Top 5 Drum Rudiments (exercises)

Drum Rudiments are the most important aspect to learning drumming. They are the building blocks to every drum beat, pattern, fill, and solo. They are the fundamentals to all percussion, and should not be ignored. A drummer should know all of the key drum rudiments, and be able to perform them without hesitation. Without the practice of these, you are limiting your skills and opportunity as a drummer. Let’s break this down a bit, and look at why drum rudiments are so important to practice.

What Is A Drum Rudiment?

A drum rudiment is basically a sticking pattern. Every sticking pattern you play on the drum set is derived from different drum rudiments. Drum rudiments are basic drum patterns, used as practice exercises. They are basically the foundation of drumming, or the basics of stick control, and wrist movement. There are many different rudiments out there. You may hear some people talking about the 40 essential drum rudiments. This may seem like a lot however, most of these are just variations of each other. Drum rudiments should be practiced on a practice pad or a snare drum. They simply help train your fingers and wrists with speed, power, control, as well as independence. . Most are very common patterns that you are well aware of like the single stroke roll, double stroke roll, and flam stroke. Some are more complex and difficult to play.

Why Are Drum Rudiments Important?

Practicing your drum rudiments as a drummer is a lot like going to the gym as a professional athlete. The same is for a drummer – we must train our muscles to hit harder, more accurate, and faster. This is where drum rudiments come into play. They force us to do nothing else but practice stick movement. A lot of times drummers will get side tracked on a drum kit and lose out on valuable practice time. Going through the basic exercises will drastically improve your skills on the drum set; allowing you to roll a lot faster, and giving you more options on the drum set.

Pros and Cons of Practicing Rudiments

To be honest, there are not a lot of cons to practicing these drum rudiments. As a drummer, you should be practicing these drum rudiments more often then you practice on a drum set. You can never go wrong by practicing your essential drum rudiments. The good thing about these is it will force you to go back to the core of drumming. It is easy to get distracted with the drums in front of you, but when you are using a practice pad working on your rudiments, you do not have that option. However, that could also be a problem. Some may get used to the practice pad, and find it hard to transfer back to the drum set. Another problem with rudimental practice is it does not work on creativity, and independence on the drum set. Being limited to a single pad, you are unable to hear the different drum voices, thus hindering your creative edge.

Summary

Practicing these drum rudiments are very important. The best way to practice these is to take a pair of drum sticks, a metronome, and a practice pad and start playing. Make sure you are playing with a metronome to keep yourself on time. If you do not know where to start, here is a list of the top 5 rudiments you should start with: the single stroke roll, the double stroke roll, the flam stroke, the paradiddle, and the double paradiddle. These are the top 5 rudiments you should start with, as each one will teach you speed, control, independence and endurance on your sticks. Make sure you read up on these essential practice tips before you begin playing these rudiments; it will help you out a lot! 

Most of the drum rudiments are variations of each other, meaning it is not too hard to learn all 40 rudiments. For example, if you can play a flam stroke, and a paradiddle pattern, you should have no trouble playing the flam paradiddle. In any case take the time to go over each one if you can. 

BlueTimbre is a Music Company with Music Education spaces, Jam Room and Recording studio located in India. BlueTimbre provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. The BlueTimbre team comes with decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.

Sources:

http://www.rockdrummingsystem.com/underground/drum-articles/importance-of-rudiments.php

http://www.40drumrudiments.com/

http://www.freedrumlessons.com/articles/drum-rudiments.php