Or like Dr. Watson alluded to, Sticking Patterns and the accented singles (3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s etc), exercises etc., bring awareness to the musicality and application. Rather than just playing for endurance without much musical context. Plus you can build ostinatos underneath with your feet and make it part of your entire drum-kit practice or warmup routine. (My personal favorite)Just work with the endurance exercises in Gary Chaffee's Technique Patterns book. Works for me
Rudiments...Rudiments...and more Rudiments.....Paradiddle-diddle..
Like.
Question: what BPM is a single stroke roll considered by some?
Admittedly, I haven't 'worked' on anything in the last 10 years..., except for surviving practice with band members.
All of this reading makes me want to go home and just wail away at my kit for hours. I don't think I've done that in decades.
Question: what BPM is a single stroke roll considered by some?
It depends entirely on the instrument. You can make a long tone or tremolo playing at a pretty low rate of speed on a large timpani, a concert bass drum, or a cymbal. On a woodblock or xylophone, which have a dry sound, you have to go pretty fast. I think generally most listeners perceive a fairly low rate of speed as a tremolo on whatever instrument. Super-fast continuous singles are kind of an overrated skill, in my book.
Super-fast continuous singles are kind of an overrated skill, in my book.
A SSR is a SSR at any tempo. If you are asking at what tempo should you strive for to get a nice smooth sounding SSR, I'd say shoot for 900 BPM, or 15 hits a second. It's a high goal. The world record used to be somewhere near 900 when they first started measuring that stuff. SSR start sounding creamy somewhere around 700 BPM, if I recall correctly. Start at a tempo you can do them cleanly, even if it's low like 400 BPM. Really. Cleanliness is THE most important element, aside from even-ness. If you can't do them clean, pull back to a tempo you can do them clean and work that until you feel you can bump it up a BPM or 2.
Roger. Yeah, I normally go for around 960BPM (actually 240 1/4 notes on metronome). That seems to be my upper limit for any sustained period of time.
What I've found, is that the tighter my snare, the slower I seem. I like a tight snare, but often find myself feeling slower (because I hear distinct hits, instead of a buzz type sound). I pride myself with accuracy, so more often I like the ability to count through a 32nd/64th notes (time signature permitting).
But years ago, I'd loosen my snare, to cover up my lack of speed. Though the only person that probably noticed all of this nonsense was me anyway.
For some reason, I've been lucky in that I have fairly mastered the double stroke roll. Way back when I used to take drum lessons, my insttructors insisted early on I learn the rudiments. I've found the singe stroke roll the most difficult - to start very slow, then slowly getting faster, then rolling, then coming out of it until I'm back where I started.
Looking at the great drummers of old, like Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa and those guys to Danny Seraphine, I've noticed they all had fantastic single stroke rolls.
So my plan? I have a good double-sided practice pad and I bought the Vic Firth logs - the wrist builders. I'm timing myself by started off at 30 seconds at a slow speed, then working up in 30 second or minute intervals and playing at a faster speed each time until I'm at my fastest. Then I spend a few mintues coming back down at slower speeds. I'm gradually increasing the amount of time I play, so I can build up endurance in my wrists without killing my wrists.
Is this a good way to approach this, or I am missing a better way? This seems to work, but not sure this is the most efficient.
Any ideas? Thanks!