Rudiments

As many of you reading this will know, a rudiment is simply a particular sticking pattern. Quite often, rudiments are treated as separately to playing on the kit (e.g. on a practice pad), and purely used to work on speed and technique. Although this is a valid and beneficial way to develop those skills, it’s important to see how you can (and perhaps already do) use these patterns in your playing.

There are many rudiments to try, but for this post we will focus on the three fundamental ones.

Single Stroke Roll: R L R L R L R L

Double Stroke Roll: R R L L R R L L

Single Paradiddle: R L R R L R L L

When you play these patterns, make sure that they are even in terms of volume and rhythm. Watch out to not let your strong hand dominating or playing in a lopsided feel. Try to play with a metronome and go between all the patterns seamlessly.

Here is a brief overview of how you can potentially use these rudiments in your playing:

Single Stroke Roll

It may be quite obvious how singles are used on the drum kit; you have likely already used this rudiment to play a fill of some variation. It’s very effective to use this pattern in grooves too. Some examples are playing with both hands on the hi hat, splitting them between the ride cymbal and hi hats and playing ghost notes in between the hi hats on the snare. When playing standard grooves with this approach, make sure you take your right hand down to the snare (if playing right handed) to play the backbeat.

Double Stroke Roll

With the Double Stroke Roll, I have found it has become more useful to me once developed to a certain level. When you start out with this pattern, it is important to play it like the others: full strokes at a slow tempo. When you start to increase the speed, you can begin to use a technique called push/pull, where the fingers become more involved to get two strokes with one movement. Once you get the hang of this, it can potentially unlock a whole new area of your drumming. Try adding little bursts of doubles on the hi hat or snare to see what combinations you can create.

Single Paradiddle

The paradiddle is very useful rudiment to help you work on leading with both hands. Getting this pattern to a certain speed can be more difficult as we are combining singles and doubles, therefore switching between techniques at a quick rate. Once again, you may find this rudiment more beneficial when it reaches a certain level, using different orchestrations to form various fill and groove ideas. A nice way to go straight into using this in a drum kit context is playing it as if you are playing a normal groove, with right hand on hi hat and left hand on snare. The left hand lands at the point you would play a snare backbeat, and combined with a bass drum on beats 1 and 3, it gives you an interesting 16th note groove. Try to play all the other snares as ghost notes to give it a more dynamic and funkier feel. There are lots of variations and approaches to this concept, but this particular groove can help get you started thinking in this way.

I have found that singles and doubles make up most of my drumming that can be thought of in a rudimental way. With solid foundations of being able to play these basic rudiments at a certain level, I don’t have to think too hard applying and improvising different rudimental combinations in my playing. It’s all still a work in progress of course! Try to combine ideas and not get too caught up in exactly what you’re playing - you might surprise yourself. Have fun! Scott Midlothian Drum Lessons