Understanding Drum Rudiments And Why They’re Important
While Guitar Players have basic scales to practice, drummers have rudiments to build a solid foundation. What exactly is a rudiment? Why do you need to know them? How do you use them? Each one of these is a great question, and a question we’ll answer in this article. In this article I’ll explain a bit about what drum rudiments are, how many there are and when and how you should use them. After reading this article you’ll have a solid understanding of rudiments and hopefully have a drive to head out and start learning them yourself.
How Many Rudiments Are There?
In total there are currently 40 different rudiments recognized by organizations across the world. The current list of 40 started out as 13 drum rudiments proposed by the National Association of Rudimental Drummers. They added an additional 13 rudiments and the Percussive Arts Society later again added another 14 to the list of 26 making the full 40 rudiments we recognize today.
A Rudiment at it’s most basic level is a pattern played usually on the snare drum aimed at improving stick and wrist technique as well as speed. These are most often played on a practice pad but can also be banged out on the snare drum of your kit. There are more advanced rudiments which require you to play them on your full kit and you’ll begin to recognize that these patterns are the building blocks of many drum patterns and beats in popular music today
Beginners can learn each rudiment on a practice pad then transfer what they learn to the drum kit later. The technique and playing it correctly should come first and speed of playing each rudiment is secondary.
What’s the importance of learning Rudiments?
A good analogy of learning drum rudiments is a professional hockey player who hits the gym every day. While there spot is hockey they still spend hours doing weight lifting, resistance and cardiovascular training which helps them with speed, endurance and strength when playing their primary sport.
The same goes for learning and practicing rudiments. Rudiments improve your stick handling, wrist control and over all technique whether playing them on a practice pad or a snare drum. It’s easy for beginner and advanced players to always want to pound the toms or practice a new beat, how ever you can never go wrong spending time on the basics and foundations of being a great drummer.
How to Learn the Rudiments
There are numerous free videos available on YouTube that talk about drum rudiments. Some will teach you rudiments on a practice pad, while others will be done right at a drum kit. If you really want to master all 40 rudiments I would suggest spending a few bucks on a drum course which has a focus on proper technique and covers all 40 rudiments in detail.
You can usually find anything you want to know online for free, it can often times be easier to spend a few bucks for quality instruction to save time and ensure you’re learning things the right way first time out.