The single stroke roll is the most basic and essential drum rudiment out there. It’s the most used as well, so it’s essential to have good dynamic control and ability to play it at various tempos. Increasing the speed at what you’re able to play the single stroke roll can be quite troublesome and frustrating, especially if you don’t have the right collection of exercises to help you achieve that. Hence, in this free drum lesson, Jared Falk teaches ten different exercises that you can use to improve your single stroke roll speed, no matter the level at what you are right now.
Playing the single stroke roll consistently and with evenly spaced strokes should be your first objective. Before you start working on your single stroke roll speed, we encourage you to check what Lionel Duperron has to say about how to play the single stroke roll, so you can learn how to perform it accurately. Through that free drum lesson you’ll learn how to apply the single stroke roll to the drum set through a couple of drum beats and drum fills as well.
Jared Falk actually plays the ten exercises from this free drum lesson as one big ten-bar exercise. If you’d like to play it like so and if you’re not good at sight-reading, you’ll have to isolate each bar, learn it, and then play it in conjunction with the previous bars you’ve already memorized. Do it at a slow tempo and without a metronome as well, or you’ll have a hard time learning and playing these exercises at first. You can also mix and match different one-bar patterns for coming up with exercises of your own. This is a great way of making the time you spend practicing that more interesting. Remember to play these exercises with both right and left hand lead.
Another very effective way of improving your single stroke roll speed with these exercises is to move the strokes around the drum set. This will enable you to kill two birds with one stone – work on speed building while coming up with some cool sounding drum fill and drum solo patterns. For more speed building exercises around the drum set, check the free drum lesson “Developing Speed Around The Kit.”
This free drum lesson features MP3 files that you can download and use to practice along with on a snare drum or practice pad. You can also use these files to practice when you’re away from your drum set. Upload the files to your MP3 player and take it with you wherever you go. Play the exercises with your hands and use your legs as a practice pad. This is very cool if you have some time to kill at school, or even on the commute to work or school.