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.
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!
∆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.
Flam Taps '09
Flam Taps ‘09 was incorporated into a larger ensemble warm-up performed by the NC State Drumline, but it is a neat little exercise on its own. It is built like a straightforward flam-taps builder, but it starts with the nonlead hand in order to create a driving upbeat feel that gives the hugadigs (three-note series on the same hand) a sense of urgency and a need for precision.
Drag Control
Drag Control runs through some different interpretations of the tap drag and flam drag rudiments to build mastery over doublestroke attacks and spacings. The main idea is that “if you can do it wrong, then you can do it right.” By exploring some extremes of how a rhythm can be incorrect, you learn to hear and feel the difference between correct and incorrect attacks and spacings.
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 exercises was probably not included because the Tap Five builder covers the same ideas and then some. The slurred tap drags in measure 2 are not intuitively easy to read, so it was easy enough to work on different tap drag variations by rote, and leave the Tap Five builder as the thing people needed to read, prepare, and use to develop fulcrum awareness. For more rudimental interp exercises like this, check out Rudiment Control.
Check Yo'Self
Check Yo’Self (Paradiddle-Diddle exercise) uses simple diddle figures to prepare your ears to listen for inconsistencies in paradiddles and paradiddle-diddles. It’s a very simple exercise, but it should make your bad habits really apparent. It’s all right hand lead, so be sure to rehearse this one off the left.
Eighteen on a Hand (Paradiddle-diddle Builder)
Eighteen on a Hand (Paradiddle-diddle Builder) is a twist on the traditional 8 on a Hand. By adding a huckadig (one-handed breakdown of a paradiddle-diddle) to the measure of legatos, this exercise opens the door to many great variations for combining and refining doublestroke and accent-tap fundamentals, in service of building excellent paradiddle-diddles. It is a simple concept, but there is a lot that you can do with it.
Waltz
Odd Singles
Odd Singles consists of variations to the classic 7/8 Singles exercise. The variations change the beat-long into into something subtly slower or faster than the sixteenth-note triplets that set it up.
Smoooves
Smoooves is a simple pattern for fitting five-note rudiments into a juxtaposition between sixteenth notes and fivelets. Included are some example rudiments that are well-suited t this pattern, as well as some accent variations to play around with. Despite all the effort changes involved, keep it smooth!
Disjunct Motion
Disjunct Motion was written in contrast to Weber State's Conjunct Motion exercise, which used doublestops to work on legato fundamentals. In this exercise, the rebound/cushion dichotomy is explored with the non-lead hand in different contexts that will depend on tempo for clear definition. The point is that sometimes it is best to rebound, sometimes it is best to cushion, and in some cases it is best to allow the stroke a slower rebound to fill the time up between strokes.
Beedlabop
Beedlabop was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line to work on cold roll attacks, four-stroke rolls, fulcrum pressure consistency, and second-note timing. One objective is to maintain proper velocity and rebound through the four-stroke rolls; even though there is a lot of space between doublestroke attacks, the second note of each doublestroke should still rebound, both for the sake of endurance and for ensuring a big, open sound on both notes of the doublestroke. The split part in measure 5 is a fun way to check timing and sound quality in a group or line setting. It is like the common trick of having half the line play a triplet roll while half the line plays eighth notes; however, in this context, everyone is responsible for multiple isolated attacks to create the overarching barrage of 24th notes.
Floppy Ernie
Floppy Ernie was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line in order to counter bad tendencies with technique on paradiddle-diddle figures: particularly, the tendency to achieve the second note of the doublestroke with a very weak bounce as you lift the lead hand for the next accent. Players with this tendency look "floppy" on paradiddle and paradiddle-diddle figures, and there is a lot of uncertainty in second-note timing on the doublestrokes.
The doublestroke should consist of two powerful taps (even if the tempo precludes the use of two equivalent wrist turns) that occur completely before the upstroke for the accents. This exercise aims to establish the approach by starting with bucks (focus on a strong tap before the upstroke) before adding diddles that are more closed (requiring more fulcrum pressure) than the ones in the paradiddle-diddles. As the doublestrokes open up from the 16th-note diddles to the paradiddle-diddles, you should be able to apply more wrist turn to the doublestrokes, leading to a more deliberate rhythm, as well as the follow through to finish the doublestroke before worrying about upstroking to the next accent.
Invert Roll / Fortepianos
Invert Roll and Fortepianos are two exercises that I used with the 2014 WSIP snare line in order to work on doublestrokes, with a silly fill to mash the two together. I like using inverted rolls to work on doublestrokes because it puts the second note of each diddle on the eighth notes, where weaknesses will be more obvious to the ear. The focus of both exercises should be matching comfort and sound quality between the forte diddles and the diddles at the tap height.
Swiss Pugida
Swiss Pugida is an exercise I used with the 2014 WSIP snare line to work on diddle interpretation: if the slurred and "straight" interpretations can be understood as separate rudiments, then the correct interpretation can be called upon in the right context.
Beef Shawarma
Beef Shawarma works on triplet rolls at different dynamics and with different playing zones. Maintaining roll quality across the range of heights and around the drum head is crucial to playing snare drum in an indoor drumline, where discrepancies in sound quality at different heights, as well as discrepancies in precise bead placement, can dramatically impact the quality of the music.
A useful variation would be to replace the "edge" position with the "guts" position (2 o'clock on the drum head, over the snare bed) and perform the exercise that way. Matching sound quality between hands is a little more challenging at the "guts" position and while transitioning to it, since the left bead has to move slightly in front of the right in order to match distance from the rim.
If you really want to push your versatility, another variation is to reverse the dynamics (i.e., piano becomes forte, crescendo becomes decrescendo, etc.), so you end up doing weird things like crescendoing towards the edge, which creates an interesting sonic effect, in addition to forcing you to match roll quality at the high dynamic with very little snare response to support the sound and hide discrepancies in timing.
Open Roll Builder
This Open Roll Builder is a triplet-roll analogue to the stock "Diddle Tap" exercise; this one works on the eighth-note-based breakdowns of an open triplet roll, instead of a duple roll.
