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| by jane boxall (jjj) | |
Editor's Note: This is the final installment of a three-part series. For parts one and two, click here and here.
Rudiments are little sticking patterns that can be a whole lot of use around the kit. There are about 40 officially-recognized rudes out there, which you can view, and hear, for free at http://www.vicfirth.com/education/rudiments.html. Rudiments are to drumming what vocabulary is to writing.
In this lesson, we're going to look at 4 rudiments and how you can use them in kit playing.
1) The Paradiddle. One of the most common rudiments, with one of the silliest names.
You're playing even strokes (on the snare drum or practice pad), and all that changes is the sticking. Here, "R" stands for right hand, "L" for left. Notice that each 4-stroke paradiddle includes a double sticking on the last two strokes. The first stroke of each group also has an accent (the > symbol above the note). This means that you play that one stroke about twice as loud as the others. This way, you're accenting the beat.
Practise the paradiddle gradually from slow to fast, keeping the rhythm even and the accents in place. Once you've mastered the pattern, you can apply it to the kit. For example, play exactly the same pattern, but play all the right-hand strokes on a closed hi-hat while the left hand remains on the snare. Keep the accents loud and the other strokes quite quiet. Add a bass drum kick with each accented note, and you have a funky linear drum groove:
Paradiddles are also great for drum fills. Try splitting your hands between the snare and a tom, or between two different toms. If you're feeling like more of a challenge, get a foot involved in place of one of the hands (for example, where you see R, play right foot instead of hand). The possibilities are endless...
2) The Flam. A rudiment that one of my former students believed for many months was called the "phlegm". Ew.
The flam sounds like its name, "fa-LAM". Say it, and you know the sound you're aiming for – a short, quiet note instantly followed by a louder one. To play a flam, you hit the drum with both hands at once. But the hands aren't equal – one goes high, one goes low. The low hand should hardly raise off the surface of the drum, and the high hand should get a good wrist swing down onto the drum. But remember, it's one movement that throws both hands down at once – the two notes of the flam need to be really close together so that they're heard as a single event.
Practice both ways – left hand low, right hand high, and vice versa. Here's the notation – (the tiny note is the low hand, the regular eighth note is the high hand):
In kit playing, the flam can act as a punctuation mark, because it sounds different to a single stroke. So, in itself, the flam is a great, very simple fill. Try playing a regular groove on snare, kick and hat (such as those in the first lesson), then replace the last snare stroke in a measure with a flam.
Flams work on all the drums, and you can also split flams between drums. For example, you can get some good effects from playing flams with one hand on the snare, one on the floor tom. "Flat flams", where both hands are at the same height, are also very useful around the kit – experiment with toms, snare and cymbals.
3) The single stroke. A really basic rudiment that's a lot of use.
Here you can see the single stroke, leading with the right hand. All the notes are even in length (in the case of this notation, they're 32nd-notes, which are twice the speed of 16ths).
As a drummer, you want to develop equal strength in both your hands, and unless you're ambidextrous, this means working a lot on the hand you don't write with. So, if you're right-handed, make sure you also practice single strokes with a left hand lead – starting with the left hand on the beat.
The single stroke is used a LOT in fills. Probably the most clichéd rock fill is single strokes – four (RLRL) on the snare, four on the high tom, four on the middle, and four on the floor tom. Play it. Oh yeah.
There's a lot more you can do fill-wise with singles – try different routes around the kit while keeping steady strokes alternating between your hands. Add accent patterns to certain beats. Keep one hand on the floor tom as your other hand switches between different drums. Again, use your imagination.
4) The Multiple Bounce Roll
If you ever want to drum for the circus (Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-CRASH!), you need to be able to play a roll. It's actually closely related to the single strokes above. In fact, a roll is actually made up of single strokes, but each one is "buzzed".
To play a buzz stroke, let go of the stick with your middle, ring and little fingers, leaving only the thumb and index finger holding the stick. Now press the stick down into the drum head, and let it bounce. Practice with both hands until you have a good clean "buzz" with both. Now play single strokes, making each one a buzz. To start with, this will probably sound nothing like a drum roll and more like a tedious lumpy mess, but persevere! Get your buzzes good enough, and your single strokes fast enough, and with practice a smooth roll will come.
Rolls are notated according to the overall number of beats they last, and it's up to you to decide how many buzz strokes you play within the allotted time. For mid-pace music, sixteenth notes often work. As long as your hands are moving fast but in a regular, controlled way, that will become a roll.
The roll is tricky to master, but it's useful in a number of ways. The intro to ‘Cherub Rock' by Smashing Pumpkins is a great example of a roll being used by a rock drummer. Rolling is pretty much the only way that you can get a long, sustained sound out of a snare drum, and so it adds to the palette of sound colors that you have at your drumming disposal.
Jane Boxall is a doctoral percussion student at UIUC, and also teaches drums and percussion at Skins ‘n' Tins Drum Shop in downtown Champaign. To schedule real-life lessons with Jane, call 217-352-DRUM.
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