Drum Column

RUDIMENTS – COME ON, THEY’RE GOOD FOR YOU.

We’ve had the rudiments chat before – ‘they’re good for you’, they’d say. Many of us don’t realise why they might be good for us but anyone that’s studied will have usually practiced rudiments for some part of their learning. Yes, it’s pretty clear that say, practicing a single stroke roll or a double stroke roll is necessary because drumming can be very clearly associated with just combinations of singles and doubles. However, there’s lots of other rudiments that tend to lend themselves to what might be considered snare drum.playing and since the rudiments have got some age behind them, newer drummers might mistake them for being kind of old fashioned and not that applicable to modern drumming. The approach we’ll discuss today covers three key areas - Rudiments, Independence and groove. Looking at the notation, there are three foot patterns to go with. However, you can use any foot pattern you like, or easily alter things to make it easier or indeed, harder. For the purposes of making things clearer, I’ve illustrated the easy foot pattern (crotchets on the bass drum) for figures A – E and then the Samba pattern for the remainder.

Back to Basics

First up – basic rudiments. Play singles, doubles and paradiddles over the foot pattern of your choice. Singles and doubles are written straight up here and although the paradiddle has an accent on the start of every grouping, you could add accents to the singles or even the doubles if you were ever so keen. I really liked the feeling of playing the accented paradiddle – accurately – over the feet and making the strokes like up perfectly. Add a good dynamic level between the accent and the non-accents and feel the resulting groove/feel, the rimshot on the snare for the accent providing a punch each time – great practice for accurate rim shots and back beats. A simple approach is right hand accent on the floor tom and left hand accent on the rack tom. You could move the accents to the cymbals. Figures D and E show the double and triple paradiddle. Here we just add another ‘RL’ to create the double paradiddle (RLRLRR LRLRLL) and another ‘RL’ again for the triple paradiddle (RLRLRLRR LRLRLRLL) accenting the primary single stroke with the leading hand each grouping. The triple paradiddle is predictably 4/4 and easy to feel. However, it’s the double paradiddle that is cooler as it’s naturally a 3/4 or 6/8 rudiment and busting it our continuously over 4/4 makes you sound great… It’s also a nice way of phrasing this rudiment as the you get a ‘crossing the bar’ scenario. Moving accents to the toms creates interesting and melodic phrases that start to sound more complicated than they actually are due to the foot pattern filling in gaps.

Roll out

Then we start using rolls. Open rolls to be precise. Figure F – H is the 5-stroke roll. Played evenly across the bar at first (F, G) over four semiquavers but then with no pauses over three semiquavers inducing a unique, poly rhythm effect. It’s great when you get it going and the foot pattern remains steady. From here we look at 6-stroke, 7-stroke and 9 -stroke rolls. They look kind of intense on paper but they’re just combinations of doubles and singles. Again, accents on toms, cymbals etc. and hear the phrases come alive over the foot pattern. Speaking of the foot pattern, we’d forgotten about it because we were so caught up with practicing the hands! This is actually the point. You don’t think about your feet when you’re walking do you? Well, the feeling of good independence can feel similar. Your feet can just seem to go on autopilot. This doesn’t happen without sitting on the grooves slowly first and feeling the phrases being created. Remember - rudiments aren’t just exercises, they’re beats – grooves. This makes them more musical and therefore, applicable! If it’s too easy, change the feet to something less predictable, try flam rudiments, combine rudiments, add more accents etc. I just liked the idea of covering all bases when practicing these and it’s far more satisfying than just smashing them out on a pad.

BY ADRIAN VIOLI