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:

Inversions of Three Camps

So I have basically a one-track mind. Maybe a two-track mind. Three closely-related tracks. Right now it's all  the Elvin waltz and Three Camps. What we have here is a little thing I improvised while playing the latter on the drums- it's an easy way to get a little more mileage out of it. What I've done is simply to offset it by one 8th note (or one triplet partial, if you're thinking of it that way) each time through; so the first time is the piece in its regular form, then it is displaced so the primary accents fall on the middle note, and then the last note of the triplet:

I've written it with the modern fp long roll at the end, rather than with the traditional ending. I think this is most effective played on the drumset, with the hihat on 2 and 4, and the bass drum either doubling the accented notes, or playing (lightly!) on 1 and 3, or on all four beats. You can also play the accented notes on the cymbals. This is easy enough that you should be able to toss the print out after two or three times through it.

Get the pdf

Three Camps round up

I recently picked up a stack of Mitchell Peters books, one of which contains several variations on this classic, and it seemed like a good time to round up the various sources and variations on it. In case anyone doesn't know, Three Camps is a military drumming piece over 200 years old, based on rolls and accents in a triplet rhythm. I've been playing it since drum corps legend Ghost (known to his mother as Bill Linen) taught me an unusual (possibly mis-remembered) version in 1982. Since at least Charles Wilcoxon's day, drummers have been using it as a template for working on other things- accented singles, paradiddles, ratamacues, etc. Here's what I could find online and in my own library: 


Books

The Moeller Book, and Haskell Harr Drum Method, book 2
Each of these has it written out in the archaic notation, with an unusual ending in Harr- two 5-stroke rolls plus release. Due to the notation they're pretty useless to modern users readers.

Rudimental Swing Studies for the Advanced Drummer by Charlie Wilcoxon
In traditional form, paradiddles, and ratamacues. Unfortunately both the original edition and the typo-riddled Sakal edition present it with the old-fashioned notation, though it's marginally more readable than the Moeller version. (To be fair to Mr. Sakal, I think there are many more typos in his edition of Rolling in Rhythm than in RSS. Still looking for an original edition of RIR to confirm that...)

Intermediate Snare Drum Studies by Mitchell Peters
Includes the usual triplet roll form (in modern notation), and in rolls with a 16th note, quintuplet, and sixtuplet pulsation.

Variations on Three Camps by Marvin Dahlgren
This was an unexpected find. I was continuing my so-far-in-vain search for a copy of Dahlgren's Drum Set Control, and came across Really Good Music, which publishes his books- including DSC. According to the site: "The first half of the book is designed primarily for Snare Drum. The second half is designed for use with Drum Set. As usual with Marv Dahlgren books, one can easily spend the rest of your life perfecting these patterns. This 61 page book is in easy to read manuscript with sticking patterns indicated." Naturally I ordered a copy- along with DSC and a book I had never heard of, Complete Text for the Rock & Roll Drummer. I'll let you know when I get them.

Variazioni in Three Camps by Daniele Sabatini
Never seen this before. Ten different variations. No information on what they are, but the preview has it written in flamacues. Available through a German site.

Online versions after the break:

Online

Snarescience.com
Written as triplets, no rolls, with a modified ending- two beats of accented triplets plus a release, instead of the traditional triplet figure with a ruff, or the four-beat fp roll which is the way I learned it. The Accent Percussion Project has an identical version.

In the snarescience.com forum there's also an unusual polyrhythmic version- the first page of it, anyway- someone who calls himself teh_guardian has changed the note values to 8th notes, while keeping the same actual number of notes, giving a 6/8-within-4/4 feel.

Rudimentaldrumming.com
Here's an otherwise conventional version written as sixtuplets in 2/4, using Berger notation.

Robinengelman.com
The image above is from a c. 1784 book mentioned on Engelman's site- it's not complete, so I include it here as a curiosity. You could write him and ask for a scan of the complete piece.

And there's my screwy old version, which has the 3rd camp in the middle, and no restatement of the second camp. There was a period of years from the late 80's to the mid 90's when I never played it- I might've remembered it wrong when I recovered it. I think I'm right, though- I remember it being substantially shorter than the traditional version. And it's hard to forget these things once you've played them hundreds of times.

Finally, I saw Elvin Jones perform it on the drums in a clinic c. 2000; he doubled the accents with the bass drum, and played a two measure drum solo at the end of each time through. I was hoping there would be video of that (or at another clinic) on YouTube, but no.

You knew this was coming...

Here's the latest stupidly-named iteration of my basic paradiddle exercise, this time using 16th note 7s, septuplets, or whatever you want to call them. As always, play through the entire page, then play combinations of exercises in 1, 2, or 4 measure repetitions. The sequence I use for combinations is 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, etc... 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, etc... 3-4, 3-5, 3-6, etc... and so on.

Get the pdf.

Umdaga, part 1

This is a very simple pattern I use a lot- I'd go so far as to say it's one of the basic DNA instructions of my playing: right/left/bass. I didn't exactly make it up, but as far as I know it has no name, so I gave it one that fits with the way I conceive it. I pronounce it oom-DA-ga. I don't know why I named it inverted from the way I think it; it sings better, I guess, and maybe it encourages something other than the usual rock & roll "floogada-floogada-floogada" thing. When you say it over and over it's got the little diphthong from the ga to the um, so I say the 'oo' in the um a little under my voice: m-daga-m-daga-m-daga-m.

So what I've done here is write up some four measure solo phrases that are neither easy nor hard, using that pattern over a variety of quarter/8th note rhythms. There are one or two deviations from the pattern because that's the way I heard the phrase, and to keep you on your toes.

Play these with both swing and straight 8th interpretation; tempo can range anywhere from quarter note = 72 to half note = 150+. Recommended stickings for the hand parts are RL RL, LR LR, single-handed, hands together, improvised. You can and should move your hands around the drums, and add accents and embellishments. You can play the hihat on 2 and 4, or play some other ostinato, or you can substitute the hihat for the bass drum, or play both feet together.

Get the pdf.

Swiss triplets exercise

Here's a fairly challenging swiss triplet exercise we used to play in my advanced practice pad group. The trickiest part seems to be the fourth line, with the 5/16 groupings comprised of a swiss triplet plus a flam tap:

Get the pdf.

Paradiddle shift with bass drum

This is something I've been working with, and finally had the time to write up. The paradiddle shift is a pretty common exercise involving the displacement of the paradiddle by one 16th note. Most people get it through Stone's Stick Control; I first started using it after seeing it in a Modern Drummer article featuring Fred Sanford, in the early 80's. Usually it follows the sequence from Stone (p.5, ex. 5-8), with the paradiddle starting on the beat, then the 'a', then the '&', then the 'e'.

What I've done here is make the shift by adding a 16th note on the bass drum, which makes the displacements happen in reverse order. The order is not a big deal, the means of making the shift is:

I've included two exercises, one with single accents, and one with two accents per paradiddle. Follow the road map- play the repeated measures one or more times, and the non-repeated measures only once; when you get to the double bar, go back to the top, reversing the stickings- start with the left the second time through. You can and should move these around the drums and add flams, drags, or whatever embellishments you want.

Get the pdf.

YouTube clip with Fred Sanford's version of the paradiddle shift after the break:

Paradiddle exercise starts at 2:30:

Matt's paradiddle thing, pt. 2

As I've mentioned, I've been working a bunch with the paradiddle page I wrote up for my student Matt F, usually combining single repetitions of each exercise, as described in the post. Last night I played through it combining single beats, which is fairly easy to do on the fly, but I thought I would write it up anyway. I'm trying to keep it on one page these days, so I've just given some examples. If you want to be a nut about it, go ahead and play through all of the 16th note combinations from the original pdf.

Lately I've been all about playing through a lot of patterns- my idea of a lot being a single page- so unless you're really struggling, try not to get bogged down in repetitions (or variations, if you're applying some creativity). Playing the entire page RH and LH lead at maybe two different tempos- moderate and bright- a few repetitions per exercise is plenty.

Get the pdf.

Todd's methods: same-handed flam accents

This is something that came organically out of my own playing- it came up again and again in improvising for years before I finally analyzed it. The only place I've seen it mentioned since is in the wadrumline.org  list of 128 hybrid rudiments. As it says in the explanation, this is a hands-only pattern for me, and I play it at a pretty even volume- little or no accent on the flammed note, and the grace note is not particularly soft.

I've included a version with a bass drum substitution, though it basically turns it into a completely different lick.

Download the pdf.

Best books: Rudimental Patterns by Joe Cusatis

Rudimental Patterns
Full Drum Set Studies for the Modern Drummer
by Joe Cusatis

This book represents pretty much everything I've always felt is wrong with the traditional approach to learning the drums, and I LIKE IT. For the better part of my study I've always looked for ways to multiply my practice efforts: if I worked on something, I wanted it to work on several levels at once- reading, hand technique, four-way coordination, orchestration on the fly, musical interpretation- as many things as I could fit in, I would. Things like pure, mindless calistenics, and pre-packaged licks (especially out of that traditional Krupa-like bag) were verboten. If it could not be learned through a quasi-musical application, it was not worth learning.

What I'm finding in working through this book (and a few others like it) is that not only do calisthenics actually work, they may be necessary. At the very least they're better for isolating a move and learning it completely and quickly, something more difficult (or easy to gloss over) when you're dealing with several issues at once. What I've found in my own playing is that there is a little bit of an Darwinian process at work, with some moves getting unconsciously weeded out of my playing through never having been learned thoroughly. Now, nobody cares if your left is a little slow making it to your floor tom, but I feel I have a little more freedom for not having to explicitly tell my hands to make certain things.


Many of the licks in the book are very cliche, and will be instantly recognizable if you're at all familiar with the more "drummery" drummers coming out of rock in the 60's- your Ian Paices and Ron Bushys- and your more bush-league Krupa clones. But I've found I actually prefer doing my calisthenics in the context of cliches rather than in the nearly content-free, purely logical/mechanical mode of some newer books (Rod Morgenstein's Drum Set Warm-Ups comes to mind)- I'm learning the moves and learning history at the same time. So far it has not caused me to start regurgitating jive licks verbatim.

I'm not wild about the archaic notation system, which uses a kind of exploded staff-for-dummies, which may have been easier for barely-literate drummers of the past to puzzle through, but is difficult for others to read quickly. It's a minor thing.

 So, another cherished ideal bites the dust. This book is recommended for anyone studying the drums- artist types like me will appreciate it filling in some technical gaps, and novices will appreciate someone giving them something to play.

Get Rudimental Patterns from Steve Weiss Music.