Learning Drums Lesson - The Five Stroke Roll Video Lecture - Learn how

today we're going to study another
rudiment called the five stroke roll the
five stroke roll is a great rudiment for
developing the hands further in that it
works both your lead and non lead hands
and can be applied several ways in terms
of execution and movement around the
drums the five stroke roll we're going
to learn today is to be played using a
combination of doubles and single
strokes
we'll start by playing the exercise
right right left left right for a while
and then switch around to play the
exercise the other way left left right
right left we can see quite clearly that
two double strokes and one single stroke
give us five hits in total and for the
minute we'll play all the notes slowly
just using wrist motions exercise 1 1 2
3 4 here's the same exercise leading
with the left exercise 2 1 2 3 4
as you gain confidence with these
exercises try alternating between right
and left hand lead exercise three a one
two three four the five stroke roll is
normally played at quite a fast rate and
therefore often written out not using
sixteenth notes as in our previous
exercise but with thirty-second notes
instead here in exercise 3b we have two
ways of writing out a five stroke roll
you can see in the first bar that there
are three beams on the top of the notes
instead of our normal two beams for
sixteenth notes this means we're
doubling up in speed to play
thirty-second notes ie twice as fast as
sixteenth notes the second bar is
another way and probably even more
common way to write drumroll notation it
has two little beams written through the
first eighth note and is then tied to
another eighth note quite tricky at
first but all you have to remember is
that it's telling you to play
thirty-second notes to the value of an
eighth note with an eighth note on the
end
in other words play two doubles followed
by a single exercise three b1
three four okay one really important
thing about playing five stroke roles or
any role for that matter is that as the
tempo increases I have to be able to
change my technique from playing wrist
motions to either a wrist and finger
combination or more commonly a rebounded
double it's a good idea to practice your
five stroke rolls many times and start
slowly using wrist motions and gradually
increase the temple whilst all the time
trying to identify the point at which
you need to switch to rebounded rolls
with rebounded five stroke rolls
I'm diddling the first two doubles and
playing a normal wrist stroke on the end
I suggest that if you haven't done any
stick control exercises before then go
back and watch my lesson on the drag in
order to learn how to manipulate the
sticks to achieve this rebounded double
or diddle here's another couple of great
exercises to help you develop your five
stroke roll where the first bar includes
the hand motions for the roll only and
the second bar has the rebounded doubles
included exercise for one
three for exercise five one two three
four practice these exercises many times
on the snare drum and be sure to play
lots of repetitions with both wrist
motion and rebounded doubles once you've
got the basic execution right we can
take the last two exercises and use them
on the kit here is a groove version of
exercise five played using hi-hat snare
drum and bass drum it's based on a
two-handed hi-hat rhythm and will just
try and add one roll in towards the end
of the second bar exercise six one
two three four exercise 7 one two three
four now let's try playing some fills
using five stroke rolls exercise eight
one two three four exercise name one two
three for the execution of your five
straw rolls on a snare or practice park
is your prime concern when you first
learn this rudiment being able to
control the sticks by using wrist
motions as well as rebounded doubles is
a very difficult but important lesson to
learn just be sure to incorporate they
stick control element into your daily
practice routine and be prepared to
spend long periods of time just going
from slow wrists played doubles
eventually swapping to rebounds when the
tempo increases and then back down again
swapping back to wrist motions once
you've got some control established
trying making up your own groove or fill
embellishments with five stroke rolls
good luck and bye for now