Ratamacoups with different feels

Ratmacoups With Different Feels consists of just one ratamacue-based breakdown that will be taken in a few different directions to challenge your hands, feet, eyes, ears, and brain. Although the ratamacue rudiments are rarely written in modern battery percussion music, these patterns will have tremendous relevance and demand for stick control, doublestroke, roll timing, and singlestroke fundamentals. Working on these patterns will pay dividends for your more broadly-applied drumming skills, while also giving you a more comprehensive understanding of one of the classic 26 essential rudiments.

The last two pages of this rudiment study consist of exercises with a variable written “mark time” component, much like the exercises you will find in the free book Mark Time Mark, also available on this website. In fact, I wrote this exercise before I wrote that book, and it was in writing this exercise that I got the idea for the book! But life happens, and it happens a lot, so I haven’t gotten around to re-visiting this rudiment study and fleshing out all the explanatory verbiage until now.

Bed 'o Taps fo' Better Taps

Bed ‘o Taps Fo’ Better Taps was inspired by an experience I had while walking through a warm-up lot somewhere in Utah, once upon a time. I heard a snare line playing some 8 and 25 on some beautifully-tuned Pearl snare drums, and it was just about the most amazing thing I had ever heard. Then they played some two-height rolls stuff, and it was like I was hearing a completely different group of performers. Obviously, two-height roll patterns tend to present more challenges than monotone rolls, but why? This pair of exercises seeks to explore this question.

These two exercises are intended to bridge the gap between roll fundamentals and accent-tap fundamentals. It is very common that players who have painstakingly developed sufficient stroke velocity and fulcrum control for playing quality doublestroke rolls will nevertheless find those habits affected by the addition of accents to create two-height figures, like paradiddles and tap rolls.

Multi-Beat Cushion Strokes (& 14 Variations)

Multi-Beat Cushion Strokes is a two-height sticking pattern that combines the contrasting demands of multi-strokes—high velocity and high rebound—with those of cushion strokes: everything is exactly the same going into the drum, and after the stick hits the drum, it simply doesn’t rebound to the full height. Fourteen variations add different wrinkles to these demands by incorporating varying applications of fulcrum pressure.

Stutter Tap Fives

Stutter Tap-Fives challenges you to control the placement of doublestrokes in tap-five figures. The main variation plays with the space around the doublestroke. It is very tricky to play a quality doublestroke that doesn’t follow from something and connect to something else. It should not be, but it is, so use it as an excuse to get very picky about how you articulate doublestrokes! If shuffling these diddles around the rhythmic grid gets boring, the modulation variations challenge you to change doublestroke placement and speed.

The included buzz/crush variations allow you to work on many of the same challenges as the main variations—rhythmic precision and the targeted application of fulcrum pressure—without having to worry about second note placement on the doublestrokes.

Hiccups

Hiccups places accents before the attacks of triplet rolls, combining the challenge of cushioning to the tap height with the challenge of calling upon the correct application of fulcrum pressure to achieve the doublestroke spacing in the roll. This skill is especially pertinent to paradiddle rudiments, and two-accent paradiddle-diddle-diddles do make an appearance here.

Eleven Stroke

Eleven Stroke uses different breakdowns of the eleven stroke roll to test different tap roll fundamentals. Apart from the odd time signature, this exercise is deceptively simple; if you are being as picky as you ought to be, some of the patterns are actually quite tricky.

I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercise was a complement to the series of “Tap Five,” “Six Stroke,” “Six Stroke Slurred,” and “Seven Stroke,” which use each roll rudiment as a means to explore roll fundamentals, beyond simply building an individual x-stroke roll rudiment.

Ten Stroke

Ten Stroke uses breakdowns of the ten stroke roll to test your application of fulcrum pressure when quick upstrokes are demanded of the rudimental content. Tap-fives require a repetitious application of fulcrum pressure and rapid upstrokes; this exercise breaks up the monotony by varying the demands (taps, doubles, accents) that surround the upstrokes and downstrokes.

I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercise was a complement to the series of “Tap Five,” “Six Stroke,” “Six Stroke Slurred,” and “Seven Stroke,” which use each roll rudiment as a means to explore roll fundamentals, beyond simply building an individual x-stroke roll rudiment.

Loosey Juicy

Loosey Juicy uses swiss triplets and different doublestroke rolls to contrast different applications where the second note of a double beat is achieved largely through fulcrum/finger pressure acting against the rebound of the first note of the doublestroke.

Pinch Perfect

Pinch Perfect requires the consistent application of a given amount of fulcrum pressure and finger assistance to create strong and consistently-timed doublestrokes. Variations then alter the release of the roll so that the fulcrum pressure and finger assistance demands are not uniform throughout 100% of the exercise.

Full 'o Crumb

Full ‘o Crumb challenges your control of fulcrum pressure and finger assistance by juxtaposing singlestrokes, doublestrokes, and flam-taps. It will require a lot of dexterity to switch between the demands of the different rudiments.

Nice Kicks

Nice Kicks is a diddle interp exercise that is primarily focused on rolls that put an accent before their release. Rehearsing different roll interpretations is an excellent practice for building confidence and consistency in timing, as well as greater fulcrum control. Apart form this benefit, the figures in this exercse are interesting rudimental fare in their own right—fun to include in musical passages to create a looser rhythmic feel where appropriate.

Smoooves

Smoooves is a simple pattern for fitting five-note rudiments into a juxtaposition between sixteenth notes and fivelets. Included are some example rudiments that are well-suited t this pattern, as well as some accent variations to play around with. Despite all the effort changes involved, keep it smooth!

Beedlabop

Beedlabop was written for the 2015 Weber State Indoor Percussion snare line to work on cold roll attacks, four-stroke rolls, fulcrum pressure consistency, and second-note timing. One objective is to maintain proper velocity and rebound through the four-stroke rolls; even though there is a lot of space between doublestroke attacks, the second note of each doublestroke should still rebound, both for the sake of endurance and for ensuring a big, open sound on both notes of the doublestroke. The split part in measure 5 is a fun way to check timing and sound quality in a group or line setting. It is like the common trick of having half the line play a triplet roll while half the line plays eighth notes; however, in this context, everyone is responsible for multiple isolated attacks to create the overarching barrage of 24th notes.

Tap-Couple-of-Diddles

Tap-Couple-of-Diddles takes the tap-five rudiment and pushes the doublestrokes around the beat in different ways. Doublestroke spacing remains the same throughout, while the initiations of the diddles are varied.

Sick-Stroke Roll Schops

Sick-Stroke Roll Schops is a chops builder or just a good way to get pretty warm pretty quick. It has really basic construction (other than the 5-bar tag) so you can just dive right in.

If this website had a theme, it would be juxtaposing different interpretations of rudiments. The rationale behind this practice is usually given as "building understanding and control of the space between notes", but in the context of this exercise, it's also just a good way to warm up the muscles you'll need. It's common to play a bunch of kinda fast rolls to get the blood flowing... now you can play a bunch of fast rolls with some slightly slower double-beats thrown in there, as well as accents and taps... and you have to switch between them... a lot.

Invert Roll / Fortepianos

Invert Roll and Fortepianos are two exercises that I used with the 2014 WSIP snare line in order to work on doublestrokes, with a silly fill to mash the two together. I like using inverted rolls to work on doublestrokes because it puts the second note of each diddle on the eighth notes, where weaknesses will be more obvious to the ear. The focus of both exercises should be matching comfort and sound quality between the forte diddles and the diddles at the tap height.

Two on a Hand

Two on a Hand is a double-beat exercise that will really stretch your understanding of time, as well as your stick control on doublestrokes. I always meant to write this into an ensemble warm-up, but I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think it would pay off much to try and get a whole line to play it. This is a very challenging exercise to get right, but I think it is worthwhile for individual practice.

Not Chicken and a Roll

Not Chicken and a Roll is a twist on the classic Higga-digga-burr, also called Chicken and a Roll in some circles (like... "check into a roll"... Does joke get you?). The basis of those exercises is to build larger motions with a check pattern and then add the smaller motions with the diddles. This exercise throws that idea out the window, instead relating eighth-note timing to 4:3-tuplet rolls. It's trippy... but I like trippy.

Beef Shawarma

Beef Shawarma works on triplet rolls at different dynamics and with different playing zones. Maintaining roll quality across the range of heights and around the drum head is crucial to playing snare drum in an indoor drumline, where discrepancies in sound quality at different heights, as well as discrepancies in precise bead placement, can dramatically impact the quality of the music. 

A useful variation would be to replace the "edge" position with the "guts" position (2 o'clock on the drum head, over the snare bed) and perform the exercise that way. Matching sound quality between hands is a little more challenging at the "guts" position and while transitioning to it, since the left bead has to move slightly in front of the right in order to match distance from the rim. 

If you really want to push your versatility, another variation is to reverse the dynamics (i.e., piano becomes forte, crescendo becomes decrescendo, etc.), so you end up doing weird things like crescendoing towards the edge, which creates an interesting sonic effect, in addition to forcing you to match roll quality at the high dynamic with very little snare response to support the sound and hide discrepancies in timing.

Open Roll Builder

This Open Roll Builder is a triplet-roll analogue to the stock "Diddle Tap" exercise; this one works on the eighth-note-based breakdowns of an open triplet roll, instead of a duple roll.