At one point or another, most drummers who aspired to be great watched their hero play in a way that they’ll never forget. That inspiration fueled their daily practice routines, constant rhythmic and rudimental studies, and took them from one performance to the next. But inspiration alone isn’t enough to take full advantage of your potential.
Great hands start with extraordinary attention to drum technique development. It’s what you’ll rely on to articulate rudiments and express your musical ideas fluently. Without a strong commitment to developing technique and rudiments, leveling up your drumming won’t be possible.
This guide is designed to help beginners build a strong foundation. It’s also intended to support intermediate and advanced players who want to level up their performance by continuing to improve their drumming techniques and rudimental development.
Getting back to the basics is not a beginner activity. It’s something I’ve been thinking about almost daily for more than 20 years. The nice thing is that attention to the basics, the fundamentals, is often the only issue holding drummers back from making the next jump in improvement.
The secret to great hands is simple. You’re either controlling (stopping) the rebound or letting the stick rebound. Everything else is a variation on those two drum techniques.
Let’s get into the two basic drum techniques and the best ways for you to develop them.
Rebound Strokes
The rebound stroke is the first lesson that every great drummer has to master. It’s one of two strokes that comprise all of the rudiments and possibilities with drum sticks. The other is the controlled stroke, which we will get to later in this article.
Rebound strokes occur when you let the stick bounce back up to the preparation position. This drum technique requires drummers to have a proper grip and motion, so let’s get into the grip before we proceed with the rebound strokes.
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Gripping the Drumstick
To find the area of the drumstick to grip, it into thirds. Between the first and second third from the butt (no tip end) pinch with your thumb and index finger to establish the fulcrum. Some drummers use their thumb and middle finger. That’s up to you. I use both, depending on whether I’m playing drums or cymbals.
The fulcrum is important because it’s where the stick is going to be held on to, for the most part. Your fingers are going to help control the stick, but you don’t want to limit the stick in terms of its motion. If you limit the motion of the stick you’re going to lose energy and therefore have to put more energy into it, losing efficiency and overall performance potential.
Wrap your finger loosely around the stick, and let it move freely while remaining ready to stop the motion if necessary. You want to be able to use your fingers to control the motion and control the stick but not limit it, unless that’s the kind of control you are trying to achieve — a controlled stroke (see below).
Types of Grips
The three types of grips that Rhythm Notes teaches include German, French, and American.
- German Grip: Palm facing down so the back of your hand is flat.
- French Grip: Thumb is pointing up with the touching surface of your hand facing inward.
- American Grip: This grip is in between French and German.
I focus mostly on American grip because it’s very ergonomic for me. But what’s more important than the nationality of your grip is how it feels when you hit the drum.
If you place your hands at your side and naturally bring them up to play without moving your wrist or pronating (rotating) your forearm, you will be ready to play. You’ll have a lot of power if the back of your hand is facing upward. How much? Try about 80 percent and adjust for power and range.
Plus, with American grip, you have the finesse and control of French grip and the power of the German grip.
Ready Position (a.k.a, Playing Position)
So much about drumming is about hitting drums. What about the opposite motions — the movements that need to happen to position your hands and sticks to play? These motions are the most fundamental and ultimately determine whether a stroke is even possible.
In your ready position, try starting with your stick straight up. This might not sound or seem too comfortable at first — it may even look awkward. I wouldn’t recommend this for like a parade drumming situation. It wouldn’t just wouldn’t look good.
But as far as developing hands and technique, it’s perfect for rebound strokes because you’re starting where you’re going to start your stroke. It’s also where you going to finish your stroke once the stick rebounds back up to where it started.
If you start with the tip of the stick close to the drum head, you have to raise the stick and then strike the drum. That added motion becomes a lot if it’s not necessary.
When you stop the rebound and don’t let the stick come back up to where it started, that’s a different stroke — a controlled stroke. We will get into that in the next section of this article.
Practicing Rebound Strokes
Practice only makes perfect if you practice well. You can do something a lot and never get better. Luckily, practicing well is not hard. It takes discipline and commitment, along with the right routines.
Related: How to Practice Drums If You Want to Be Great
Rebound Stroke Exercises
The first exercise is called eight on a hand, and it’s eight rebound strokes on each hand. Remember to focus on staying relaxed, breathing, and your ready position. It’s also a great exercise to develop a strong grip that’s not too tense.
You can keep on going through this cycle as long as you want. Perhaps you should try 20 minutes or even just two. It depends on where you are in your development. It also depends on how much time you have to dedicate to developing drum techniques.
The next exercise that I recommend is called eighths and sixteenths. Although the title starts with eighths, this exercise starts with sixteenths. It’s designed to develop even, hand-to-hand rebound strokes, as well as transitions to leading with your other hand.
It doesn’t matter which hand you start with. The important thing is to balance the development of your hands and start exercises with the hand opposite of your dominant one.
The goal is to have two dominant hands — right and left.
Relaxation and Muscle Development
Developing great hands is about developing your mind and body. Relaxation, posture, and breathing are three things to focus on while practicing. Follow these for better muscle development.
- Relax your arms and your shoulders — they should feel like jelly.
- Avoid gripping the stick too tightly. You will use too much energy and stress muscles and other tissue in destructive ways.
- Keep your back straight. Slouching can affect your breathing and overall concentration.
- Clear your mind of distractions. If your practice begins to feel like meditation, you’re doing it well.
If you choose not to take relaxation seriously, you’re not going to get the most out of the drum, the sticks, or cymbals.
Sometimes you’ll drop your sticks. That’s not a big deal. Pick them up. Eventually, it will feel very comfortable — your hands and sticks will float around the instruments, fluently executing your musical ideas.
Use a Metronome
Practice with a metronome, and set it to slow, medium, and fast tempos. Try to push yourself, but if you start to feel any sort of tension in your arms, stop give and it a rest. Maybe shake it out a little bit, stretch, breathe, and then get back to it. You do not want to be drumming through that tension
The metronome will help measure how much you are pushing yourself. Keep track of your specific tempos on the exercises, and bump them up each week or month, depending on how much your practice.
Try different subdivisions.
- Start with quarter notes and move through the subdivisions incrementally, ending with 32nd notes, for example.
- Don’t forget triplet subdivisions, too. Smoothly transitioning from 8th notes to 8th-note triplets and back is a sign of a drummer with great hands.
It’s important to know that if you do this properly over time, you will feel great strength in your arms, especially if you practice consistently relaxed at the right tempos and with the proper drum techniques as we’ve discussed here.
Controlled Strokes
If you stop the rebound, it’s a controlled stroke. That’s the difference. You’ve used your fingers to stop the stick from bouncing off the drum and up to a stick height that’s ready for the next stroke.
The controlled stroke allows us to quickly switch between one stick height and another. This effectively creates enough dynamic contrast to establish accented and unaccented strokes.
Practicing Controlled Strokes
Since the purpose of a controlled stroke is to differentiate stick heights to create accented and unaccented strokes, the exercises are designed to place accents among rebound strokes. The following exercises are designed to develop the coordination to transition from controlled to rebound stroke in almost any combination.
Controlled Stroke Exercises
The first exercise is high on the list of most important exercises you’ll ever learn. It’s called accent to tap — some drumline instructors call it “bucks.” The goal of this exercise is to define the controlled stroke and then the rebound stroke that follows at a lower stick height.
Exercise 1
Let’s say you’re playing rebound Strokes at a lower stick height like three or four inches. If you want to add accents, you’ll have to play higher stick heights, like nine to 12 inches. To get back down to the lower rebound stroke stick height, the controlled stroke helps you make that transition.
The second exercise explores accents that are more spaced out by incorporating groupings of fours and twos and threes. This exercise is a great opportunity to focus on even rebound strokes at lower stick heights — anywhere from three to six inches.
Exercise 2
If the transitions from lower stick heights to higher stick heights are not mastered, it’s impossible to play the rudiments properly. You may be able to kind of fudge through them, but they’re going to be messy. Playing them on the drum set, for example, will sound all over the place because of the lack of definition.
Additionally, accent to tap exercises are a good opportunity to practice adjusting your grip to stop the stick and release it for the rebound. Make sure that the focus is on relaxation because tension will negate the work you do with accent to tap exercises. Tension ruins everything you’re doing to develop great hands.
Moeller Technique
Most drummers want to learn how to play fast. What a lot of drummers don’t realize is that speed is achievable through mastery of the rebound and controlled strokes. The Moeller Technique is the secret to playing these transitions between higher and lower stick heights fluently with definition and speed.
It has three different types of movements to achieve a cycle of accented and unaccented strokes.
- Up Stroke
- Down Stroke
- Tap Stroke
The Moeller technique uses the weight of your arm to add mass to the stroke and the movement of your arm to add height, which increases your potential stick height and therefore the energy coming back to the drum.
1. Up Stroke
2. Down Stroke
3. Tap Stroke
The conservation of energy that the Moeller Technique provides is the most significant part. It allows drummers to play faster and louder without using as much energy to maintain control of the stick heights or hand-to-hand combinations.
This is an important drum technique because when you learn other rudiments like paradiddles, you’ll be able to combine rudiments and shift (permutate) accents with more ease.
It’s also important for playing rudiments like hand-to-hand flams, which are explained in one of the following sections of this article. Pay close attention to how the controlled stroke helps you prepare for the grace note.
Drum Rolls
This section discusses two types of rolls — open and closed (buzz) — and the sticking patterns that determine the lengths of each roll. An open roll is created from open double strokes, while the closed strokes (or press) make a multiple bounce roll (or buzz roll).
Both types of rolls are named in terms of how many strokes it takes to make the roll. We talk about the different rolls in terms of their rhythmic structure because it’s easier to count them that way.
Exercises below explore the five-, seven-, and nine-stroke rolls. You can make a roll that’s any amount of strokes for any length of a roll, but the following exercises focus on these three.
The five stroke roll is literally five Strokes — 2 strokes on the right hand, strokes 3 and 4 on the left, and a single stroke to release the roll. The counting structure for three 8th notes is 1 + 2. If the rhythmic structure (first measure in the example below) is an 8th note and two 16ths, it’s counted 1 + a.
Five-Stroke Roll
The doubles are both rebound stokes. Some players start developing their rolls by dropping the stick and letting it bounce. It’s a good place to start and get the feel of the stick bouncing, but it’s not enough.
Once you start treating these double strokes like two rebound strokes, and giving them the strength they deserve, your playing will that much stronger. Try the following exercise to build this strength and coordination.
Double Beat Exercise
The following exercise explores the five-stroke roll by starting it on different sixteenth notes within the beat. Each variation begins with a check pattern and follows with a five-stroke roll that relates to the check pattern.
Five-Stroke Roll Exercise 1
Five-Stroke Roll Exercise 2
Five-Stroke Roll Exercise 3
Try these exercises with multiple bounce rolls, too. Play the exercises slowly until you can build up some speed without losing control. The exercise description and tempo you are practicing are the kinds of information you should be logging in your practice journal.
You can try the same approach to practicing seven- and nine-stroke rolls as shown above with the five-stroke. Just add another double stroke or multiple bounce stroke, depending on the type of roll, onto the five, and you have a seven. The same goes for the nine-stroke roll.
Seven-Stroke Roll
Nine-Stroke Roll
Open Roll Exercises
The roll exercises in the 5-stroke roll format above are good for reading and counting. I prefer to practice rolls in more of drumline approach because it gives the hands a good workout and they’re easy to remember.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Drag Exercises
The next set of exercises incorporates accents and drags. Drags are like a three-stroke roll. Just add a double stroke to one note in a check pattern, and you’ve created a drag. The following exercise explores drags on different 16th notes, while adding accents to other notes in the second exercise.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Drum rolls can be organized musically in so many ways. We have only discussed some of the basic configurations, so you should definitely try different ones as you practice and develop your drum techniques and rudiments.
Paradiddles
Right | Left | Right | Right || Left | Right | Left | Left
Paradiddles are a sticking pattern that combines single and double strokes. They make it easy to play complex patterns of accented and unaccented notes at almost any tempo. It gets fancy when you realize how useful paradiddles can be when moving from one instrument to another to play your parts.
There are three types of paradiddles:
- Single paradiddles
- Double paradiddles
- Paradiddle-diddles
The paradiddle-diddle is a paradiddle with an extra diddle. This is important to think about because, unlike the single or double paradiddles, paradiddle-diddles always lead with the same hand. This isn’t a hard rule, of course. You could lead with the opposite hand, but it requires a transition beyond the rudiment, which is just composition at that point.
Sometimes paradiddles are accented, and sometimes they’re unaccented. The accents are usually on the downbeats, but that’s only a basic approach. Moving the accents around to different stickings in the pattern is a simple way to make things very interesting (see the exercise below).
In order to incorporate accents, It’s important to define the stick heights. Like explained above in the section on controlled strokes, the accents are only such in relation to a lower stick height that we call a tap. Accents and taps can be any stick height as long as they are not the same in a relative musical phrase. The important rule to follow is to make it deliberate. In other words, define the stick heights to bring clarity to music.
Paradiddle Exercises
Let’s go over some of the paradiddle exercises. It’s important that when you do these exercises that you’ve warmed up with some of the rebound and controlled-stroke exercises. This gets your brain thinking about relaxation and, coordinating accented versus unaccented notes. It’s also important to
Here are some more tips for playing exercises.
- Practice these exercises slowly, medium, and then a little faster with a metronome.
- Keep your posture straight and ready position consistent.
- Run everything through with both right-hand and left-hand lead. This strategy is great for your brain. Plus, it’s the beginning of the end of your “weak hand.”
- Focus on even stick heights. For example, if your taps are six inches and accents are nine inches, make sure your taps don’t creep up to nine inches.
- Give each stroke the strength it deserves. Dropping strokes just to play faster or get through your practice routine is counterproductive.
- Focus on developing your Moeller Technique to maintain your relaxation while still producing enough sound from the drum.
The first exercise is designed to work both hands equally. It’s a long exercise when you factor in all of the repeats. The first measure repeats before continuing to the extended phrase. Then, the end of the extended phrase brings you back to the beginning of the exercise on the left hand (if you started with your right).
Paradiddle Exercise 1
The next two exercises can be played with paradiddle-diddles or double paradiddles. The 8th-note or single paradiddle transition at the end each phrase is the only difference between the two exercises.
Paradiddle Exercise 2
Paradiddle Exercise 3
The last set of exercises follows the moving accents concept. Only this time, the 16th notes are played with paradiddles. This is an excellent test of your Moeller Technique. If it’s not strong, this exercise will expose you at faster tempos.
Paradiddle Exercise 4
Paradiddle Exercise 5
Flams
Flams are two strokes played at the same time but one hits the drum before the other. The primary stroke is a higher stick height than the grace note. Since both are played at the same time, the grace note stick will hit first, creating a rhythmic anticipation.
Grace notes are usually an inch and a half to three inches, but higher grace notes are possible as long as they maintain the flam sound where one stick hits the instrument before the other, which brings us to another issue.
Some flams are very tight — meaning that the space between when the grace note hits and the primary stroke are very close, almost hitting at the same time. If the stick heights are the same and the sticks hit at the same time, it’s called a double stop. Those are not flams.
Other flams can be played more openly by opening the space between the grace note and the primary stroke. Play around with how close the grace note and the primary stroke make contact. As your control over this space between the strokes increases, you’ll find that the stick heights on an instrument like drum set don’t matter as much to produce good flams.
Hand-to-Hand Flams
The first flam rudiment is hand-to-hand flams. To develop the transition from right-hand flam’s to left-hand flam’s, it’s important to practice accent to tap, which is exercise that comes up a lot when trying to gain clarity in your rudimental performance.
Control over the rebound of the stick is especially important because the grace note for the next flam requires that the stick stay close to the head. In other words, as you play alternating flams and you want to play those flams really fast, it’s just a matter of being able to use the Moeller technique to coordinate the accent to tap motions explained above.
Flam Accent
The second flam rudiment that we’re going to work on here is the flam accent. The flam accent is a flam followed by two unaccented alternating rebound strokes. The exercise below separates the right and left hands before combining to create the rudiment.
Flam accents are awesome because can add a lot of different things, like drags (diddles) on any stroke in a flam accent. Depending on which stroke you apply the drag determines what we generally call these new “hybrid” rudiments.
Flam Drags
Let’s try flam drags. Add a double stroke on the second triplet eighth of each beat. Notice that the exercise separates the check pattern, drags, and flam accents before combining them to make flam drags. I suggest returning to the check pattern in between because it trains your hands to maintain the basics — rebound and controlled strokes.
You can add diddles to the downbeat, too. A lot of drummers call them cheeses. Try the same exercise design shown for the flam drags, and be sure to maintain proper stick heights as you add a diddle to the primary stroke of a flam.
Speaking of hybrid rudiments, flam fives are another cool combination of flam drags and cheeses. Just add a five-stroke roll starting on the primary stroke of the flam to create flam fives.
Swiss Army Triplets
Before we move forward to the last set of flam rudiments, I want to share a sticking variation on the flam accent. If you add double strokes to the flam accent rhythm, it creates Swiss Army Triplets. The following example includes the check pattern before a measure of Swiss armies with a flam accent transition on beat 4.
This is a really cool rudiment for drumset, especially if you’re coming off cymbals and transitioning to drums. Swiss Armies and variations on sticking patterns with flams add a thickness to the transitions from groove to fills that can be really powerful.
While we’re talking about drum applying rudiments to drum set, it’s important to play them well on the practice pad. Otherwise, it’s not going to go well on the drum set, as Ed Soph would say. In other words, if you’re not moving well on the pad, you’re not going to move well on the instrument. And if your movement is out of control, your music will be out of control, too.
Flam Taps
The next rudiment is flam Taps, which is just a double sticking with a flam on the downbeat.
Right | Right | Left | Left
Like the flam accents, it’s another rudiment that develops well after you practice each hand separately before bringing them together.
You may notice that when you play one hand on the practice pad and the other on your leg (or other surface) that there’s a triple beat. That triple beat can be accented or unaccented, and it’s important to practice them to train your brain to give those strokes the effort they deserve.
The following exercise includes the lead hand triple beat in the first measure, followed by the other hand triple beat in the next measure. The last measure brings the, together to play the flam tap rudiment.
Flam taps work really well with other rudiments, like Swiss Army triplets. Check out the exercise below to see what I mean.
Inverted Flam Taps
Just as the name describes, inverted flam taps are like flam taps with taps that are the opposite hand as the flam primary stroke. If the flam is on the right hand, the tap is on the left.
Use the same exercise as the regular flam taps by adjusting the sticking. This is a great exercise to do for working on control if you can practice this without getting too tense. You’ll have great control over your hands and transitions.
Flam Paradiddles
Flams are cool because, as Steve gadd would say, you add so many more strokes when you add flams. If you’re practicing paradiddles, for example, put flams on any subdivision.
You’ll get a great workout by adding flams to the moving accents exercise, too.
Final Thoughts
Developing your hands as a drummer is a lifelong pursuit. Beyond the amount of time you dedicate toward being great, the drum techniques and methods are the only difference between average drummers and the best.
I stand by these drum techniques because I’ve learned them from the best. This is why I chose to share them with you.