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.
Every rudiment, one page each
Each of the forty has its own page: the notation and sticking, a play button, what it is and how to practise it. Open one from here, or pick it in the trainer above.
Roll rudiments
Singles, doubles and buzzes, and the numbered rolls built from them. Rolls are where hand control and evenness come from.
Diddle rudiments
The paradiddle family: singles and doubles mixed so the accent moves between the hands. The most-used stickings in drumming.
Flam rudiments
A soft grace note just ahead of a full stroke. Flams add thickness to a note, and the flam rudiments put them into rolls and paradiddles.
Drag rudiments
Two grace notes, played as a quiet double, into a main stroke. Drags are the ornament of marching and concert snare playing.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Accents make the rudiment — taps low (an inch or two), accents high. The contrast is the whole point, especially in the paradiddle family.
- 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.
Filming a rudiment at tempo is the honest way to check it — andDrum Filters will make the phone clip sound like the pad and snare deserve before it goes anywhere.