The following three exercises are designed to work your entire body. They involve leading with both hands, and moving your hands a bit of a distance (in a short amount of time). They should help you get used to moving around the kit in some different ways. These movements may seem uncomfortable to you now, but they should become second nature after a while.

Exercise 1 is made up of two ideas. The first half of the bar is a single-stroke roll in a triplet form with cymbal, bass drum, and hi-hat embellishments. The second half of the bar is a broken-up double-stroke roll, moving from the cymbals to the snare drum with bass drum and hi-hat embellishments. I recommend practicing both sections individually before playing the entire exercise.

Once you try this exercise, you'll see that by following the notated stickings, your hands will be moving back and forth from cymbals to snare in a short amount of time. As you work on it, you'll find that you'll be able to come off of crashes faster and more cleanly.

One final pointer for Exercise 1: when playing it with the correct accents, I sing the melody to "I love to be in America," from West Side Story. It help me think more about the phrasing than just the notes.


Exercise 2 is something I like to work on for getting used to accenting in odd places in the measure, as well as giving my bass drum foot a good workout (when played up to tempo). Be sure to follow the indicated sticking, and lay into the accents.


The last exercise will help you incorporate doubles into your fills.



With all of these exercises, don't be in a hurry to play them faster than you can cleanly execute them. Once you've got them up to a good tempo (dotted quarter = 80), play them each individually for at least a half hour without stopping, varying the dynamic level. You might drive your neighbors crazy, but you'll get a great workout. I've found that by practicing this way, when I try to apply these ideas musically, they're automatic. Once you've reached that point, try moving some of the written snare drum parts to the toms - that'll give you a whole new set of challenges!


Reprinted from Modern Drummer magazine, June 1991