All American Drummer Solo No. 128

Here's a raggedy little video I made of Solo No. 128 from Wilcoxon's All American Drummer— in response to an online question. Never played it before, I worked it up in about 15 minutes. Tempo is 74 bpm. 

And here is the solo written out: 

As always, the notation is a little screwy and imprecise. They really didn't know how to write some basic things back then. Or maybe it's the engravers' fault. When you encounter something weird and impossible looking, smooth it out and make it normal. Play the 7 stroke rolls in the first line with a 16th note pulsation— roll is 32nd doubles on the e&a of the beat, for example. 

Play the 11 stroke rolls in the second line with a quintuplet pulsation. It's a little irregular the way I play it, but it sounds cool. 

The 10 stroke rolls in lines 3-4 and 6-8 are straight out of Three Camps— as are the fast 5 stroke rolls next to them in lines 6-8— play them with a sixtuplet pulsation.  

It's another poorly-balanced Wilcoxon solo. Those 10s impose a definite speed limit, but if you can't do them fast the rest of the solo is so slow it falls apart. There's maybe a 10 bpm range where the thing is playable without sounding stupid [or not!]. Have fun! 

Reed interpretation: short rolls

An easy thing to do with Syncopation, adding short rolls. This will be a no-brainer any time you want to work on your rolls without a lot of extraneous stuff, using familiar materials. I wrote something like this in 2012, and it kind of sucked. This way is better. 

Do this with 5 stroke rolls (16th note pulsation), 7 stroke rolls (16th triplet pulsation), or 9 stroke rolls (32nd note pulsation)— at whatever tempos give you quality rolls in each of those rates.  

First, you can just play a roll on the first note of any two (or more) notes with an 8th note spacing: 

If you want, you can do some different things when there are more than two 8th note spaced notes in a row. Like when there are three notes, you can put the roll on the first note, or on the middle note: 

When there are four notes, you can put the roll on the first note, or on the second or third note (after one or two taps), or do two rolls: 

Same deal with longer runs of 8ths: first note, second note, third note, next to last note, or fit as many rolls as you can starting on the first, second, third notes:

You could put a jazz inflection on it by accenting the one or two taps at the beginning of the run, and the last note of the run:

Obviously there's no need to do this exhaustively— do it how you like. It would be good to play through all the options once just to know them, and test your reading by doing them with the full page exercises. Putting the roll at the very end of the longer runs of 8ths, say, while playing the full page Exercise 2 does force you to read ahead and plan ahead— that's a good exercise.  

Sidebar: open and closed

As long as I've been playing, with the people I've been around*, open and closed were understood to refer to, respectively, double-stroke, rudimental-style rolls, and multiple-bounce, orchestral style rolls. Double strokes = open, multiple-bounce = closed. That has been the modern meaning since at least the 1930s, when George L. Stone gave these definitions in the introduction to Stick Control:  

The “open roll” referred to through the book is the rudimental roll of two beats (no more) of each stick [...].

The “closed roll” [...] is the one commonly used in light orchestral playing. It has several rebounds to each stick movement...

Reading the recent collection of Stone's own published articles, Technique of Percussion, in his day there was debate about the meaning of the terms, and about roll interpretation. Evidently a good number of those older people didn't even recognize the multiple bounce stroke as a legit thing. It was controversial enough that Stone had to make a case for the multiple-bounce roll and drag— and eventually prevailed, with the definition above.  

In some older books open and closed seem to mean simply slow and fast. Rudimental drummers will demonstrate a rudiment “open to closed”, slow to fast. And Stone himself, in an early piece in Technique of Percussion refers to practicing double-stroke rolls “Open to Closed (slow to fast).” Recently we saw in Wilcoxon there are some double stroke rolls indicated as “closed” simply because they're played with a faster pulsation than another example marked as “open.” On YouTube I occasionally catch rudimental people using the terms that way today. 

I normally reserve the term roll for things that are meant to be heard as a long tone, but there's an antiquated definition that includes any fairly rapid hand-to-hand playing in a steady rhythm. So I use a third category, a rhythm form— which is an open-form roll rudiment played slowly enough to be heard as a rhythm, rather than as a long tone. You'll see that in Wilcoxon— things identified as a type of roll even when they're not meant to be played at long tone speed. 

There's enough lingering ambiguity about closed especially, that I'm getting away from using it. Usually I'll say multiple-bounce, sometimes buzz.    

Also see my All About Rolls post from a few years ago. 

* - I've been around a lot of other Charles Dowd students, and a lot of Tony Cirone students. Dowd was a also student of Cirone, and of Saul Goodman.  

10 and 11 stroke rolls in Wilcoxon's Rolling In Rhythm - continued

Continuing with this nerdly topic of problems with roll notation in Charley Wilcoxon's book Rolling In Rhythm; it should have been the authoritative book on rudimental rolls, but is compromised at times by some very sketchy, archaic notation. Last time we looked at 11-stroke rolls on p. 24, until I got tired of it. Today we'll do the 10-stroke rolls on pp. 25-26. Also check out my old post on 7-stroke roll notation in Wilcoxon. 

Here's the 10 stroke roll in “triplet” / compound meter form. That's it's native form, probably most familiar to everyone as it occurs throughout the rudimental piece Three Camps:  

And here it is in 3/4: 

I'm going to try to find literal interpretations of the following notational weirdness, but most likely, those are the intended forms for all of them— maybe in double time, or in a different time signature, but with the same rhythmic structure. The barely-literate rudimental drummer attitude about notation basically goes ehh just fit a 10 stroke roll into this space. The 1s need to be in the right spot, and that's about it.  

So let's blast off into la-la land, with the next thing on the page:   

With that second ruff of each measure, the book repeats the most problematic thing we saw last time; I believe the double is meant to fall on the beat, and the main note (the last 8th note in the measure) is played a 16th note later than it's notated, like this:

Thus violating the modern universal rule of ruff notation, which is to play the main rhythm precisely, and add the ruff strokes to it— the ruff strokes will fall before the beat, and are usually unmetered. Or course there's no way to squeeze that ruff stroke in between the written 32nd notes and the following 8th note. 

On the next line on the page we have this: 

If that were meant to be played the same as the previous example, it would be a real atrocity— there's not even the ruff notation as a cue that that last 8th note should be played late. Without any other context, I might guess that this was meant to be played with a 16th note triplet pulsation. We see a lot of 8th note length 7-stroke rolls in these studies— this would simply be that, with an extra double at the beginning:
 

But that would be too fast for the indicated tempo, and there are no other studies using that interpretation— I only suggest it because I'm futilely trying to find a precise interpretation of the notation. 

This also illustrates the ass-backwards (and tempo-dependent) nature of rudimental writing in general. Normally, a musical part indicates a roll, and the performing drummer decides what type of roll should be used, based on the tempo, and other musical considerations, to get the best quality roll. Writing into a part ok, monkey, now roll super fast is peculiar to rudimental writers. 

Now look at this: 

Lots to unpack there. The “open” 10 is played as 16th notes and ends on beat 4; the “closed” 10 ends on beat 3, so we'll have to play it faster to fit it in. They're using the archaic definitions of  open and closed to simply mean slow and fast. In my training, open meant double strokes, and closed meant multiple-bounce strokes— those are the modern meanings of the terms, around here. 

The closed example is a complete mess. First, it violates the note values big time— here is that measure of music without the roll: 

But if you look at the way the roll stokes line up with the bass drum part, the roll begins before beat 2, right in the middle of that dotted quarter note. Going by the previous interpretations, you could play that either of these ways— as 16th notes with that 8th note played late:

...or as 16th note triplets, with the 8th note played as written:

Either of those interpretations put an unnaturally large space between that opening accent and the roll itself, which, again, we don't see anywhere else. Normally with a 10-stroke roll, we expect the starting and ending accents to be at the same pulsation speed as the body of the roll, like in the first two examples.   

And of course playing either of those interpretations at half note = 96 doesn't work at all. So probably what's actually intended is to just play this, or something close to it: 

Clearly we have to relax our modern standards for precision with some of this stuff. Hit the 1 and 3 accurately and get the right number of notes and you're golden. That's close enough, apparently. In fact, these posts seem to have been a very long winded way of saying “traditional rudimental notation was shamefully imprecise, slovenly, and often misleading.”

10 and 11 stroke rolls in Wilcoxon's Rolling In Rhythm

Let's ring in the new year drummer-style, by complaining about a Charley Wilcoxon book maybe two or three of you own, Rolling In Rhythm! Even without the book, there's something to be learned about archaic drum notation, and rudimental-form rolls, and drum notation generally. It's funny, remembering that much of George L. Stone's Technique of Percussion, written 70-90 years ago, is dedicated to this same problem of interpreting drumming notation. Apparently it's an eternal thing.   

See my 2018 post All About Rolls if there's any confusion about the terminology in this post.

Rolling In Rhythm should be the ultimate book on rudimental rolls, especially in that swing-era type of phrasing, best known to us now through Philly Joe Jones's playing, and a lot of other bop drummers. It's a 30s thing that was a dominant form of soloing and filling in jazz for another 30-40 years. Unfortunately, the book a mess. There is a lot of bad, archaic notation in it, which is not aided in the typo-riddled edition by Richard Sakal, which seems to be the only version available now. 

The pages covering 10-stroke rolls and 11-stroke rolls are especially egregious— pp.24-26. 

We commonly encounter both of those roll types in triplet form in the piece Three Camps, either as two beats of triplets* with an accent at the beginning, rolling on the remainder:  

* - Since the example is in 3/8 time— a compound meter— these are not actual triplets— they are played with a triplet feel, however. I say triplets here for convenience, because that's what the same rhythm is in 4/4, and 4/4 is a familiar point of reference, and triplet is the familiar term for notes played with that feel. When the time signature has an 8 in the bottom, if I say triplet, I mean 8th notes played in a triplet feel. Compound meter 8th notes. 

Or as two beats of triplets with accents on the beginning and end, rolling in the middle: 

Starting with an accented single, the 11-stroke roll above would be called a “tap 11.” Another form begins with the roll on the downbeat:
 

So far so good. Things begin going off the rails in the next line, with this oddly-displaced 11-stroke roll:  

First, the editor put the time signature as 6/8, but put the actual barlines in 3/8. I scratched out the extra barlines and added a beat of rest at the end to make it actually 6/8. No big deal. He also put the wrong sticking on beat 2 of the third measure. OK. 

Further on we get into a bit of archaic rudimental drummer notation hell. I believe the intention is that the first two measures, and the second two measures, are each intended to be played the same: 

In measure 2, we get some ruff-type notation that is intended to be played as a metered rhythm, at the same speed as the rest of the body of the roll, like in the first measure. That's weird for me; in my training, ruff notation always indicates an unmetered embellishment, usually played as a buzz. 

The fourth measure is cursed— that ending ruff. The main note visually lines up with the bass drum on beat 3, but is actually intended to be played as 3e&, like the third measure. This happens fairly often in rudimental notation, and it's a major violation of space-time laws. I can deal with putting the ruff in rhythm, I cannot deal with distorting the plain rhythm on the page to accommodate the embellishment. Forget it, that is wrong. 

Moving along, the weirdness begins to compound on us: 

Again, the first four measures, and the last two measures, are each intended to be played the same. The last two measures are fine; it's a tap roll at 16th note rate— although 96 bpm is rather fast for that. 

The first four measures all have the roll starting on the beat, with the release written on the last 8th note in the measure. With the untied rolls in the third/fourth measures, there is an implied release. That is illustrated in the roll studies in Stick Control (see the heading Ties, Releases, Taps, and Accents here). 

PROBLEM: Making the above roll at a 16th note rate displaces that last 8th note to fall on the last 16th note of the measure: 

I think that's what we're intended to play. It's what they did to us in the previous example with the written ruff on 4. But I don't know what we're expected to do with that bass drum note in the third measure. Probably play it at the same time as the release of the roll. I'm beginning to sense that these old rudimental guys are playing fast and loose with rhythm.

We could play the 8th note release in its notated timing by playing the roll at a quintuplet rate, which you might actually do at times, but not at this tempo. There is some of that kind of thing in Stone, there is nothing like it elsewhere in Wilcoxon. 

The purpose of that is to produce a quality roll at tempos where it's difficult to do that at more normal pulsation rates. It's a good thing to practice, but it's not what's intended with the book, so you'll be creating inconsistencies within the book materials. If you follow the screwed up archaic interpretation, at the book materials will be consistent within themselves. 

That's enough of this for one day, we'll chronicle the 10-stroke roll atrocities another time. Happy New Year!  

Long rolls, Reed format

A supplemental Reed item— this is about the level of thing I'm capable of right now. Not written out of any pressing need, hahaha, except this is a basic thing it's not easy for intermediate students to do reading from Syncopation. I've just rewritten “lesson 1” in the current editions, replacing the rests with rolls, and made a long roll out of line 1. There's no shortage of existing materials for practicing quarter note and longer rolls, but what the hell, the Reed format works, so let's have this, too. This would be a good page to use to get your Baby Dodds groove together.

Tempo is always important in practicing rolls, because it determines the rate of the pulsation you will use— the rate of the strokes during the roll. With this page you could use anything between 32nd notes (very slow tempos) and 8th notes (very bright tempos)— including triplets, quintuplets, sixtuplets, and septuplets.

Get the pdf

Wilcoxon weirdness

More on rolls, from a discussion on the Drummerworld forum. Look at this very strange piece of writing from Charley Wilcoxon:

From Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer

If you analyze what is written here and try to play it you will get very confused and/or angry:

What's up with the ruffs on rolls?
I see this fairly often in old rudimental literature, and I think this the way our knuckleheaded forebears would write a roll intended to begin on the second 16th note of that opening 8th note, like this:

This sticking is problematic, as is this
timing of the ruff, which I'll explain in a moment.

So the ruff is part of the body of the roll, and is played in time with it— in normal modern usage, ruffs are unmetered. I often see the familiar tap-7 stroke roll written the same way; those old rudimental guys seemed to be somewhat phobic about writing that 16th-dotted-8th rhythm:

Tap 7 written the modern way, and the old way.

What is a 12 stroke roll, and how do I fit one in that space?
It's not a common length of roll— at least it's not commonly referred to by this name. It's five double strokes and two accented taps, one at the beginning and one at the end; or two at the end. Literally:

Extremely non-textbook presentation.

Or in 2/4, in normal notation:

If you're confused by the presence of three accented taps in those examples, don't blame me— the logic of which taps are counted or not counted in the name of the roll can be kind of obscure. Take a look at Wilcoxon's book Rolling In Rhythm for many more examples of this.


So how do I play what's written in the solo? 
You can't, not with the given stickings— either Wilcoxon or the copyist has screwed this thing up. First, look at the sticking in the solo, and in my first example, compared to the sticking immediately above— the very last measure of the piece is the only one they got right. The ending accents on all of the others should be RL.

Also, the ruff is still a problem. This is what is literally indicated by the notation in the piece— with the sticking corrected:

The opening ruff is counted as part of the roll, but it has to be played at a different speed from the rest of the roll to fit it into the space it's given, which is not typically a done thing. Rolls aren't supposed to change speed.

What do I recommend? Pencil in the correct stickings, and just wing in the five double strokes (or multiple-bounce strokes), and get the timing of the surrounding accents right. Don't try to meter the internal roll speed.

Or you can try doing the ruff as in the previous example, playing it faster than the body of the roll. [NOTE: John Riley commented on the Drummerworld discussion, and he seems to favor that interpretation.] One or both of those things is/are probably what was done back then.

Or better yet, skip it and work on something interesting, and not riddled with errors. Just because Charley Wilcoxon puts something in front of you doesn't mean you have to do it. It's frankly a stupid little piece.


What's the lesson?
Don't trust everything you read. Drummers are not all infallible geniuses. Old drum notation is often shockingly unliteral. Not everything is worth the time and effort it takes to figure it out.

[h/t to Odd-Arne at Drummerworld]

All about rolls

Some examples.

This is more or less the complete practical theory of drum rolls as I know it, as gleaned from about 38 years as a student, player, and teacher in a community of professionals associated with the University of Oregon and San Jose State University percussion departments, and with the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps. I'm going to refrain from using any notated examples; maybe I'll expand this post into an e-book I'll flesh it out with examples and exercises.



Basic definition
In drumming terminology a roll is a long tone, played by hitting the instrument multiple times for the duration of the written note— or for the intended duration of the note, if we're talking about an improvised or non-notated part. It's supposed to sound like a long tone, not a rhythm; the texture may vary, but to be called a roll it has to be perceived as a long tone.

In some older, rudimental usage I get the impression that it's intended to mean any steady rhythm at all using a hand-to-hand motion. That's an archaic usage, and I consider it wrong today.


Types

Single-stroke
Played with alternating strokes, one note per hand. The standard way to roll on cymbals, timpani, concert bass drum, mallet instruments, woodblock, and other percussion instruments. On percussion instruments it must be played fast enough for the resonance of the instrument to blend the individual strokes together to make a long tone; so more resonant instruments like concert bass drum, larger timpani, suspended cymbal or vibraphone may call for a slower roll speed, and drier sounding instruments like wood block, xylophone, or smaller timpani will call for a faster roll speed. On drumset the term is generally used to mean fast alternating strokes on the drums, without the strokes necessarily blending together. 


Open 
Also called a double-stroke roll, it's played with alternating strokes, two notes per hand. Machine gun-like, standard for rudimental drumming, and modern drumset for soloing, filling, hihat embellishments, and brushes.


Closed
Also called a multiple-bounce roll, orchestral roll, or buzz roll.  Played with alternating strokes, with multiple notes per hand, overlapping to make a continuous tone. Smooth-textured, standard for concert snare drum in all settings, and on drumset.

This meanings of open and closed are different from what they were in the past; traditionally they seem to have meant slow and fast— I believe that's a reflection of how military drumming was taught in the 19th century; it's archaic and has little to do with current musical reality.


Other types
The so-called “one handed” roll is really a drumming trick, and doesn't have any standard musical application on the snare drum or drum set; it's strictly for show. Some percussion instruments may use a one handed roll played by alternating between two surfaces of the instrument, like in the corner of a triangle or the mouth of a cowbell; there is a similar one-handed brush technique for snare drum using a rapid back-and-forth motion— functionally that is a roll, though I never hear it called that. Cymbal rolls can be attempted one-handed with a mallet if the other hand is occupied.

Three-stroke rolls are a type of open roll with alternating strokes, three notes per hand, usually in a sixtuplet rhythm. Strictly a modern rudimental thing, and not normally used in any other playing; drumset players with drum corps background sometimes use it in soloing as a sort of technical display. I find it to be musically uninteresting and useless.

Construction and notation

Ties, releases, taps, and accents
Usually a roll consists of the roll note itself, tied to a single note release. Rolls written without a tie end without a release, with a little space between the body of the roll and the following note. In Stick Control, George Stone presents untied rolls as ending with an unaccented tap before the next written note (exercises 13-24 on pages 11 and 12 illustrate this). Often rudimental rolls will start with an accented tap at the beginning. Orchestral rolls written with an accent, a fp, or an sfz will have the first, or first two, multiple-bounce strokes accented. In soloing on the drumset, some players will accent multiple-bounce strokes during the body of the roll.


Rhythm
There are two rhythm components of any roll: the written (or intended) duration of the roll itself, and the pulsation speed— the rate of hand motion— to make the roll. The rate of pulsation is determined by the tempo of the piece, and the instrument on which the roll is being performed; it has to be fast enough to make a smooth long tone on that instrument. Often it's assumed to be 16th notes, but depending on the tempo it may be sixtuplets, 8th note triplets, 8th notes, 32nd notes, quintuplets, or septuplets. Pages 38-46 in Stick Control are designed for developing rolls at different tempos, with different pulsation rates.


Notation
The current American standard notation assumes all rolls are 32nd notes. It's beyond the scope of this post to explain it in detail, but that's what those familiar roll-indicating slashes connote. Three slashes are used with whole, half and quarter note duration rolls; two slashes are used on 8th note duration rolls, and a single slash is used for single 16th note drags. The three slashes— or one beam + two slashes, or two beams + one slash— indicate the three beams used in notating 32nd notes. They're an abbreviation saying “play this note value for the duration of the note the slashes are adorning.”

It's bastard notation, because if the roll were literally played as 32nd notes, it would not be necessary to have a tie. The only time rolls are actually meant to be played as 32nd notes is when they're in open, rudimental form— but the tie is still used in that setting. Otherwise, what is meant by the notation is to play as many roll strokes as are needed to make the roll sound like a long tone.

A European convention is to notate rolls as a tremolo, with or without ties as in standard American notation.

Note: the PAS graphic at the top of the page distinguishes open rolls from buzz rolls by using the slash notation for open, and an italic Z for buzz; this is not standard throughout the drumming literature. The only place I've seen that to be the case is in marching percussion. In most standard literature, the slash or tremolo notation is used, and as a performer you are expected to know the right kind of roll to use for that setting— almost always either multiple-bounce, or single stroke, again, depending on the instrument.



Length

Drags
A drag is a single double stroke or multiple-bounce stroke. It can be a component of a ruff, or it can be played by itself in the middle of a run of notes— typically 16th notes or triplets, typically in a rudimental or drumset setting. There is also a specific rudiment called a drag, the definition of which actually varies, depending on who you talk to— I'm using it generically, not attached to a specific pattern.

There are probably a number of rudimental people who would use this term only in association with the actual formal rudimental pattern, who would consider my definition above to be wrong. But that was a common usage of the word by the corps people I learned from, who were all in the 70s-80s Santa Clara Vanguard orbit— SCV instructors, or former members who became instructors.


Ruffs
Technically not a roll, but it's in the roll family. In modern usage it's a short, unmetered, multiple-bounce stroke adorning a tap; or three unmetered single-stroke grace notes adorning a tap. There is some contention online about ruff terminology, and how they're executed, but I have no interest in that. Again, I learned this from Charles Dowd, who learned it from Tony Cirone and Saul Goodman, and that to me is authoritative.


Numbered-stroke rolls
Rolls with the familiar names 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17-stroke. The names refer to a hand motion, counted as two notes per roll stroke plus one note for the release. With multiple bounce rolls, the name will not reflect the actual number of notes played: an orchestral 5 stroke roll is played with two multiple bounce strokes and a release, so you're not literally playing five notes.

There are also 6, 8, and 10 stroke rolls that typically have two taps: at the beginning and end, or both at the beginning or end. The terminology is not perfectly scientific, because there are versions of the odd number-named rolls that start with a tap and end with a tap, yet both taps are not counted in the name of those rolls. It may have to do with how they were used in traditional rudimental drumming— rudiments were not just patterns in the abstract, they were formalized pieces of verbatim musical content.

For what it's worth, the only numbered terms I personally ever use are 5, 6, 7, and 9. For longer rolls than that, I think of them only in terms of their duration and pulsation rate.


Long roll
A long roll is any roll longer than the ones for which we have numbered names.


So, that's a fairly exhaustive overview of my roll knowledge, at least as far as verbal information is concerned. Some people's textbook definitions will certainly differ from mine. For further study, I'll write a roll studies bibliography and post it another time. 

Basic short roll studies with continuous motion

UPDATE: Download link is working!

I've got to stop putting “EZ” on every single normal-difficulty thing I post. This is an easy page of roll studies I wrote to prepare a couple of younger students to play Rolling In Rhythm, a Charley Wilcoxon etude I teach to a lot of my students. We'll also see a similar page of drag studies soon.

The main thing about this page, which is similar to the Wilcoxon etude, is that the exercises have a continuous 8th note rate hand motion, with some of the notes played as singles, and some as doubles. When you get into the upper tempo range— above about quarter note = 160— count in 2/2. So if you're playing the exercises at 160, set your metronome to 80, and count metronome pulses in 2.

Get the pdf

YouTube round up: open roll technique

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, in which I go on YouTube and comment on the things brought up by searching a basic drumming term; punishing the guilty, rewarding the innocent, and so on. Today we'll do that with “open roll technique”; I'll limit myself to actual instructional videos on playing an open roll. I'm not really a one right answer kind of guy, and there are at least some things to think about in most of the videos. We can talk about what we think is the ideal method for doing this, but the main thing is to just put in a lot of time working at it, using the better videos, and your critical eye, as guides, so your hands can figure out how they want to do it.

The first one is by Jim Chapin.  No pressure, everybody else, you just have to follow the foremost scholar of rudimental snare drum technique of the 20th century.



Chapin is a little scattered in his presentation here, but this is all stuff I use. As I see it the important thing is to moderately accent the second note, and play an upstroke at the end of the double. If you do that, and play a shuffle rhythm with each hand, from slow to very fast— about ten minutes per hand— you can develop a good open roll. Just do the exercise and don't over-think it. He also has a good method in which you do a fast, full-speed double, but starting with a slower overall motion— he does this after 1:45. My old corps director George Tuthill, a rudimental authority, advocated learning rolls this way— he didn't like the traditional slow-to-fast thing.


Next, from a site called The Beat Doctor:



I guess the verbal instruction is not terrible, but the demonstrations are weak— particularly at 1:26, where he downstrokes each note, momentarily lets the stick rebound while he's telling you to let it rebound, then goes back to downstroking. He advises against that latter technique of Chapin's above, calling it “galloping”— you can decide who's right. There is some disconnect between the different stages of the progression, and the presentation seems a little unformed.


By Jason Furman:


Decent video by a good drummer, though I don't really care for the method he ended up with. The technique he demonstrates after 1:25 is mentioned in the Chapin video as a not-preferred way to develop a roll: with an exaggerated soft-loud dynamic, and ending with a downstroke— both of which are contrary to the final product we're after— and Furman says he was unsatisfied with that technique, too. I do not dig the thing he eventually settled on, with a sort of scooping motion, which he demonstrates after 3:25— it would be easy for your average self-instructing, YouTube-using drummer to screw up, so approach with caution. I would only recommend doing that with an expert teacher (like Furman) who can guide you through the process.

To some this will be the ultimate in nit-pickery: it bothers me that at one point he is in playing position with the sticks resting on the head, even making a little sound as he places them there— just an unthinkable no-no to me. My old professor Charles Dowd was very picky about doing things silently, and I guess I internalized that. Also, being at rest with the sticks laying on the drum head is... difficult for me. Sorry, Jason...

More after the break:

Page of ten stroke rolls

Here's a pretty straightforward page of ten stroke rolls, open, in a variety of rhythms and meters. A ten stroke open roll consists of four doubles and two taps— one at the beginning and one at the end, or both at the end, or both at the beginning. In a few cases there is a third tap, which traditionally would make the thing into an eleven stroke roll— according to Wilcoxon, anyway— but I'm not going to go there; I'm reserving the eleven stroke name for a roll with five doubles and a tap.

If you don't have it already, my page of six stroke rolls is a good companion to this.

Get the pdf

Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon

Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer:

A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, plus a release note, and there are two forms of them here, one of which is rather obscure-looking to modern readers. The sevens at the beginning of the piece, written as unembellished 8th note rhythm are pretty self-evident; you play the roll part as a 16th note triplet starting on the &, and release on 1.

At the end of the third line there is a seven stroke roll written as an 8th note with a ruff at the beginning; which is an old-fashioned way of writing a tap seven, with a 16th note pulsation. In modern notation, that would be written as a 16th note and dotted-8th, with the roll on the dotted-8th— you roll on the “e-&-a.” The 15 stroke roll in the third line would be played the same way, with the roll continued through beat 2.

The presence of ruffs on the same line is a little confusing; usually those are interpreted as an short, unmetered multiple-bounce stroke before the primary note, and seeing them attached to a roll you want to try to play them the same way. In traditional rudimental drumming, though, they're often given a rhythm, and played as a drag on a 16th note— we'll have to go into that another time.

So, line 1 would be played:

And here's line 3, into line 4:

Get Charley Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer

Rudimental Reed: five stroke rolls

I've been fooling around with applying some rudiments to the long exercises in Syncopation, by Ted Reed. We'll start humbly with it, converting the written quarter notes (and tied 8ths) to untied rolls-- an 8th note roll with an 8th note release. There are a few dotted quarter notes, which become a quarter note roll with an 8th note release:

This should be played at a medium to bright tempo. The release notes are not part of the written melody, obviously, and we're trying to give the impression of untied quarter note-length rolls, so don't play the releases too strongly. This method is easy enough that you should have little problem using it on the fly to the other long exercises in Reed. You can do the rolls open or closed, as either 5-strokes or 7-strokes-- or 9s or 13s on the quarter note-value rolls:

Get the pdf.