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How to play a Triple Stroke Roll - London Drum Lessons

Hello and welcome back to Hackney Wick Drum Studio. I'm Jack, your Drum teacher in London and today I'll be helping you learn a nice easy rudiment, the Triple Stroke Roll.


With the Single Stroke Roll, we had one stroke per hand, with the Double Stroke Roll, we had two strokes per hand, so it'll come as no surprise that with this one, we're going to be playing three strokes per hand. You can check out the Triplet Lesson for a quick recap o the counting for this one if you need to. While it's not the most widely used of all the drum rudiments, it'll certainly help you add some versatility to you playing and is great for developing had speed.


Make sure you've mastered your Singles and Doubles before tackling this one, it'll certainly help you achieve it quicker. So let's take a look at it below.



Here we have Eighth Note Triplets and as you can see, three strokes per side. 3 right hands for beat 1, 3 lefts for beat 2 and then continue throughout the bar. You'll want to start these very slowly indeed. As I always say, don't sacrifice the integrity of the rudiment for speed. If it starts sounding a bit muddy, you're going too fast.


As you start to increase your hand speed, you'll hopefully notice the stick starting to bounce. Now this should be a controlled bounce, you don't want the stick flying all over the place so work on keeping it consistent and in time. Make sure to use your fingers to control the rebound of the stick. Getting the bounce right will unlock so many different possibilities on the drum kit.


TRIPLE STROKE ROLL 60 BPM



You'll find this start to happen quite easily on the practice pad, not so easily on the snare drum and quite hard on the toms. Basically, the more rebound a surface has, the easier this drum rudiment is.


TRIPLE STROKE ROLL 90 BPM



Let's take a look at a few other examples of where this rudiment could be applied to the drum kit.

Here we're playing Floor tom on 1, Snare on 2, Mid Tom on 3 and High Tom on beat 4.


Now let's try a Sixteenth Note Triplet example.

This is just one way of applying it in a groove form, so why not give it a go and see what other ways you can find of applying the triple stroke roll around the drum kit. I've found it very useful for Jazz and Funk style Ride and Hi Hat Patterns. If you need so help with applications, I offer online video drum lessons, so no matter where you are in the world, come and learn all of your drum rudiments with me.


So there we have it for another drum lesson. Hopefully you've now got a good basic understanding of the Triple Stroke Roll. See how far you can take it!


Get in touch with me jack@hwdrumstudio.com with any questions or help you need with this, or any other questions you have regarding improving your drumming. Like I said above, I offer online 1-2-1 drum lessons, which you can book here. As a drum teacher in London, I also give lessons from my drum studio in Hackney, so you can always come down if you're in the London area and have your Drum Lesson in my state of the art Drum room.


Thanks again for checking out this free Drum Lesson, and I'll be back next time with another free drum lesson in my series looking at drum rudiments.


Until next time, Happy Drumming!


Jack x

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