Here’s a pretty straightforward page of ten stroke rolls, open, in a variety of rhythms and meters. A ten stroke open roll consists of four doubles and two taps— one at the beginning and one […]
Category: snare drum
Pad practice fodder
In a dream world, a perfect world, we would all do our “pad” practice— I call it snare drum practice— on an actual drum, and giving it our undivided attention. Somewhere along the line I […]
Survival chops: six-stroke rolls
Or as I usually call them, “Swiss” sixtuplets— that’s my own coinage, based on an overheard conversation between two drum corps legends, George Tuthill and Alan Kristensen, who were my corps director and percussion instructor […]
It’s a flam accent throwdown!
Oh, it’s on.* I guess. At least, Sam Nadel has posted a nice flammed triplet warm-up, and, inspired by that, I wrote a similar one of my own, with flam drags, and same-handed flam accents, […]
Paradiddle-diddle variations, for jazz
Hey, we haven’t done anything for the snare drum in awhile— in my own practicing I’ve been preoccupied with Dahlgren & Fine’s Accent On Accents books, and Buster Bailey’s Wrist Twisters, and my students are […]
Crossing accents
This very simple idea occurred to me while I was working on an Elvin Jones transcription today— either I had an insight into an underlying concept in his playing, or I was just daydreaming. What […]
Pad practice caveat
As someone who comes from the land of the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and the rest of that nightmare, it’s kind of quaintly Canadian that he calls this a “rant”, but Ted Warren says something […]
More Stick Control in 5/4
Another way of using Stick Control in 5/4 came up in my practicing recently, as I was working on Mevlevia. What I’ve done is change the rhythm to three beats of 8th notes and two […]
Rudimental Reed: paradiddles
Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed’s Syncopation, this time using paradiddles. Here’s that well-known opening line from the […]
Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon
Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon’s All-American Drummer: A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, […]
On the varieties of stickings
Here’s a nice geekish piece at by E.W. Flack at The Drumslingers, in which he goes in depth on the history and usage of the three basic sticking methods in US drumming and its derivatives– […]
I think this is what is referred to as a “chestnut”
Here’s a book that has been part of the terrain forever, but which is much more valuable than you might expect: Haskell Harr’s Drum Method. It’s a two-volume item, and I’ve only used Book 2, […]