This lessons follows on from our Four Stroke Ruff Sticking and Four Stroke Ruff With Quarter Note Feet lessons. It will be much easier to follow if you are familiar with the content from these lessons.
In rudiments such as the Single or Double stroke roll it was very simple to just move these around the kit to create orchestrations. As discussed in our flam lessons, this isn't really the case with grace note based rudiments such as ruffs. Rolls are about playing consistant groups of a note value with a specific pattern where as a ruff is a method of decorating these kind of patterns. That doesn't mean these orchestrations can't be directly applied as fills, it is just that they are far lesson common and there is far less variety.
The patterns given on this page make very good exercises for getting you comfortable with the rudiment as they force the hands to move around the kit. I have added feet to each exercise also to increase the challenge. Feel free to remove the feet whilst you are learning the orchestration then adding them back in later. Experiment with using different feet patterns from our previous lessons and try different sticking variations also. In later exercises the orchestration switches part way through the bar. Both quarter and eighth note versions of the rudiment have been used.
Each pattern is notated for the standard sticking of the rudiment but it is always a good idea to use reversed and alternate sticking with these kind of patterns.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Exercise 5
TASKS
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all exercises up to a tempo of 150bpm with good hand technique.
- Use all three sticking patterns with each exercise.
- Create your own feet patterns for the exercises.
- Create your own orchestrations of the rudiment.
- Play all 5 exercises as a continuous 5 bar pattern, then repeat.
