DrumFaster

The rudiment trainer

All 40 essential rudiments in real notation, with the sticking in front of you and the pattern in your ears — right and left hands play different pitches, so you can hear exactly what your hands should be doing. Free in your browser; members unlock random practice mode.

Notation reads as on a practice-pad sheet: accents marked >, small slashed notes = grace notes (flam/drag), z on the stem = buzz. Big letter = full stroke · filled = accent. R rings higher than L, so you can hear the hands.

80BPM

Keep playing and the trainer deals you a new rudiment on its own — no stopping to choose, no favouring the ones you already know. The fastest way through all 40.

How to practise rudiments

New to all this? Our guide to why rudiments matter and where to start walks you through the first five, why they work and how to get them off the pad and onto the kit.

  1. Slow first — start where every stroke is deliberate (60–80 BPM), and only speed up when it feels boring. Sloppy fast practice teaches sloppy fast playing.
  2. Listen for the hands — the R and L pitches are different on purpose. If what you play doesn't match what you hear here, your sticking has drifted.
  3. Accents make the rudiment — taps low (an inch or two), accents high. The contrast is the whole point, especially in the paradiddle family.
  4. Build speed properly — when a rudiment is clean, take it to the tempo trainer — the link carries your current BPM over, so trainer mode climbs from right where you are — exactly as in our guide to drumming faster. Note the BPM you reached in the practice log and next session starts where this one stopped.

The four families

Rolls build your doubles and buzz control. Diddles — the paradiddle family — mix singles and doubles and move the accent between your hands. Flams add a soft grace note for thickness, and drags add two. Master a handful from each family and you can fake the rest — but the full 40 is the complete vocabulary, as codified by the Percussive Arts Society in 1984 — the end of a four-hundred-year paper trail that starts with Swiss fife-and-drum companies in the 1600s.

Worn your pad out? Might be time for fresh sticks — our drumsticks section has you covered. And to see rudiments in the wild, watch how the pros use them in our drummer features.