Top Tips for Approaching Technical Exercises

Okay, here we go with some top tips on how to approach and practice your technical exercises. Now, I'm not going to give a detailed technical lesson here. It's more a case of going through the technical sections in the Rock School books and breaking down the key components.

Key Components to Consider

What I feel to be most important when you're approaching those exercises includes:

• Dynamics
• Physical techniques to use
• Getting a nice flow of notes
• Using accents appropriately
• Understanding what to do when we flam

So, it's just an overview of the things that I think will give you an easier technical ride through your Rock School journey.

Grouping the Exercises

I'm going to break that down into different family groups, including:

• Singles
• Doubles
• Paradiddles
• Flams
• Drags and ruffs
• Linear applications
• Stroke rolls

There's quite a lot to look at there, but I'll give you as much information as I can in a short space of time.

Single Strokes

Let's get started with single strokes. Single strokes can be played with or without accents, and that's a key consideration because that will affect the physical technique used. We need to pay attention to that physical technique at all times, as it provides:

• Sound
• Timing
• Flow of notes
• Dynamics

Overall, we're trying to achieve a nice, efficient feel. We want to feel like we're playing the right notes and moving in the correct way to get that sound. Technique is all about sound and feel. The end result is how it sounds, and as a drummer, you need to feel as good and as efficient as you can.

Classical Single Stroke Roll

If I was playing a very typical classical single stroke roll (right, left, right, left), without accents, I would play like this using a natural bounce technique. In many of the technical study exercises, you're required to play through a range of subdivisions.

• When the subdivision is slow, it's not absolutely necessary to bounce the stick.
• As things get faster, it becomes difficult to maintain that without utilizing bounce technique.

In my technical demonstrations, I approach everything, even the slow rates of notes, with a bounce technique. So, if you start at a slower tempo, you might end up faster while using that same technique.

Patterns with Accents

Moving on to the patterns that have accents requires a different physical technique. If I was playing a group of three or four or more notes, as you'll see in the later grids, you might go from one note per beat up to ten notes per beat (including deck tuplets).

Incorporating Accents

We're required to play accents, most typically on downbeats. This requires us to employ a sequence of stroke techniques (sometimes called stroke sequences). Each of those strokes has a dedicated name that has evolved from other techniques.

For example, if I play a group of three notes, I'm going to play these as triplets at this tempo:

You can see I'm playing an accent on the downbeat on the quarter note, incorporating different physical motions to achieve the required dynamics.

Molar Technique

Now, we're incorporating accents and quiet strokes. It's not possible to just bounce the sticks because we won't be able to create that dynamic difference. The same goes for working through 16th notes, quintuplets, or 16th triplets, where we incorporate a series of stroke sequences.

These strokes are given names, such as:

• Down
• Tap
• Up

This evolved from the molar technique, a very common concept. It's something you should research further or discuss with your teacher. The terminology has evolved through generations of drummers, and familiarity with it is crucial.

Example Sequence

So, what I'm playing here in a group of three is:

• Down
• Up
• Tap

This sequence gives me a nice flow of notes and the required dynamics:

• Down, up, tap
• Down, tap, up, tap

General Tips for Single Strokes

It's very important to understand that the stroke sequences provide those dynamics, and there's a physical motion attached to every sequence. As a summary:

• Always check if you need to play an accent or not.
• If you don't play an accent, your best bet is to use natural rebound techniques; it makes life easier.
• You can use that technique with wrists or fingers (I was using wrists in my examples).

If you play accents, do some research or discuss it with your teacher. Think about how you're going to move the sticks and the specific motions to produce specific sounds.

Conclusion

That's it! Here are the technical exercises for your grade, played at the tempo stated in the book. I wish you good luck!