Unlock Your Drumming: Hand Technique for Beginners (Part 1)

Exactly what is a rudiment, anyway? Here you'll learn what they are and why they are so important to you in everything you play, regardless of what style you play.

The first two foundation rudiments. Almost every other rudiment is made up of these two sticking patterns in one way or another. This is your third backing track "Mixed Singles and Doubles", which you'll need throughout this section of the course. Make sure you can play up to Level 5, whilst tapping your foot or playing the bass drum before moving on to the next exercise.

This is one of those rudiments that seems a lot more scary than it really is, so I've devised a method to make it as simple as possible. A paradiddle is simply a mixture of single strokes and doubles strokes. This exercise will have you playing paradiddles in next to no time. Make sure you can play up to Level 5 with the "Mixed Singles and Doubles" track, whilst tapping your foot or playing the bass drum, before moving on to the next exercise.

Now we get to the fun stuff. In this lecture you'll learn about inversions and gain an understanding of how to create more complicated sticking patterns and increase your drumming vocabulary.

This is an insiders trick for practicing a difficult exercise up to speed as quickly as possible. You can use this method for other exercises in the course.

Things start to get quite tricky now as we explore the reverse paradiddle, the inward paradiddle and the outward paradiddle. These are some quite advanced concepts, but once you have an understanding of these you'll gain great control at the drums and be able to play some complicated sticking patterns. Play these exercises with the "Mixed Singles and Doubles" track, and remember you need to get to level 5, with bass drum or foot tapping, before moving on.

Your fourth backing track of the course. Here we begin putting everything you've learnt so far into one fun practice routine so you can experience changing sticking patterns at speed. This is an awesome exercise for drum set control. Remember to play this with the "Workout #1" backing track and play the bass drum or tapping your foot. Try to get up to level 5 before moving on.

Your final exercise, and fifth backing track of the course. Here you'll learn a different sequence to perform your paradiddle inversions, and begin exploring how these will sound when you play them on different surfaces of the drums. By now you will have excellent control of rebound strokes, you'll be able to perform some complicated sticking patterns, and you will have learnt some different musical forms along the way too. Now you will be able to begin Part 2 of the course, where we look at how create excitement by introducing dynamics into our playing.