PAS #12 · Roll rudiments
Eleven Stroke Roll
11 main strokes over 3 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.
RR LL RR LL RR L
Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.
What the eleven stroke roll is
Five double strokes and one accented single. From here upwards the rolls are really the same skill at increasing length — endurance and evenness rather than new technique.
How to practice it
- Five doubles then the accent: count the sixteenths so the accent lands on its beat.
- This is where stamina starts to matter — relax the grip and let the rebound do the work.
- Alternate the lead hand every repetition; the accent hand changes each time.
Where it leads
The eleven stroke roll belongs to the roll rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the thirteen, fifteen and seventeen stroke rolls. Get it even at a slow tempo before you move on — every rudiment built on top of it inherits whatever unevenness you leave here.
Reading the notation above
Both hands play the snare drum, so every notehead sits in the third space of the staff and the sticking letters underneath tell you which hand plays which note. Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are grace notes. There are no grace notes in this rudiment, so every note is a full stroke. The marks above the staff are accents: hit those notes harder. Full details in the drum notation guide.
Rudiment data last updated . Every diagram here, in the printable PDF and in the chart image comes from one dataset, so the paper and the screen cannot disagree.