On the long road to learning their instrument, drummers will be faced with the prospect of rudiments. In certain genres, rudiments may appear irrelevant and be pushed aside by drummers. What they are missing out on, however, is the construction of important skills and muscle memory that could facilitate their musical expression. Here are some of the ways that learning rudiments can edify your musicianship.
Building Blocks
The PAS 40 International Rudiments are foundational building blocks of most of the drumming you’ll encounter. Essentially, these combinations are the building blocks of drumming that can be pieced together to create any musical phrase you can think of.
You can think of rudiments in terms of language, like the phonemes that make words. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a language, like ah, ee, p, th, etc. If you understand how these smaller units work together, you can figure out almost any word. The same is true for rudiments; if you acquire this knowledge, you’ll have powerful tools for working through future projects.
Practice Opportunity
Since rudiments are the building blocks of drumming, you can put them together or split them up in infinite ways to create exercises. There is a huge opportunity for building your technical skills, coordination, speed, and control using rudiments as your basis.
This could be as simple as creating musical phrases with two synergistic rudiments like flam taps/single flammed mills, paradiddles/double paradiddles, swiss army triplets/flam accents, and many others. These make great exercises for your hands to build your chops in a fun way and find new ways to use rudiments in your playing.
This could also go as far as playing rudiments using all 4 limbs in many combinations. A great way to build your dexterity in your feet, for example, is by playing rudiments. If you’re brave, you could try playing one rudiment with your feet while playing another with your hands; and the possibilities go on and on.
Builds Dexterity
There are many intricate skills one has to cover when learning drums; stick heights, accents/taps, buzzes, doubles, legatos, dynamics, velocity control…it can seem dizzying if you take each one on its own.
Luckily, the rudiments can teach you all of these things when working with them. In order to pull off ratamacues, for example, one needs to have control over heights, doubles, and accents/taps, giving you an efficient way to practice all of those techniques simultaneously.
While most drummers don’t necessarily use ratamacues in their punk-metal band, the skills it teaches you serves your overall dexterity and gives you greater control over your playing. This can open free up your attention to give to timekeeping, flow, etc.
Musical Opportunity
Rudiments are used all the time in music, whether it’s on drumset, in a snare solo, or a part for marching band. Rudiments are all over the place in drumming, and having that skill in your hands or feet can give you an edge when it comes to learning new music.
That being said, you can also use rudiments to create unique musical phrasings to define your Sound. With some creativity, you can create a virtually infinite number of variations to create grooves, fills, or licks.
For example, inverted paradiddles make a great ride cymbal/hi-hat/snare combination from which to create driving grooves. Paradiddles voiced around the toms can give a cascading effect to a fill. Six stroke rolls are employed with regularity for myriad linear phrases.
The possibilities really are endless!
What’s Your Story?
As I mentioned earlier, learning rudiments builds your musical vocabulary. Each combination can be thought of like a phoneme (the smallest unit of sound in a language). Phonemes are put together to form words, words to make phrases, phrases to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to make stories. It is incredibly difficult to write a convincing story if your vocabulary is limited.
In the same way, lacking rudimental knowledge can limit your potential for drumming. From the opposite perspective, gaining rudimental knowledge can unlock your potential for drumming, and open an entirely new musical world to you.
Just like everything else, though, the choice is yours. Your musical journey is your own, and you should pursue the things that serve your purpose. If this includes rudiments, then you have found a powerful tool to build your skills.
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