Double-Stroke Rolls - Explation and Utilzation of 32nd Notes

In this article, I will be explaining concept of a double-stroke roll and some exercises on how to start to learn this new technique so that you can utilize it in your playing.  The information that for this article was taken directly as from my lesson on the double-stroke rolls as my drum instructor, Jack Hall, presented them to me at his studio at the Willis Music Store on Hurstbourne Lane here in Louisville Ky.

What is a double-stroke roll?

A roll is music terms are notes that are played in secession, such as the single stroke roll where you alternate playing with both hands R,L,R,L (Right hand, Left hand, Right hand and Left Hand).  Taken that a step further, play the roll with two beats (hits) per hand, such as R,R,L,L (Right hand, Right hand, Left hand, Left hand) and you have the double-stroke roll. In drumming terms when two beats of played with the same hand, it is referred to as a dibble.

There is nothing really hard about this technique other than having to train muscle memory in order to play two beats evenly with each hand and have it sound the same as it would with just single strokes.  The Double-stroke roll is one of the fundamental building blocks for other rudiments that a drummer will use in his / her playing such as some of the more common rolls: five, seven and nine stroke rolls.

I mentioned rudiments above, let me take a minute and expand upon this : Rudiment are are the equivalent of chords that guitar players utilize. Rudiments are the building blocks for drummers and there have been 40 of the defined by the Official Percussive Arts Society.  There are many resources out there that will assist you in learning the Rudiments in which I listed several in the resource section of this article.

Two of my favorite are:

Vic Firth : Vic Firth Presents: 40 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments
Freedrumlessons.com :  The 40 Drum Rudiments

Benefits of Double Stroke Roll

One of the benefits of using the double-stroke roll is it can be used to increase speed by using the natural rebound of the stroke to get more then one beat per hit without having to lift the stick again.  This is sometimes called a rebound stroke and I won't go into a lot of detail here, but the gust of it that after making your first stroke with the stick, close the fingers and it will make another stroke.  This is how our idols do it to get such fast speeds.

What are 32nd Notes?

32nd Notes are another subdivision that we can make to increase the amount of notes that are played during a measure.  In a normal measure, if we divide a normal 4/4 time signature into 32nd notes, there will be 32nd notes to be played in that measure.  32nd notes are the subdivision of the 16th notes and is where they occur.

How do you count 32nd notes?

As my drum instructor informed me, unlike other subdivisions that have been introduced, 32nd notes don't have a count of there own for the individual notes, but are counted in groups of two. Therefore you would count the notes are sixteenth notes, but play two beats for each count.

What we end up with is really playing double-strokes for each of the beats of a sixteenth note.  This is why double-stroke roll and 32nd notes are introduced together.

Exercises

Exercise 1 - 8th Note Double-Stroke Roll

 Simple 8th note measure played on the snare drum with double-strokes starting with the right hand then moving to the left and then repeated.

8th Note Double-Stroke Roll

Exercise 2 - 16th Note Double-Stroke Roll

 This is an expanded version of exercise 1 above, but we double the number of strokes.  Again start with the right hand and play the 1, e with the right hand then &, a with the left hand.  Repeat the same for the other three sets of sixteenth notes.

16th Note Double-Stroke Roll

Exercise 3 - 32nd Note Double-Stroke Roll

 This again expands upon the previous exercise and again we double the number of strokes to be played. With this exercise, as I mentioned in the How to Count 32nd Notes above, you double the count of the 16th note.  In the image below, you start on the count of 1 by playing two strokes with the right hand, then play e with two stroke with the left hand, & with two stroke with the right hand and finally the a with two stroke with the left hand.  Repeat this for the other three sets of sixteenth notes in the measure.

32nd Note Double-Stroke Roll

Exercise 4 - Five Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

 Now that you have double-stroke roll under you belt, it's time to turn it up a bit and introduce an exercise that you can utilize to add a five stroke roll to you list of techniques.  The five strokes start on the count of & of 1 with two strokes with the right hand, a is played with two strokes with the left hand and the fifth note is played with the count of 2.  The pattern repeats itself with the & of 3 to the count of 4.

Five Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

Exercise 5 - Seven Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

 This exercise builds upon exercise 6, but we add another double to the count of two.  It starts like the other and we have a snare on the count of 1 and e then doubles on the &, a of 1 and 2 ending with the seventh beat on the e of 2.

Seven Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

Exercise 6 - Nine Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

 This is a bit different than the first two, starting with doubles on the count of 1, e, & and a and the ninth note ending on the count of 2; repeat for the count of 3

Nine Stroke Double-Stroke Roll

 There you have it, an introduction to the rudiment double-stroke roll and 32nd notes and some applied examples to get you in some practice and take it to the drum kit.  You can click here to download a copy of the exercises in a PDF file so that you can take it to the kit and start adding this to you technique.

PDF File: Double-Stroke Rolls and 32nd Notes

Resources

Online Rudiments Resources:

Vic Firth : Vic Firth Presents: 40 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments
Freedrumlessons.com :  The 40 Drum Rudiments
Freedumlesson.com : Learn To Count Thirty Second Notes

Double-Stroke Roll Books:

Stick Control for the Snare Drum by George Lawrence Stone : Amazon

George Lawrence Stone's Stick Control is the original classic, often called the bible of drumming. In 1993, Modern Drummer magazine named the book one of the top 25 books of all-time. In the words of the author, it is the ideal book for improving ""control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and muscular coordination,"" with extra attention given to the development of the weak hand. This indispensable book for drummers of all types includes hundreds of basic to advanced-level rhythms, moving through categories of single-beat combinations, triplets, short roll combinations, flam beats, flam triplets and dotted notes, and short roll progressions.

Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman : Amazon

Used worldwide, this one book contains all the fundamentals needed for playing drums. It is exceptional value for the money!

Mini-Monsters of Rock by Joel Rothman : Amazon

This study has almost everything you always wanted to know about rock drumming. It contains disco beats, coordination exercises, rock breaks, and much more.

Read more >>

Technique - Take Your Stick Control to the Next Level

Hello again fellow drummers, musicians and followers. I came across something that I had to include in my daily practice routine and thought so highly of it that I wanted to pass a long to you as well.  I hope that it will assist in improving your drumming technique and allow you to get the best out of the time that you are spending during your practice sessions. 

This technique improvement is based on the book Stick Control for Snare Drummers written by George L. Stone published originally back in 1935.  You can order a copy of the book from Willis Music Store or from Amazon.com: Stick Control for Snare Drummers written by George L. Stone. 

This book is one of the most highly recommended drum books ever written in order to improve your technique; no matter what type of drummer you are. Here is the description of the book on Amazon:

"George Lawrence Stone's Stick Control is the original classic, often called the bible of drumming. In 1993, Modern Drummer magazine named the book one of the top 25 books of all-time. In the words of the author, it is the ideal book for improving ""control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and muscular coordination,"" with extra attention given to the development of the weak hand. This indispensable book for drummers of all types includes hundreds of basic to advanced-level rhythms, moving through categories of single-beat combinations, triplets, short roll combinations, flam beats, flam triplets and dotted notes, and short roll progressions."

My drum instructor informed me that I will be working out of this book in the future. Okay, enough about the book, lets get to the meat and potatoes of why I'm writing this, the exercise that inspired me.  This repost is from jazzsnob on the DrummersMagazine.com Official Discussion Form posted on 09/08/2006 (see resource STICK CONTROL (george L stone) your experiences and suggestions) in which he describes how he was taught to use the exercises that are in the book:

"This is an awesome thread, and I hope it gets stickied. I'll add the way I learned.

This is by no means the only way to do stick control, but this is a proven way to get some serious technique together. It requires A LOT of patience, and I don’t suggest starting it if you aren’t going to finish it. It’s EXTREMELY difficult sometimes. And also, the method takes about 3-5 years to complete. And you only practice the first page of the book. 

THE JIMMY SAGE/CHUCK BROWN/BILLY GLADSTONE METHOD FOR STICK CONTROL. 
Set your metronome to an 8th note of about 100. Most drummers should be able to do anything on the first page at that tempo after a few minutes of messing around. Now spend an entire week working(I’m sorry, I don’t have my book with me, so I don’t have exact numbers) on the . Just singles, doubles, and the first paradiddle exercise. Only those two , extremely slow. The doubles and paradiddles should sound EXACTLY like singles. It’s good to go over this method with a teacher, or to record yourself doing it on a snare drum to make sure everything is perfect. Then, one week later, you practice single, doubles, and the next exercise, inverted paradiddles(RLLRLRRL). If it takes you two weeks to get it perfect, fine. Give youself time on these excercises.

Another difficult part of the exercise is that every minute or so you should raise your stick to at least a 12-16 inch height and play at that height for 8 measures. Then you bring in back down. You must do this perfectly in time and make sure all the strokes are still uniform in dynamic and tonal quality and all that jibba jabba. This will give you “good pain” after a while, your muscles WILL get sore, but they will never give you terrible pain.

Remember, just like G.L. Stone said, stay relaxed 100% of the time, even when you go up. You should be putting at least 30 minutes a day into these excercises.

So you spend 2 months, going through excercises 5-24 or something at tempo 100. Done now? Great! Now you do it all over again at 104! and 108! and 112! and 116! and so on!. Never go up more then one click on a metronome when starting the page over.

The reason this exercise method is so difficult is because you have to be so patient. A lot of younger drummers especially want to start faster, speed up the next day, blah blah blah. If you do that you WILL NOT IMPROVE AS QUICKLY. This exercise really seriously does require patience. It apparently takes an entire year to get from 200 to 208.

The reasons this exercise is GREAT are numerous. First of all, you are always working on singles and doubles. Singles and doubles are what most of drumming is made of. Second of all, spending a couple weeks on only one combination of 8 notes makes you completely intimate with the pattern, and you will be able to interchange it in time with any feel you want. I guarantee you that by the time you finish this exercise(in 2112 or so) you will have some SERIOUS technique. One of my drum teacher’s older students is on 176 or something(he's been doing for 3 1/2 years) and has some crazy technical abilities. 

Good technique means you can learn parts faster.

Yay for good technique!

p.s. do these excercises on a practice pad with LOTS of rebound. Don't worry, you won't need a pillow to "feel the burn" once you get to about 138 or so."

This is a great technique of the application of exercises the book has to offer that will help build your technique as I quote the book, "control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and muscular coordination,"

I have been using this technique now for about two weeks and I already have seen improvement in playing singles, doubles and the paradiddle as it relates to grooving these with the metronome. I have also turned on my instructor onto this method and maybe one day he will be using it with his other students.

 

Resources:

Top 25 Timeless Drum Books by Modern Drummer Magazine:
http://www.moderndrummer.com/site/2013/04/25-timeless-drum-books/#.UZr7oUmv9mI

STICK CONTROL (george L stone) your experiences and suggestions:

http://drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17751&highlight=stick+conrol

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