Welcome back to Drum Lessons at Hackney Wick Drum Studios. Today we have another great drum lesson in our rudiment series covering the Single Stroke 4.
This is a nice one to learn because it uses a few of the tools we've already picked up in previous lessons. As the name of it suggests, we have a group of four single strokes, and the way it's played is a Triplet, followed by the fourth note on its own. Take a look at the Eighth Note example below.
As you can see with the notation, it's simply a Triplet on beat 1, followed by a Quarter note on beat 2, followed by the same thing again on beats 3 and 4. If you need to go back and recap on the Triplet lesson fro a few weeks ago, you can take a look at that here. Remember to count the Triplet as 1-TRIP-LET, with each syllable accounting for 1 note.
Check out the video below to see how it should sound at 60 & 90 BPM
SINGLE STROKE 4 - 8TH NOTES
Now we're going to take a look at a slightly different and more advanced way of playing it. This time we're introducing Sixteenth notes into the mix, so now you'll have more notes to fit into each bar.
So what's happening here is that you've got a 16th note triplet on beat one, and you're finishing with the fourth note of the group, an eighth note on the and of the 1. Then this simply repeats for each beat of the bar. Here it is played at a few tempos to give you an idea of what it sounds like nice and quick.
SINGLE STROKE 4 - 16TH NOTES
This is a great one to move around the drums once you're comfortable with the sticking. A nice idea to get going with is to play each beat on a different drum. An example of that would be something like this.
Here, we're just moving around the kit from Snare on beat 1, Tom1 on beat 2, Tom2 on beat 3 and finally onto the Floor tom for beat 4.
Like all drum rudiments, the possibilities are endless. They are a great way to add colour and expression to your playing and even though they're not particularly difficult to master, they sound super impressive.
Let me know what variations you come up with, I'd love to hear from you.
So that's it for another drum lesson here at Hackney Wick Drum Studios. If you've enjoyed this free drum lesson, there will be another one next week where we'll be looking at the single stroke seven.
If you need any help with anything contained in todays drum lesson, why not book an online video lesson and I can help you through any aspect of it, or any other area of your drumming that you're looking to improve upon. I'd love to help you expand on this rudiment and show you some other great applications on the drum kit.
I also offer drum lessons in Hackney at my studio, so you can also enquire about that or anything else by getting in touch at jack@hwdrumstudio.com, or book a lesson direct.
Thanks for checking out another drum lesson with me, and i'll see you next time!
Happy drumming!