What are they?

Rudiments have a ‘military’ or ‘march-like’ sound and are sticking patterns (variations of Rights and Lefts). They are essential to work on in learning drumming. They improve coordination, rhythm, stick control and give us patterns on how to express our musical ideas around the drums. There are many rudiments, we’ll take a look at some of these later in this Blog!

What’s the history?

The origin of the rudiments can be traced back to Swiss Mercenaries armed with long Pole Arms with the first written rudiment dating back to the year 1612 in Basel, Switzerland. The cradle of rudimental drumming is said to be France, where professional drummers became part of the King’s honour guard in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

These rudiments became standard patterns played in marching bands throughout the world and later in early 20th Century made their way on the first drum kit.

Video Lessons

In this next section I have prepared 3 video lessons on just some of the rudiments.

Video 1 is on ‘Basic Rudiments’ and suitable for beginner drummers onwards. This takes you through the Single Stroke Roll, Double Stroke Roll and Paradiddle and shows how to practice this on the drum kit.

Video 2 is on the ‘Paradiddle-diddle’ rudiment and suitable for intermediate drummers and up, although beginner drummers can still play along to parts and watch the video for fun.

Video 3 is more of an advanced video although beginner and intermediate drummers can still watch and take part with what feels comfortable! This is on the ‘3 Stroke Ruff’ rudiment which is single stroke based pattern.