Drum rudiments: all 40 with stickings, and the five to learn first

The sticking exercises shown on this page are from the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1, by Kennan Wylie and Gregg Bissonette. It teaches singles, doubles, paradiddles and flams as part of a full drum-kit course, on the pad first and then around the kit.

Every fill, groove and snare part a drummer plays is built from a small set of sticking patterns. Drum rudiments are those patterns, named and written down, so you can practice each one alone until your hands play it without thought. A practice pad and ten minutes a day are enough to start.

This guide explains what drum rudiments are and why there are both 26 and 40 of them. It shows how to read the sticking letters and teaches the five rudiments to learn first, with a practice plan you can run against a free metronome. Then come all 40 in one chart, a printable sticking sheet and ways to move the patterns from the pad to the kit.

Drum rudiments are the standard sticking patterns that drummers practice as the building blocks of technique, such as the single stroke roll (RLRL), the double stroke roll (RRLL) and the single paradiddle (RLRR LRLL). The Percussive Arts Society lists 40 of them, and that list includes the 26 traditional American rudiments.

What drum rudiments are

A rudiment is a short pattern with a fixed sticking: which hand plays each note, which notes are accented and where the small grace notes fall. R stands for the right hand and L for the left. The Hal Leonard Drumset Method calls rudiments the fundamental sticking patterns that all drummers should know well, practiced at different tempos and dynamics with a relaxed feel.

The patterns come from military field drumming, where the snare drum carried signals and camp calls. Today snare and kit players learn the same set, so a teacher can say “play a paradiddle” and every student plays the same eight strokes. On the drumset, the same stickings become fills around the toms and grooves split between the hi-hat and the snare.

Rudiments are not only for marching band. You need no kit to learn them. A practice pad, a pair of sticks and a metronome cover the first months, and the pad is quiet enough for an apartment.

How many drum rudiments are there: 26 or 40?

Both numbers are real, and the 40 contains the 26. In 1933 the National Association of Rudimental Drummers (NARD), whose members included William F. Ludwig Sr. and George Lawrence Stone, set out the Standard 26 American Drum Rudiments. The list came as two sets of 13. It was based largely on the 25 rudiments in Gardiner A. Strube’s 1870 Drum and Fife Instructor, with the single stroke roll added.

In 1984 a committee of the Percussive Arts Society (PAS), chaired by Jay Wanamaker, reorganized the 26 and added 14 more. The result is the 40 International Drum Rudiments, grouped into four families: rolls, diddles, flams and drags. These 40 are the current American standard.

The 14 rudiments added in 1984 are the single stroke four and single stroke seven, the multiple bounce roll, the triple stroke roll, the six stroke roll and the seventeen stroke roll. The diddle family gained the triple paradiddle and the single paradiddle-diddle. The flam family gained the single flammed mill, the pataflafla, the Swiss Army triplet, the inverted flam tap and the flam drag. The drag family gained the single dragadiddle. The chart further down marks which of the 40 belong to the original 26.

If you want to work through the traditional set as its own course, a dedicated book keeps the 26 together. The 26 Traditional American Drumming Rudiments by John S. Pratt is a 24-page book that groups them as rolls, flams, ruffs, ratamacues and paradiddles. It adds roll charts and two rudimental solos, “The Sons of Liberty” and “The All-American Emblem”, so you play the patterns in real music.

How to read a rudiment

Rudiments are written on a single line or on the snare space of a staff, with the sticking printed under each note. Five marks cover almost every rudiment:

• R and L. The hand that plays the note: right or left.
• Doubled letters. RR or LL is a double stroke: two strokes in a row by the same hand.
• Accent. A small wedge (>) above the note means play it louder than the notes around it.
• A flam. One small grace note before the main note, with a lower-case letter for the grace note: lR means a soft left just before a full right.
• A drag. Two small grace notes before the main note, played as a quick double stroke by one hand: llR means two soft lefts just before a full right.

The figure puts these marks on one line so you can see each of them once before you meet them inside a rudiment. Notice that the grace notes and their lower-case letters are smaller than the main notes.

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Many rudiments are written twice, once leading with the right hand and once with the left. Learn both. If you are left-handed, you can swap every R and L.

Hold the sticks first: grip and stroke

Check the grip before the first pattern, because an uneven stroke makes the whole rudiment uneven. Most beginners start with matched grip, where both hands hold the sticks the same way, palms facing down. The Hal Leonard Drumset Method sets it up in a few steps:

• Hold the stick between the thumb and the index finger, about four to five inches from the butt end. That pivot point is the fulcrum, and it should stay secure.
• Keep the thumbs on the side of the stick, with the thumbs almost facing each other and most of the back of each hand facing up.
• Rest the back fingers lightly on the stick without squeezing, so the stick can bounce.
• Hold the sticks at close to a 90-degree angle to each other, with both tips in the center of the drum or pad.

The photo from the method shows matched grip from above. Look at the angle between the two sticks and at how both tips meet in the same small area of the head.

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Traditional grip is the other common grip. The right hand is the same, and the left stick sits in the webbing between thumb and index finger and rests on the ring finger. Players who use it often tilt the snare drum slightly downward. Either grip works for every rudiment on this page. Both grips and the rebound stroke are shown step by step, with photos from the method, in the guide to how to hold drumsticks.

The basic stroke is the rebound stroke. Start with the wrist turned up, throw the stick toward the drum and let it bounce back by itself, the way you dribble a basketball. The method asks for a stick height of at least nine inches and plenty of wrist, without jabbing from the forearm. Accents and flams add a controlled stroke, where you stop the stick about two to three inches above the head after it strikes.

The five drum rudiments to learn first

Five rudiments carry most of what the other 35 ask of your hands: alternating strokes, double strokes, the mix of the two, and the two kinds of grace notes. Learn them in this order. For each one, start with the metronome at 60 BPM and play two notes per click.

1. Single stroke roll

Sticking: R L R L R L R L. The hands simply alternate, one stroke each, and the goal is that a listener cannot tell which hand is playing. The method’s single-stroke exercises move from eighth notes to sixteenth notes in the same bar. Six sticking lines go with them, from plain alternation to patterns that start on the left hand.

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The usual fault is a weaker or lower left hand. Watch the sticks: each one should rise to the same height. If one comes up short, the two hands will not sound the same.

Close your eyes while the book’s recording of these exercises plays and try to tell the hands apart. Then listen for the bar where the eighth notes turn into sixteenths. The strokes come twice as fast there, and they should stay as even as the slower ones.

2. Double stroke roll

Sticking: R R L L R R L L. Each hand plays two strokes in a row. PAS calls it the double stroke open roll, and it is played so that each note can be heard distinctly. Play both strokes of each pair from the wrist, with the stick rising to the same height for each.

The figure shows one bar of sixteenth notes in double strokes, the way the roll is usually practiced on a pad.

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Most often the second stroke comes out quieter than the first. Practice the pairs slowly and listen for two strokes of the same volume. Speed comes later.

3. Single paradiddle

Sticking: R L R R L R L L, with an accent on the first note of each group of four. A paradiddle is two single strokes followed by a double stroke. Because of the double, each new group starts on the other hand, which makes the paradiddle a common way to switch the lead hand in the middle of a phrase.

The method lists the single paradiddle with its relatives, the double and triple paradiddles and the paradiddle-diddle.

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Watch that you do not rush the double at the end of each group, so the four notes come out uneven. Count “1 e & ah” and place every note on its syllable. The guide to the paradiddle covers its inversions, the strokes behind the accent and the grooves and fills built on it.

4. Flam

Sticking: l R, r L. A flam is two notes from opposite hands that land almost together: a soft grace note first, then the full primary note. The method gives the stick heights. The grace note comes from two to three inches above the drum and the primary note from about nine inches. The two strokes should sound like one thick note, slightly longer than a single stroke.

The method’s flam exercise alternates the flams, so each hand plays both the grace note and the main note.

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The usual faults are a flat flam, where both sticks hit at the same moment, and a grace note that drifts too far ahead. Keep the grace-note stick low and the main stick high, then let both fall together.

The recording starts with a bar of plain single strokes and then plays the book’s flam exercise. Compare the two: each flam should sound like one note, a little thicker and longer than the single strokes before it.

5. Drag

Sticking: l l R, r r L. A drag is two grace notes, played as a quick double stroke by one hand, just before the main note of the other hand. The main note is usually accented. Once the drag is even, add the single drag tap, which follows each drag with one more stroke: l l R L, r r L R.

The figure shows the drag and the single drag tap one above the other, so you can see the extra stroke that turns one into the other.

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If the drag sounds messy, the grace notes are usually too loud or too far apart. Play them close to the head and close together, so they lead straight into the main note.

How to practice drum rudiments

Rudiments improve with short, regular sessions more than long, occasional ones. Ten minutes a day on a pad is a good start. A practice pad lets you practice without the volume of a real drum, so you can work at home at any hour.

1. Start on the pad. Use the grip above and aim both sticks at the center of the pad.
2. Set the metronome at 60 BPM. Play two notes per click with the free online metronome. If a rudiment is not clean at 60 BPM, it will not be clean at 120 either.
3. Raise the tempo in small steps. Add a few BPM only after a full minute without a mistake, and drop back when the strokes go uneven.
4. Play slow to fast to slow. The PAS rudiment sheet asks for every rudiment to be practiced open (slow) to closed (fast) and back to open, or at an even, moderate march tempo.
5. Lead with the other hand. Play each rudiment starting with the left as often as with the right. Many of the method’s sticking exercises start on the left.
6. Vary the volume. The method recommends practicing each rudiment at different dynamics, which trains the stick heights as well as the sticking.
7. Record yourself. A phone recording shows uneven strokes and a weak hand far more clearly than listening while you play.

The method’s first sticking exercise is a good daily warm-up. It runs through 24 combinations of single and double strokes, half of them starting on the left hand. The book sets the metronome at 150, 170 and 190 BPM for it. Start at 60, like everything else, and work up to those tempos.

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The book has a recording of this exercise, and for playing along it asks you to go through each line four times before moving on. Follow the numbers on the figure while you listen. Line 2 is the double stroke roll and line 4 is the single paradiddle, so you hear two of the first five rudiments inside the warm-up.

After the first five rudiments, it helps to have a course that orders the rest of the work for you, so you do not skip the reading and the slower steps. Buddy Rich’s Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments is a classic choice for that. Rich wrote it with Henry Adler, and Hal Leonard dates the first edition to 1942. Its 120 pages hold a systematic course for the beginner: 83 lessons of exercises and rudiments, 21 reading exercises, 10 exercises built on rudiments and advanced rhythmic studies.

All 40 PAS drum rudiments

The chart lists the 40 PAS International Drum Rudiments in their official order, with the family, one cycle of the sticking and whether the rudiment was already in the Standard 26. Lower-case letters are grace notes. Where a rudiment repeats on the other hand, both halves are shown. Five rudiments are marked to learn first.

In the five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, fifteen and seventeen stroke rolls, every stroke but the last is part of a double, and the last one is accented. The ten stroke roll ends on two accented single strokes. The six stroke roll starts and ends on accented singles with two doubles between them.

You do not need all 40 at the same level. Most drummers use a small group every day and learn the rest as the music asks for them. A sensible order is the five above first, then their close relatives: the rolls from five to nine strokes, the double paradiddle, the flam accent, the flam tap and the single drag tap. The rest come after those.

The chart is also available as a free printable sticking sheet on one page, grouped by family, with the learn-first five highlighted. Print it and keep it beside the pad.

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From the pad to the drum kit

On the kit, you split a rudiment between drums and cymbals. Two simple moves turn the same stickings into a groove and a fill.

A paradiddle groove. Play the single paradiddle as steady eighth notes, with every R on the closed hi-hat and every L on the snare. Add the bass drum on beat 1. The accents of the paradiddle now fall on the hi-hat, and the doubled notes give the groove a different shape from a plain rock beat.

A single-stroke fill. Play a bar of sixteenth-note single strokes and move the pair of hands around the kit, four notes on each drum: snare, high tom, low tom, floor tom. Then play a crash with the bass drum on the next beat 1. Start with one beat of fill at the end of a four-bar phrase, and lengthen it once the landing is clean.

On the snare, try a flam in place of a plain backbeat note, or a drag leading into an accent. To try these ideas in real music, pick a song from our list of easy drum songs to try them on, and play a short fill at the end of each section. If the fills are written out on a chart, the guide to drum sheet music shows how to read them. The guide to eighth and sixteenth notes covers the counting behind every rudiment.

Hybrid rudiments

A hybrid rudiment combines two rudiments into one pattern, or adds notes before or after an existing one. The PAS list already contains a simple hybrid: the flam drag joins the flam and the drag. Marching drum lines, especially in drum corps, have built hundreds more since the 1990s, with names such as the “cheese” (a double stroke with a grace note). Learn the 40 first; hybrids are combinations of the same parts.

Frequently asked questions

What are drum rudiments?

Drum rudiments are standard sticking patterns that drummers practice to build control and speed. Each one fixes which hand plays each note and where the accents and grace notes fall. The single stroke roll (RLRL), the double stroke roll (RRLL) and the paradiddle (RLRR LRLL) are the best known.

How many drum rudiments are there?

The Percussive Arts Society lists 40 International Drum Rudiments, published in 1984 in four families: rolls, diddles, flams and drags. They include the Standard 26 American Drum Rudiments that the National Association of Rudimental Drummers set out in 1933, plus 14 added by PAS.

Which drum rudiment should I learn first?

Start with the single stroke roll, alternating R L R L at 60 BPM with two notes per click. Then learn the double stroke roll, the single paradiddle, the flam and the drag, in that order. Together they cover the motions that the other rudiments combine.

Do I need to learn all 40 drum rudiments?

No. Most drummers use a handful every day and learn the rest as the music needs them. Master the first five, then add their close relatives such as the five and seven stroke rolls and the flam tap. The full list stays useful as a reference when a piece calls for a rudiment you have not met.

Can I practice drum rudiments without a drum kit?

Yes. A practice pad and a pair of sticks are all you need, and the pad keeps the volume low enough for home practice. Use a metronome, keep the sticks in the center of the pad and move the patterns to a snare or a kit once they are even.

Start with one rudiment and a click

Pick the single stroke roll, set the metronome to 60 BPM and play it for ten minutes, both hands at the same height. Add the double stroke roll, the paradiddle, the flam and the drag one at a time, each from the left hand as often as from the right. Keep the sticking chart beside the pad and move a rudiment onto the kit as soon as it sounds even.

To take these rudiments from the pad to the kit, the Hal Leonard Drumset Method, Book 1 works them into beats and fills page by page, with Gregg Bissonette’s video lessons.