This lesson is a continuation of another lesson on Essential Techniques.

My first series of lessons with a new student revolve around rudiments and from the word go, there’s a solid introduction to independence or coordination if you prefer. I don’t like to think about drummers as being naturally coordinated. I’ve heard many times where someone says “Oh, I could never play drums. I’m too uncoordinated”. Now, you need to be coordinated but it’s something you can learn and develop. Where to start?

Rudiments are a great way to start coordinating your hands and from there, you can begin to add the feet with basic exercises to start the process.

So this lesson is devoted to the basics yes, but as you’ll see in the video, once you begin to explore the possibilities around the drums, you’ll begin to develop a language and your own ideas. The rudiments give you a place to start. The foot pattern (really basic at this stage) begins to teach the idea of having a part of your body on auto pilot while another part plays something else. When you play a rock beat, you don’t really think about your hi-hat – it’s just playing along while you decide what bass part or snare variation you are going to do. This is the start of that with your feet.

In the lesson we go through Single Strokes, Double Strokes and Paradiddle as eighth notes with crotchets on the bass drum. I play these rudiments on the snare drum. To take it a step further, we move the rudiments randomly onto the drums. By randomly I mean that I’m not playing a prearranged pattern. I’m just thinking the sticking and letting my hands move wherever feels naturally. If you have the rudiment memorized, you’ll be able to speed it up and move faster in the process. The only way to play the rudiments faster is to know how that feel to play. They have to be a muscle memory.

We can also play the rudiments as sixteenth notes with a crotchet pulse on the bass drum. This is realistically a more natural way to approach this concept and will spark some good ideas when you move them onto the drums.

I truly believe the Three Basic Rudiments are a sensational foundation for any drummer. Let me know your thoughts.

Hope you enjoy the video.

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CHECK OUT PART ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES LESSON HERE!