How I Practice Snare Drum Rudiments
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For any serious snare drummer, practicing and mastering snare drum rudiments is a requirement. They are the basic building blocks to every piece of snare drum literature today, almost like ingredients in a cookbook. Put a bunch of these ingredients together and now you have a solo! Pretty cool stuff. An idea that Edward Freytag capitalized on when he wrote the famous The Rudimental Cookbook.
Reflecting back on my time as a beginning snare drummer, I wish I had some of the tools that I know and use today. It would have really accelerated my growth, but hindsight is 20/20. If you are interested, below are some of the tools that I use.
Work on the Underlying Rudiment
Not to get too inception-like here, but almost all rudiments can be broken down into other rudiments and skills. For example, the paradiddle can be looked at as two single strokes and a double stroke. Flam drags can be thought of as a flam, a three-stroke, and a double stroke. You can even think of double strokes as two single strokes. This can obviously become a rabbit hole, but what I suggest is finding the sub-rudiments and developing those to work on your target rudiment. For example, check out how I break down a flam paradiddle:
While, I could certainly go deeper, I found these three to be the most helpful in developing this particular rudiment.
Play it Slow!
I know, I know. If you’ve read any of my practice blogs, you have heard this a ton, but I can’t say it enough! Playing things slowly is super effective. It will give you the ability to really focus on the nitty-gritty of the rudiment you are working on. Is my flam a consistent quality? Is the double in the paradiddle well-timed? Are my hands relaxed?
It is also worth noting that if you are a beginner percussionist, some rudiments require you to build some coordination that you may not have yet. For example, in high school, I struggled with playing paradiddles while marching. It was a skill I had to work on with slow practice and patience
Separate your Hands and Use Double Stops
Similar to finding the underlying rudiment in this example, you are going to extract what a single hand is doing in a rudiment and play only that. The goal is to develop each individual hand so that you don’t have to process or think about it in the context of the full rudiment. Check out the example below, where I break down a Pataflafla.
This method works really well for rudiments like paradiddles and flam drags where each hand is playing the same part (they will be displaced in time). When this is the case I like to use double stops, so I can ensure that my weak hand is keeping up with the facility of my strong hand. Check out my breakdown of the flammed mill below.
Practice Gridding!
Once you reach a certain mastery with a rudiment, this is where you take it to the next level. To grid something means to take an aspect of a rudiment and shift it through all of the partials. For example, If you are working on paradiddles shift the accent from the downbeat to the second sixteenth note partial and then to the third, and then to the fourth.
This can be a confusing topic to explain through words, so check out the example below where I grid a paradiddle.
Paradiddles may be easy to learn, but gridding paradiddles is a whole different beast. Take a look at the third and fourth partial. There are some serious accent/tap technical challenges to overcome, which will require some shedding.
The awesome part about gridding is that you can apply this to almost any rudiment you want. You just need to find something to shift through the partials, such as an accent, diddle, or flam. Check out this example, where I grid a Flam Accent, but I shift the flam.
Good luck!
I hope you find these tips helpful when developing your rudiments. As for the next steps, try applying these rudiments to solos such as 14 Modern Contest Solos by John S. Pratt!
If you want to find more information to improve your snare drumming check out this post here, where I break down three ways I improved my snare drum facility.
