Category: Filling/soloing

Alan Dawson’s “Ruff Bossa”

We’re laying it on pretty thick with the Reed interpretations right now, but I just went over this with a student, so I need to put up one…

Rudimental Reed: ruffs

Today’s Rudimental Reed entry is pretty straightforward— just make a ruff out of any note that doesn’t have an (untied) 8th note before it.  That’s an awkward way…

Houghton’s triplets

From Steve Houghton’s book Studio and Big Band Drumming, here’s an alternate sticking method for making triplets out of Syncopation. For most people the most familiar method is…

Six stroke rolls around the drums

I’m just cranking them out today. I’ve been using the last paradiddles around the drums thing so much I decided to write up something similar using another familiar…

First-inversion paradiddles around the drums

This came up in my own practice today, and I went ahead and wrote it up. I’ve been doing a fair amount of this kind of thing lately-…

Best books: Rudimental Patterns by Joe Cusatis

Rudimental Patterns Full Drum Set Studies for the Modern Drummerby Joe Cusatis This book represents pretty much everything I’ve always felt is wrong with the traditional approach to…