How to Play a Single Stroke Roll on Drums

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Ken Marcou, I’m going to talk a little bit about the single stroke roll. Single stroke roll is another type of roll just like the double stroke roll but it differs and that it’s desired kind of effect is to sound more mechanical as opposed to like a buzz, a double stroke roll ends up sounding very smooth and very much like a buzz and it’s actually called the buzz roll sometimes but a single stroke roll sounds more mechanical, more like a machine charging along, more like the pistons in an engine firing, if you will. I’m just going to play that, basically it’s played by very simply doing right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left but doing it smooth and making sure that it sounds you know that no one’s stick is hitting much louder than the other, you can play it with accents and it happens all the time but the actual rudiment is just to play it smooth, I’ll demonstrate…single stroke roll."