Drum Rudiments
The 40 Percussive Arts Society rudiments, played back with the sticking, the accents, the flams and the drags exactly where they belong.
Pick a rudiment, set a tempo you can actually play, and follow the highlighted sticking. Right hand and left hand get different pitches, and accented strokes are louder, so you can hear the shape without watching the screen.
One stroke per hand, strictly alternating.
Twelve rudiments are free. Player adds the other 28, including every roll from the six to the seventeen, the full flam and drag families, the automatic speed trainer and saved practice routines.
Get Player · $9.99/moHow to Use the Rudiment Trainer
Pick a rudiment from the list, drop the tempo lower than feels necessary, and press start. The strokes light up one at a time as they play, the right hand sits higher in pitch than the left, and accented strokes are noticeably louder. That is the whole interface. What matters is what you do with it.
A rudiment is not a lick. It is a sticking pattern, a fixed order of right and left hand strokes, that shows up inside thousands of fills and grooves once you know it is there. The reason drummers drill them is not the pattern itself; it is that each one isolates a specific mechanical problem. Learn the pattern and you get a fill. Learn what the pattern is training and you get a hand.
Play along with the trainer rather than after it. If you are chasing the sound you hear, you are always late. Set the tempo slow enough that you can land exactly with it, then raise it only when landing together feels boring.
The Four Families
The Percussive Arts Society standardized 40 rudiments in 1984, folding the older Standard 26 American Drum Rudiments in with drum corps, orchestral and European patterns. They are organized into four families, and the family tells you what you are actually practicing.
Roll rudiments are about sustain: getting multiple strokes out of one arm motion, whether that is a single stroke roll, controlled doubles, or the pressed buzz of a multiple bounce roll. Diddle rudiments are the paradiddle family, where two singles and a double combine so the lead hand flips every cycle. Flam rudiments add a grace note from the opposite hand just before the main stroke, thickening it into one fat sound. Drag rudiments do the same with two grace notes instead of one.
Where to Start
Forty is an intimidating number, and almost nobody learns them in order. Four rudiments carry most of the mechanical content, and the free set here is built around them.
| Rudiment | Sticking | What it trains |
|---|---|---|
| Single Stroke Roll | R L R L | Pure alternation and evenness. The foundation under every fill you will ever play. |
| Double Stroke Open Roll | R R L L | Rebound control. The second stroke of each pair has to match the first, which is the hard part. |
| Single Paradiddle | R L R R | Switching lead hands without thinking about it, so patterns flow around the kit. |
| Flam | lR · rL | Two sticks landing close enough to read as one thick note. |
| Five Stroke Roll | R R L L R | Joining doubles to an accent. The most used roll on the sheet. |
Lowercase letters are grace notes, so lR means a quiet left grace note just before a right hand stroke. Once those five feel automatic, the rest of the list stops looking like 40 separate things and starts looking like combinations of what you already have.
Accents Are the Rudiment
The most common mistake is playing every stroke at the same volume. A paradiddle with no accent is just four notes; a paradiddle with the first note accented has a shape, and it is that shape that makes it audible inside a groove. The trainer plays accented strokes louder and outlines them in red so you can see and hear where they land.
Getting this right means playing the unaccented strokes quieter, not the accented ones harder. Practice from a low stick height and let the accent be the only stroke that comes up. Once you can do that at a slow tempo, speed mostly takes care of itself.
Turn the metronome click off once a rudiment is comfortable and let the accent pattern carry the time. If it falls apart without the click, the rudiment is not solid yet; if it holds, you have internalized the pulse rather than borrowed it.
Open to Close to Open
The instruction printed across the top of the official PAS sheet is that every rudiment should be practiced open (slow) to close (fast) to open (slow) again. It is one continuous pass: start slowly, gradually accelerate to the fastest tempo you can hold cleanly, then decelerate back down without stopping.
This matters because stroke technique changes with speed. A slow double is two separate wrist strokes; a fast double leans on rebound. Practicing at one comfortable tempo never rehearses the handover between the two, which is exactly where most players fall apart. The Player speed trainer automates the climb: choose how many reps to hold, how much to add, and where to stop, and it steps the tempo for you at the top of each repetition.
A Practice Plan That Works
Ten focused minutes beats an hour of noodling. Pick one rudiment, not five. Set the tempo where it is genuinely clean, play it for two minutes without stopping, raise it by a few BPM, and repeat until it breaks down. Note the tempo where it broke, and start there tomorrow.
Rudiments transfer to the kit only if you move them there. Once a pattern is comfortable on a pad, orchestrate it: put the accents on the snare and the unaccented strokes on the hi-hat, or move the accented notes to a tom. That is the step most people skip, and it is the one that turns exercises into playing. Our drum machine is a quick way to hear a rudiment-derived pattern in a groove, and the metronome covers subdivisions and polyrhythms once you want to practice against a different pulse.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 40 drum rudiments?
They are the sticking patterns standardized by the Percussive Arts Society in 1984, grouped into roll rudiments, diddle rudiments, flam rudiments and drag rudiments. They combine the older Standard 26 American Drum Rudiments with drum corps, orchestral and European patterns.
Which rudiments should a beginner learn first?
Single stroke roll, double stroke roll, single paradiddle and flam. Those four cover the mechanics behind most of the others: alternating strokes, controlled doubles, a sticking that switches lead hands, and two sticks landing as one sound.
Is this rudiment trainer free?
Twelve rudiments are free with no account, covering all four families, along with tempo control, tap tempo, accents, the count-in and the metronome click. The remaining 28 rudiments, the speed trainer and saved practice routines are part of the Player tier at $9.99/month.
What tempo should I practice rudiments at?
Slow enough that both hands sound identical. The point of a rudiment is evenness, so the useful tempo is the fastest one where your weaker hand still matches your stronger hand. If the second stroke of a double is quieter than the first, you are already too fast.
What does open to close to open mean?
It is the practice instruction printed on the PAS sheet. Start the rudiment slowly, gradually speed up to as fast as you can play it cleanly, then gradually slow back down, all without stopping. It trains the transition between stroke types rather than one comfortable tempo.
What is the difference between a flam and a drag?
A flam is one grace note from the opposite hand landing just before the main stroke, which thickens the sound. A drag is two grace notes from the opposite hand, usually played as a double, which gives a short buzz into the main stroke.
Do I need a drum kit to use this?
No. Rudiments are practiced on a single surface, so a practice pad, a snare, or even a cushion works. The trainer plays the sticking so you can hear where the accents fall while you play along.
Are my saved practice routines stored on my account?
Yes, on Player. A routine stores the rudiment, tempo and speed trainer settings under a name, saved to your account so it follows you between devices. Anything saved while signed out stays in that browser and moves up to your account the next time you sign in.