How to Play: Single Stroke Seven

Single Stroke Seven

My favorite single stroke rudiment. Once you build up speed in your hand-to-hand playing, Single Stroke Sevens never get boring!

Kids today don’t know all of their 40 Essential Rudiments…or rather, they DO know them. What am I talking about?! Ok…Most students today know how to play a six-tuplet. That IS a Single Stroke Seven. This happens again and again, they just aren’t teaching kids to call rudiments by their proper name anymore. But never fear! I made this video and blog post to fix that problem.

So yeah, a Single Stroke Seven is essentially a six-tuplet with a release.

See…

In my video I talk about how this was the secret to the infamous Cheesy Poofs tap off. Santa Clara Vanguard Percussion was amazing for many reasons. This is one of them. If you haven’t seen footage of the drumline or learned Cheesy Poofs, go away right now and do both of those things. I won’t be offended. You can find the music in this book…Fresh Perspectives for the Modern Drumline. Don’t go steal the PDF somewhere. Be better than that. Single Stroke Seven’s will add flare to your drumming just like in Cheesy Poofs.

A quick breakdown for Single Stroke Seven:

Measure One: Play two Single Stroke Sevens with the left hand on your leg

Measure Two: Play two Single Stroke Sevens on the drum

Measure Three: Play two “Left Hand Lead” Single Stroke Sevens with the right hand on your leg

Measure Four: Play two “Left Hand Lead” Single Stroke Sevens