Rudimental Reed: ruffs

Today's Rudimental Reed entry is pretty straightforward— just make a ruff out of any note that doesn't have an (untied) 8th note before it.  That's an awkward way of phrasing it, but I think you'll find it's very intuitive once you play the examples. The rudiments covered, or generated, include ruffs, single drags, and double drags, similar to a lot of the things in the Wilcoxon etude Roughing the Single Drag, from Modern Rudimental Swing Solos— I would recommed playing through that as a companion piece to this item.

As always, we'll first see how it applies to the first line of Exercise 1, p. 37 in Syncopation:

I've given both alternating and natural stickings— play it both ways, leading with either hand. I haven't included the multiple-bounce strokes in the stickings, but they happen with the opposite hand. Swing the 8th notes.

Here's a denser example, which is the first line of Exercise 2:

If you have questions about how to play a ruff, there's a pretty good video after the break:

Rudimental Reed: paradiddles

Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed's Syncopation, this time using paradiddles. Here's that well-known opening line from the first long syncopation exercise in Reed, p. 37 in the old editions, as written:

First, play the quarter notes (or the equivalent) as 16th note paradiddles. On the longer values/rests, play a paradiddle with an unaccented ending note, as on beat three of the second and last measures:

Next, apply an appropriate paradiddle-type sticking to the longer values/spaces— double paradiddles / paradiddle-diddles, or triple paradiddles / paradiddle-diddle, diddles as I'll call them (there aren't enough commas in rudiment names for my taste) since that rudiment doesn't exist to my knowledge. I chose the latter rudiments:

With that last, we arrive at something pretty similar to an interpretation in Ramsay's Alan Dawson book; the one additional step there is to play the 8th notes as two alternating 16th notes, with an accent on the first.

Another example after the break:

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.