You Never Master the Basics
After you hit a drum with one hand, you have two basic options:
- Hit it with your other hand.
- Hit it with the same hand again.
If you choose the first option and alternate from one hand to the other, this is called a ‘single-stroke roll’. It’s the first ‘rudiment’ a drum student learns.
Try it now on the table or your knees:
R L R L R L R L
[Apologies for my unconscious bias against lefties, who might find it easier to go:
L R L R L R L R]
Pretty easy, right?
So you might be surprised to hear that the best drummers I met - no matter how long they had been playing - they still practised their single-stroke rolls. It’s the basis of pretty much everything you play on the drums, and there’s always an element of it that can be improved - consistency, pace, tone, balance, dynamics - all of these aspects can be worked on.
That was something I clearly understood in my drumming career - a sense that I always needed to practice the basics, that I would never ‘master’ the single-stroke roll.
I think the equivalent in my current work is listening - it’s the foundational skill upon which everything else is built. Without listening, it doesn’t matter how good my questions are, or how much information I can deliver - if I’m not listening, I’ll end up asking the wrong question, or delivering irrelevant information.
What am I not hearing?
And who am I not hearing?
PS What’s your equivalent of the single-stroke roll? And did you practice it today?