Ratamacoups with different feels

Ratmacoups With Different Feels consists of just one ratamacue-based breakdown that will be taken in a few different directions to challenge your hands, feet, eyes, ears, and brain. Although the ratamacue rudiments are rarely written in modern battery percussion music, these patterns will have tremendous relevance and demand for stick control, doublestroke, roll timing, and singlestroke fundamentals. Working on these patterns will pay dividends for your more broadly-applied drumming skills, while also giving you a more comprehensive understanding of one of the classic 26 essential rudiments.

The last two pages of this rudiment study consist of exercises with a variable written “mark time” component, much like the exercises you will find in the free book Mark Time Mark, also available on this website. In fact, I wrote this exercise before I wrote that book, and it was in writing this exercise that I got the idea for the book! But life happens, and it happens a lot, so I haven’t gotten around to re-visiting this rudiment study and fleshing out all the explanatory verbiage until now.

Drag Control

Drag Control runs through some different interpretations of the tap drag and flam drag rudiments to build mastery over doublestroke attacks and spacings. The main idea is that “if you can do it wrong, then you can do it right.” By exploring some extremes of how a rhythm can be incorrect, you learn to hear and feel the difference between correct and incorrect attacks and spacings.

I pulled this exercise off the cutting room floor of the NC State Drumline exercise packet… I recently found a very early handwritten draft that included several exercises which, despite not making the cut, are actually quite versatile and worthy of study. This exercises was probably not included because the Tap Five builder covers the same ideas and then some. The slurred tap drags in measure 2 are not intuitively easy to read, so it was easy enough to work on different tap drag variations by rote, and leave the Tap Five builder as the thing people needed to read, prepare, and use to develop fulcrum awareness. For more rudimental interp exercises like this, check out Rudiment Control.

Two on a Hand

Two on a Hand is a double-beat exercise that will really stretch your understanding of time, as well as your stick control on doublestrokes. I always meant to write this into an ensemble warm-up, but I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think it would pay off much to try and get a whole line to play it. This is a very challenging exercise to get right, but I think it is worthwhile for individual practice.