Rudiments

An open roll is two clean single strokes per hand, not a buzz. The whole difficulty sits in the second note: it has to be produced by the wrist and fingers afte

Forty beats per minute is slower than most drummers can play cleanly, which is exactly why it belongs at the front of the book. At 40 BPM a single stroke roll i

The five stroke roll is two doubles and an accent — RRLLR, then LLRRL. It is the first rudiment in this book that mixes two stroke types in one gesture, and it

RLRR LRLL is the most useful eight-note pattern in drumming because the accent lands on a different hand each time it comes round. At 60 BPM sixteenths you have

The double paradiddle is RLRLRR LR LRLL — six strokes that span three eighth notes, or one and a half beats in 4/4. Because six does not divide evenly into four

Seven strokes starting on the right end on the right, so the next group automatically starts on the left. That built-in flip is the reason the single stroke sev

RLRRLL is six strokes that do not return to the starting hand at the point you expect — which is what makes it the most useful six-note grouping on the kit. At

fL R L / fR L R is six strokes in two groups of three, and it is the rudiment that teaches triplet feel better than most triplet exercises, because the flam lan

A flam is two hands landing almost together — the grace note a few centimetres off the drum, the primary note on it. The flam tap is that sound on every stroke,