C.A.T.S. — 2021

C.A.T.S. (Cloned Accent-Tap Singles) — 2021 is an accent-tap and singlestrokes warm-up that employs doublestops in order to match stick motions between the hands before splitting the hands up into the singlestroke patterns. This is the same idea behind Singles a la Clone from page 5 of Twelve Eight-Bar Exercises in 12/8 to Stave off Cabin Fever (With Play-Along Practice Recordings) as well as Mantra #7 Singlestroke Rolls / Consilience from page 5 of Mantras For Rudimental Snare Drum, now available in a hip ensemble warm-up that would likely suit many collegiate and independent drumlines very well!

The concept is further described in the aforementioned Cabin Fever book:

The lead-hand breakdowns of accented singlestroke rolls and singlestroke tap rolls will generally have different tendencies. A downstroke followed by taps tends to feel different than a bunch of taps followed by an upstroke. This exercise aims to unify your approach to upstrokes/downstrokes within the context of the different accented singlestroke rudiments. The doublestops with only one hand accented at a time will expose your tendencies on upstrokes and buck motions, allowing you to more smoothly transition into singlestroke rolls and singlestroke tap rolls. Keep it smooth, people. This is another great one to try with brushes, drum set sticks, and with a towel on your drum or pad.

Edit 15 December 2021: Fixed a typo in the last measure of the snare part.

Ghost Meat

Ghost Meat has the bones of an accent tap exercise, but the muscle of a doublestroke exercise and the skin of a singlestrokes exercise. The name was inspired by the notion of “ghost notes” which are the subtle inner beats that add character and direction to an overarching rhythmic figure… it’s always crucial that ghost notes be sweet and low. This warm-up employs solid, monotone slurred ruffs (“pudidahs”) in both ninelet and sextuplet contexts before adding some accents to create true “ghost note” contexts. The bottom half of the piece shifts from the accent-tap focus to a singlestroke rolls focus, and it will require considerable maturity to accurately shift between the ninelet, sixteenth-note, and sextuplet rhythms of the singlestrokes.

Shawnlet Bucks

A rare sight indeed: something on FatMattDrums that was not written by FatMatt, so take heed! It’s good as gold.

Shawnlet Bucks (ca. 2004) is a straightforward approach to working on accents and taps in a battery setting that allows you to keep things interesting while maintaining the ensemble’s focus on the important fundamentals.

There is a detailed description on the *.pdf, but the main idea is to string sequences of variations together. Maybe there’s a cool combination that is your go-to accent/tap warm-up, but the sky is really the limit. These recordings provide a few examples:

Example 1. S: 3, 2, 2, 1; T: 1, 2, 1, 3, 1; B: 5, 3. Example 2. S: 5, 3, 2; T: 3, 2, 5; B: 2, 5, 3.
Example 3. S: 1, 1, 4, 2, 2; T: 1, 2, 3, 4; B: 1, 1, 5, 3. Example 4. S: 7, 2, 2, 3, 1; T: 5, 2, 2, 3, 3; B: 4, 8, 2, 1.
Example 5. S: 3, 3, 3, 5, 1; T: 6, 2, 1, 4, 1, 1; B: 9, 3, 2, 1. Example 6. S: 5, 4, 3, 2, 3; T: 3, 5, 4, 5; B: 4, 5, 3, 2, 2, 1

Chow Down

Chow Down (2021) is an all-around and all-in-one ensemble warm-up targeting the high school level. It consists of five “movements”: 1. Legatos, 2. Bucks, 3. Doubles I, 4. Doubles II, and 5. Triplet Rolls. Each movement could be used as a standalone warm-up, and you can gradually work each movement into the full sequence as the season progresses, so that you have both a warm-up book, and a cohesive ensemble warm-up, however you are able to deploy it. It may be beneficial for the snares to learn the tenor part in some places, as some passages involve the snares playing a fundamental exercise pattern while the tenors play an even more fundamental breakdown of the motion involved in that pattern.

This warm-up was originally conceived for tri-toms instead of quad or quint tenors, so that is the arrangement you will hear in the Virtual DrumLine (VDL) recording. I am providing the score to both arrangements here:

Slurred Ruff

Slurred Ruff (2010) was used by the NC State and Athens Drive HS drumlines to work on tap sound quality between doublestrokes and single beats. Whether your doublestrokes tend to overpower the single beats, or vice versa, your ears will pick up on it. This warm-up doesn't actually have straight paradiddles in it, but the skills it hits are most related to the other paradiddles warm-ups. 

Timing-wise, one tendency seems to be (I don't know why; it's just what I've seen) to tighten up the ruffs on the all-tap bars: i.e. to play something like 1 &a2 &a3 &a4 &a on the single-height bars. A constant doublestroke motion on one hand must be maintained, whether the other hand executes a "buck" motion, or a rebounded "8 on a Hand" motion.

The bass drum part is such that all the written notes could be played as a single unison part.

Accent Tap

Accent Tap (2008) is a comprehensive two-height warm-up that covers buck figures, accent-tap contexts, singlestroke figures, and paradiddle figures. It was written with the goal of being part of the NCSU Drumline warm-up repertoire, but John wrote an on-field warm-up with more brevity and focus. This, however, is a good long warm-up to work on accents and taps, with some groovy interludes. It's based on Groovement Movement from the original FatMattDrums, and I think that any level of drumline could find some useful portions to excerpt from it.