disConnect is a pattern for fitting 6-note combinations in order to draw attention to the nuances of finishing out the rudiment and starting it again. Paradiddle-diddles and double paradiddles especially need to be finished strong, but very often the quality and clarity of the final doublestroke are sacrificed for a focus on accents and the beginning of the next repetition of the rudiment. There are many possibilities for what you can fit into this one, but written variations included here are: Doubles, Double Paradiddles, Shirley Murphies, Flam 3–2–1, Flam Paradiddle-diddle, Paradiddle-diddle, Singles, Slurred Six-Stroke Roll, Slurred Ruff, and Swiss Army Triplet.
Ratamacoups with different feels
Ratmacoups With Different Feels consists of just one ratamacue-based breakdown that will be taken in a few different directions to challenge your hands, feet, eyes, ears, and brain. Although the ratamacue rudiments are rarely written in modern battery percussion music, these patterns will have tremendous relevance and demand for stick control, doublestroke, roll timing, and singlestroke fundamentals. Working on these patterns will pay dividends for your more broadly-applied drumming skills, while also giving you a more comprehensive understanding of one of the classic 26 essential rudiments.
The last two pages of this rudiment study consist of exercises with a variable written “mark time” component, much like the exercises you will find in the free book Mark Time Mark, also available on this website. In fact, I wrote this exercise before I wrote that book, and it was in writing this exercise that I got the idea for the book! But life happens, and it happens a lot, so I haven’t gotten around to re-visiting this rudiment study and fleshing out all the explanatory verbiage until now.
Bed 'o Taps fo' Better Taps
Bed ‘o Taps Fo’ Better Taps was inspired by an experience I had while walking through a warm-up lot somewhere in Utah, once upon a time. I heard a snare line playing some 8 and 25 on some beautifully-tuned Pearl snare drums, and it was just about the most amazing thing I had ever heard. Then they played some two-height rolls stuff, and it was like I was hearing a completely different group of performers. Obviously, two-height roll patterns tend to present more challenges than monotone rolls, but why? This pair of exercises seeks to explore this question.
These two exercises are intended to bridge the gap between roll fundamentals and accent-tap fundamentals. It is very common that players who have painstakingly developed sufficient stroke velocity and fulcrum control for playing quality doublestroke rolls will nevertheless find those habits affected by the addition of accents to create two-height figures, like paradiddles and tap rolls.
Fundamental Focus on Rebound: The Velocity and Buck Exercises
The Velocity and Buck Exercises describe and break down the motions involved in velocity strokes (which are allowed to rebound back to their attack height) and cushion strokes (which are not allowed to rebound, or which are only permitted to rebound to a lower height than their attack). This exercise, along with The Fulcrum Exercise and The Hot Stove Exercise, enable you to truly isolate and perfect the building blocks of drumming fundamentals, as described by The Technique Triangle.
Fundamental Focus on Fulcrum: The Fulcrum Exercise
The Fulcrum Exercise (and its supplemental materials) break down and describe the grip and fulcrum fundamentals necessary for good rudimental drumming. This exercise, along with The Hot Stove Exercise and The Velocity and Buck Exercises, enable you to truly isolate and perfect the building blocks of drumming fundamentals, as summarized by The Technique Triangle
Fundamental Focus on Wrist Turn: The Hot Stove Exercise
The Hot Stove Exercise (and its supplemental materials) describe and break down the basic wrist turn motion in rudimental drumming. This exercise, along with The Fulcrum Exercise and The Velocity and Buck Exercises, enable you to truly isolate and perfect the building blocks of drumming fundamentals, as described by The Technique Triangle.
Stravagante
Stravagante is a high school drumline audition étude, written to test the application of fundamentals in a musical context. The rudimental content will provide the listener with an excellent cross-section of the student’s capabilities, and the breadth of the noted tempo range allows students to interpret the piece however they will best shine. At the same time, the frequency of flams and slurred drags may make this piece inappropriate for some students, and Meticuloso would be a more suitable audition étude.
Multi-Beat Cushion Strokes (& 14 Variations)
Multi-Beat Cushion Strokes is a two-height sticking pattern that combines the contrasting demands of multi-strokes—high velocity and high rebound—with those of cushion strokes: everything is exactly the same going into the drum, and after the stick hits the drum, it simply doesn’t rebound to the full height. Fourteen variations add different wrinkles to these demands by incorporating varying applications of fulcrum pressure.
Chocolate Mitchells 2021
Chocolate Mitchells 2021 includes various passages for rehearsing variations of paradiddle rudiments that cram an extra accent into the pattern.
Swissin' Vert
Swissin’ Vert works on inverted swiss army triplets, allowing you to feel the rudiment in the context of other comfortable figures while avoiding the challenges to endurance and relaxation that are posed by rehearsing multiple consecutive instances of the rudiment. Use the crescendo variations to build comfort with the rudiment without the huge upstroke required in the decrescendo variations. Adding backsticks raises awareness of fulcrum construction.
Additional pages include further description and supplemental exercises
Meticuloso
Meticuloso is a high school drumline audition étude, written to test the application of fundamentals in a musical context. While the vocabulary will provide the listener with an excellent cross-section of the student’s capabilities, the breadth of the noted tempo range allows students to interpret the piece however they will best shine. There should be no pressure to strive for speed: only an emphasis on maintaining commitment to the chosen tempo. Everyone—from your hot shot snares who want to prove they’re the best to your rookies just trying their best to honor the spaces—has their work cut out for them on this one. You gotta be meticulous… or… Meticuloso!
Stutter Tap Fives
Stutter Tap-Fives challenges you to control the placement of doublestrokes in tap-five figures. The main variation plays with the space around the doublestroke. It is very tricky to play a quality doublestroke that doesn’t follow from something and connect to something else. It should not be, but it is, so use it as an excuse to get very picky about how you articulate doublestrokes! If shuffling these diddles around the rhythmic grid gets boring, the modulation variations challenge you to change doublestroke placement and speed.
The included buzz/crush variations allow you to work on many of the same challenges as the main variations—rhythmic precision and the targeted application of fulcrum pressure—without having to worry about second note placement on the doublestrokes.
Hiccups
Hiccups places accents before the attacks of triplet rolls, combining the challenge of cushioning to the tap height with the challenge of calling upon the correct application of fulcrum pressure to achieve the doublestroke spacing in the roll. This skill is especially pertinent to paradiddle rudiments, and two-accent paradiddle-diddle-diddles do make an appearance here.
Bapawappa
Bapawappa is a sequence of variations to a simple doublestroke pattern. Apart from the crushes, the lead hand stays basically constant throughout the exercise, although there may be subtle differences in timing and volume/height/velocity from variation to variation, depending on how you choose to interpret different rudiments. For additional practice, try feeling the doubles as ninelets (see the 4/4 Feel variation on page 2, with instructions on how to convert the tempo for your metronome).
Unified Fields
Unified Fields combines hand-to-hand independence patterns with unison doublestop patterns in a manner that pointedly tests your accent-tap and legato fundamentals.
∆Effort
∆Effort consists of a doublebeat/triplebeat pattern that can be treated as a multistroke, stick control, or timing exercise. Different variations check your timing, hand-to-hand consistency of motion, and sound quality.
Movin' Mills
Movin’ Mills is a simply-created grid that makes for a lot of weirdness with the hands. Get picky about your grace note placement and get comfortable with the stickings… then speed things up and try to keep everything nice and relaxed. I dare you!
Eleven Stroke
Eleven Stroke uses different breakdowns of the eleven stroke roll to test different tap roll fundamentals. Apart from the odd time signature, this exercise is deceptively simple; if you are being as picky as you ought to be, some of the patterns are actually quite tricky.
I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercise was a complement to the series of “Tap Five,” “Six Stroke,” “Six Stroke Slurred,” and “Seven Stroke,” which use each roll rudiment as a means to explore roll fundamentals, beyond simply building an individual x-stroke roll rudiment.
Ten Stroke
Ten Stroke uses breakdowns of the ten stroke roll to test your application of fulcrum pressure when quick upstrokes are demanded of the rudimental content. Tap-fives require a repetitious application of fulcrum pressure and rapid upstrokes; this exercise breaks up the monotony by varying the demands (taps, doubles, accents) that surround the upstrokes and downstrokes.
I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercise was a complement to the series of “Tap Five,” “Six Stroke,” “Six Stroke Slurred,” and “Seven Stroke,” which use each roll rudiment as a means to explore roll fundamentals, beyond simply building an individual x-stroke roll rudiment.
Touch Doubles
Touch Doubles is a basic doublestroke exercise with some variations that will draw your attention to the second note of each doublestroke, so you can really examine how your hands work to create quality doubles. To overcome tendencies to play weak second notes, you are invited to explore the opposite extreme: make the second note of each double stronger than the first, either by increasing its height, or by increasing the stick velocity while attacking from the same height.
I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercise does not lend itself well to a “drum camp” situation; it is more of a means to really get to know your own hands, requiring woodshedding, self-reflection, taking things nice and slow, and experimenting. The exercise of playing “Did Pat One” while maintaining a fully rebounded set position (something we did teach at the camps) was challenging enough, which is probably why this exercise didn’t make the cut.
