Hey guys, so I am currently working on George L. Stones' Stick Control book, and got stuck at page number 25, which include rolls in 6/8 and i really can't get that to sound in my head.
http://imageshack.com/a/img538/8438/9Er9nQ.png
Further in the book there are also rolls of 10, 12, 14. How do I count them and place them into the whole bar? It gets me confused because playing these odd numbers to a metronome really puts me off of time. Can anyone help with this? Thanks.
On pg. 25, the rolls are groups of 8. So, effectively you're playing a triplet and a group of 32nd notes if you've got your metronome set to click two beats per bar, which is usually how 6/8 is counted.
Let's start with exercise 13. Set your metronome to around 50 BPM. First, play your group of three on beat one as is - i.e. RLR. But, when you get to beat 2, play a group of 16th notes with only your left hand and add one more note to finish on the first beat of the second bar. Play NO MORE NOTES and let the click count the second bar. So, your count will be 1-trip-let 2e&a 1 (and the click will play beat 2 of the second bar). Your sticking will be RLR LLLL L. Use a metronome so you know you're evenly spacing your group of 3 and your 16th notes. Keep working at this until your groups of 3 and 4 are nice and evenly spaced. Once you've got that happening, you add your right hand to play in between the notes in your group of 4, to give you all 8 notes. Once you've got that, do the same with the second bar but reverse the hands. When you're good with that, toss them together.
In order to play the groupings of 10, 12 and 14, you first have to be comfortable playing groups of 5, 6, and 7. If you can play a group of 5 as single strokes, you then use that as the skeleton figure for double strokes to get a group of 10. That is, your wrists will be playing the group of 5 but with the second note provided by the rebound/fingers, you get a group of 10. On pg. 39, for example, correct execution of exercise 1 leads directly to exercise 9 - providing you have your double stroke technique together. In Ex. 9 you're simply doubling the subdivision of 5 from Ex. 1. Note that you don't need to count all 10 strokes, just keep track of the group of 5 - i.e. the first note of every double. The same follows for the 12s and 14s - i.e. count/track the groups of 6 and 7 rather than trying to count a blaze of 12 or 14 notes. You'll do your head in that way, as you've found out.
You can get this together much like you'd get your double stroke roll together in duple subdivisions like 8ths, 16ths and 32nds.
Set your metronome to around 40-50 again. Play a quintuplet (5) single strokes beginning on beat 1 followed by a quarter note on beat 2. You'll play 6 total strokes. On beat 3 and 4, take the check/skeleton pattern of 5 singles and make them double strokes. Keep track of the first note of the groups, don't worry too much about the second note. You can even those out later. Just get the feeling of evenly spacing your 5 initial strokes in the space. You can even try buzzes instead of doubles at first just to get the feel of elongating those 5 singles.
