Hi all, welcome to my March blog. I’ve had a really fun couple of months drumming and have been involved with lots of exciting projects. I wanted to take the time out to share some of the ideas I’ve been thinking about and working on.
I felt lately that my single strokes weren’t as smooth as I would like them, especially when moving them around the kit. Taking this on board I came up with a couple of exercises to regularly throw into my practice routine to help bring my single stroke rolls up to the level I wanted.
The first exercise is for the snare drum or practice pad, every note should be played as a full stroke (rebound stroke). Watch out for the sticking reversing on the repeat.
This will help balance out your hands as you get to play each hand in isolation and also lead the single stroke roll with the right and left hand.
The second exercise is for the whole kit and lets you experience four different movement patterns round the drum kit. Try each movement pattern on their own to start with and then put then in sequence.
This will help you keep your singles even and controlled as you move them around the kit and get used to the different spacing (distance and height) between drums.
As far as tempo goes the sky is the limit. I’ve been using the exercises as warm ups at the start of a practice, beginning slowly then gradually building up to higher tempos (50 – 150BPM). Always make sure you put quality before speed and you’ll make faster more meaningful progress.
I hope you enjoyed these exercises, one of the things I love most about drumming is how an exercise like the single stroke roll which on the surface seems so simple, can provide you with a constantly progressing challenge through your life as a drummer with a never ending depth of knowledge to be explored. If you have any ideas for topics that you feel would be beneficial to your drumming and would like me to cover in my blog, then please get in touch. Happy drumming
Play drums. Play music.