Emmanuelle Caplette | Rudiments, made fun
Emmanuelle Caplette came from drum corps to become one of drumming's clearest educators. Her book, her playing, and her Sonor and Sabian setup.
Rudiments have an image problem. They are the vegetables of drumming: everybody agrees they are good for you and almost nobody enjoys them.
Emmanuelle Caplette has built a career on the unfashionable position that they are actually the fun part — and, more importantly, on being able to prove it.
Here is one of drumming’s best current educators.
Who is Emmanuelle Caplette?
Emmanuelle Caplette is a Canadian drummer and educator from Quebec.
She started at nine, in a drum and bugle corps — which is the single most rudimentally rigorous environment a young drummer can be in — and won a string of competitions as a snare drummer before she ever sat behind a kit professionally.
That grounding is audible in everything she does. Her hands are corps hands: even, controlled, and capable of a great deal at low volume.
The playing
She has performed with Stéphane Rousseau, and with Andy Summers in Circa Zero — the Police guitarist’s project — and has appeared on a long list of Canadian and US television, including the Jutra Awards, Belle et Bum, Broco Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers.
The teaching
This is where the reputation lives. Her YouTube channel has passed 20 million views, and she has been a regular presence on Drumeo for years.
In 2021 she published Smile! You’re Drumming — a multilingual training book built out of short, motivating exercises, and drawn from more than thirty years of playing and analysis. The title is the thesis: this is meant to be enjoyable.
Drumeo’s panel gave her the Jim Chapin Award for Education in 2021.
What Emmanuelle Caplette actually does
Her hands are exceptional. Drum corps snare technique — clean doubles, even singles, an immaculate roll — applied to a kit.
She plays with a very light touch. Corps players learn control at low volume before they learn power, and it shows.
She makes technique musical. The exercises in her material are grooves and phrases, not abstract patterns. That is a deliberate pedagogical choice and it is the reason people actually do them.
She teaches without mystique. Clear, cheerful and entirely free of the guru posturing that occasionally attaches to drum education.
She is a genuinely good pop and rock drummer. The television work is straight, tasteful, in-the-pocket playing, which is a different skill from the technical material and she has both.
Emmanuelle Caplette’s setup
Every era, with buy links, is on Emmanuelle Caplette’s Rig Vault page.
Want the sound without the rig?
Her whole approach is a strong argument that gear is not the answer, and she is right.
Buy a practice pad and a metronome. That is it. That is the shopping list. Almost everything that makes her hands what they are was built on a flat surface.
Then work slowly. The corps method is to play a rudiment at a tempo where it is perfect, then move the metronome up two clicks. Not ten. Two. Our rudiments guide covers the patterns, and our how to drum faster piece covers why slow practice is the fast route.
If you do want a kit, the Gear Guru will spec one to a budget — but the pad first.
Where to start
- Her Drumeo material. Start with the rudiment videos; they are the best argument for her approach.
- Smile! You’re Drumming (2021). Short exercises, multilingual, genuinely usable.
- Circa Zero live footage. Her playing straight rock behind Andy Summers.
- Her YouTube channel. Twenty million views is not an accident.
Final thoughts
Drum education has a lot of people who can play and a much smaller number who can explain. Caplette is firmly in the second group, and her particular gift is making the least glamorous part of the instrument feel worth doing.
The Chapin award — named for the man who wrote the most rigorous hand-technique book in drumming — is a neat fit for a drummer who came up through a bugle corps and never stopped caring about the fundamentals.
Smile. You’re drumming.
See Emmanuelle Caplette’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Dom Famularo — the man the award is now named after.