Are you a single stroke player?

[2bsticks]

I have been playing drums for 40 years and consider myself a single stroke player. Can anyone shed some light or better yet give examples of how I can incorporate double stroke sticking into my playing. I know that practicing rudiments is a great tool for developing independence but for me trying to incorporate some of this stuff into my playing music seems to be a roadblock to me.
Thanks drummers

[Class A Drummer]

Whether it be on the snare or the set you can do the same thing generally. Try just doing 4 bars of singles, then 4 more bars of singles, but on those, throw doubles on every down beat with your right hand. Then do 4 more bars of normal singles, then 4 more bars of singles, but double the second 16th note in ever set of 16th notes, and so on. (if you know what i mean.).

Then you can try throwing in different rests and adding random doubles in. This is a good method for you because you said you are more of a single stroke player, so by doing this you will be playing more to your strenths even though you are switiching it around.

[FunkRaft]

i always thought that playing 16th note doubles on the high hats and ride hitting the snare on two and four sounded pretty cool, great for break downs or to communicate a change.(right hand on ride, left on high hats). Take the second stroke (2E) to the toms or off the high hat or wherever you like.
Thats all i got, wish i had more for you :P

Justin

[Wavelength]

One of the greatest double stroke applications on the drum kit is the concept of right (or left) hand lead, which means that you play the accents around the kit with the right (or left) hand and play the ghost notes on the snare (or other places) with the left (or right) hand. For example, playing an accent on every third stroke around the kit might prove to be a bit problematic, since you need to do a lot of cross-overs, but by utilising left hand double strokes and right hand accents you can play the same pattern a lot more fluidly. Try applying various rudiments on the drum kit and you'll see the benefit of using double strokes quite clearly.

[rjvsmb]

I have been playing drums for 40 years and consider myself a single stroke player. Can anyone shed some light or better yet give examples of how I can incorporate double stroke sticking into my playing. I know that practicing rudiments is a great tool for developing independence but for me trying to incorporate some of this stuff into my playing music seems to be a roadblock to me.
Thanks drummers

Hey 2b,

May I recommend the book, The Charley Wilcoxon Modern Rudimental Swing Solos for Advanced Drummers. This book will show you how to use rudiments around the kit. It is a challenging and effective book.

You can find it at Sheetmusicplusdotcom

Best,
rjvsmb

[fourstringdrums]

One of my favorite applications of doubles is in fills using 6's or 9's.

6 - RllrrL

9 - RllrrLRll

Try playing those either alone or together putting the accents on various drums and cymbals.

[Drummer Karl]

Personally for me the key when involving doubles and single-double variations on the kit:

Orchestration

Take a single paradiddle for example: RlrrLrll
First thing you gonna notice is that it`s all about two essential things, singles and doubles, singles or doubles. However, there are various variations how you could orchestrate this rudiment. Simplest may be a 3-level orchestration, means that you simply put the first note of every 16th note package on the Tom.

So following you`d get this: FT l r r HT r l l
Then maybe lay your right hand on a tom, left stays on the snare drum.

Or develop a groove. Right hand on Hi-Hat, left stays on the snare drum, the first left is accented, Bass drum on is played with the first right so on 1 and 3.

R l r r L r l l
B

There are many many possiblities...another one could be the Paradiddle-diddle: Rlrrll
How about playing that as a fill-in. Again, use this orchestration system.

Just some thoughts...be creative and write down your ideas!

Karl

[balboa]

sometimes to reserve energy, i use doubles instead of singles...it minimizes movement! rather than doing a single stroke roll down the toms, do doubles. start slow, get the notes even, and go from there. i also pick different rolls i would normally do single strokes with, and then i figure out how to do them with doubles. for instance:

Singles: each drum is struck twice for this example

snare, tom1, tom2, tom3, tom2, tom1, snare....

this roll involves going down and back up the kit. sounds great, but there is limited speed in doing this in a single stroke fashion. do it instead with doubles like this:

right hand snare, left hand tom1, right tom2, left tom3, right tom2, left tom1, right snare.....

when performed even, this sounds like your moving amazingly fast up and down the drums, but really your using doubles. and, by using doubles, you can achieve blazing speed with out muscle fatigue!