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How to Increase the Speed of your Single Stroke Roll by 96 BPM

Photo credit: Amnemona

Its not easy but it is possible.

Here's how to do it:

• Pick a single stroke roll exercise. It really doesn't matter what it is as long as you can play it to a click.
• When you practise it, start off at a slow click setting and keep putting it up a couple of BPM every few minutes.
• Do this until it's so fast that you can no longer play it.
• Repeat this every day for a long period of time.

Case study: Stuart

I set one of my drum students, Stuart, a single stroke roll exercise and recorded how fast he could play it. Then after practising it for 3 months, I again recorded how fast he could play it. To start off with, he was playing at 50 BPM and after 3 months he was at 146 BPM.

How did he do it?

He followed my advice outlined above and he practised it near enough every day for 3 months. If you did the same thing would you see the same improvement in speed? Maybe, maybe not. Would you see any noticeable difference? Absolutely, practising works!

Below is the exercise that I set him so you can try it out for yourself:

You'll see that the timing changes a lot.

This is because when you're working on the speed of your single stroke roll you should practice it at both slow and fast speeds.

The slow speeds will help with your timing and give your wrists a well needed break.

So try it out and let me know how you get on with it by writing your comment below.

Have fun with it and keep practising!

Alex

Bonus:

These are the full results of 34 of my drum students tested in the same way as Stuart.

Everyone has 3 numbers on the chart. The first is their speed at the end of the 3 month period, the second was their speed at the start and the last number is the difference between the 2 which shows how much they improved by (Stuart is at number 17).

1    Mikey  197    145    52
2    Rach    188    155    33
3    Mike    185    125    60
4    Brad    182    132    50
5    Sean    180    160    20
6    Nathan    178    90    88
7    Ruth    176    90    86
8    Phil    173    155    18
9    Innes    172    135    37
10    Scott    170    100    70
11    Jared    163    100    63
12    Mark    162    125    37
13    Amy    161    150    11
14    Robbie    157    140    17
15    Patrick    153    125    28
16    Blaine    150    120    30
17    Stuart    146    50    96
18    Jono    146    121    25
19    Siobhan    145    145    0
20    Lesley    140    55    85
21    Lewis    131    110    21
22    Julia    127    90    37
23    Fiona    126    100    26
24    Steve    115    115    0
25    Grant    110    50    60
26    Aidan    110    60    50
27    Terry    106    65    41
28    Jon    105    50    55
29    Molly    95    90    5
30    Caitlin    90    60    30
31    Sarah    85    80    5
32    Jill    78    42    36
33    Callum    76    50    26
34    Dale    65    56    9

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