
Category: rolls
Rudimental Reed: two methods
A whole lot of snare drum happening right now. Here are two pretty basic things to do with Syncopation on the practice pad, first with short rolls on the short notes and paradiddles on the […]
More short rolls and drags
Following up the page from the other day, here are some more short open roll and drag combinations. I’ve also rewritten the other page in normal notation— download that and compare it with the first […]
All American Drummer Solo No. 128
Here’s a raggedy little video I made of Solo No. 128 from Wilcoxon’s All American Drummer— in response to an online question. Never played it before, I worked it up in about 15 minutes. Tempo […]
Reed interpretation: short rolls
An easy thing to do with Syncopation, adding short rolls. This will be a no-brainer any time you want to work on your rolls without a lot of extraneous stuff, using familiar materials. I wrote […]
Sidebar: open and closed
As long as I’ve been playing, with the people I’ve been around*, open and closed were understood to refer to, respectively, double-stroke, rudimental-style rolls, and multiple-bounce, orchestral style rolls. Double strokes = open, multiple-bounce = closed. That […]
10 and 11 stroke rolls in Wilcoxon’s Rolling In Rhythm – continued
Continuing with this nerdly topic of problems with roll notation in Charley Wilcoxon’s book Rolling In Rhythm; it should have been the authoritative book on rudimental rolls, but is compromised at times by some very […]
10 and 11 stroke rolls in Wilcoxon’s Rolling In Rhythm
Let’s ring in the new year drummer-style, by complaining about a Charley Wilcoxon book maybe two or three of you own, Rolling In Rhythm! Even without the book, there’s something to be learned about archaic […]
Long rolls, Reed format
A supplemental Reed item— this is about the level of thing I’m capable of right now. Not written out of any pressing need, hahaha, except this is a basic thing it’s not easy for intermediate […]
Wilcoxon weirdness
More on rolls, from a discussion on the Drummerworld forum. Look at this very strange piece of writing from Charley Wilcoxon: From Wilcoxon’s All-American Drummer If you analyze what is written here and try to play […]
All about rolls
Some examples. This is more or less the complete practical theory of drum rolls as I know it, as gleaned from about 38 years as a student, player, and teacher in a community of professionals […]
Basic short roll studies with continuous motion
UPDATE: Download link is working! I’ve got to stop putting “EZ” on every single normal-difficulty thing I post. This is an easy page of roll studies I wrote to prepare a couple of younger students to […]