NoteAtlas

PAS #38 · Drag rudiments

Single Ratamacue

4 main strokes, 2 grace notes over 2 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.

llR L R L

Single Ratamacue in standard drum notation with sticking letters, left grace, left grace, right, left, right, left443RllLRL

Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.

2-beat cycle · loops until you stop it · both hands on the snareStopped

What the single ratamacue is

A drag followed by three more alternating strokes, with the accent on the last one — effectively a single stroke four that begins with a drag.

How to practice it

  • A drag, two taps, then an accented note on the next beat — the accent is the destination.
  • Count the triplet in front of the accent so the last note lands squarely on the beat.
  • Keep the drag tight; if the grace notes spread out they turn into extra notes.

Where it leads

The single ratamacue belongs to the drag rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the double and triple ratamacues and rudimental snare solos. 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. The small noteheads with a slash through the stem are the grace notes of the ornament — they are played almost simultaneously with the note that follows, not as separate beats. The marks above the staff are accents: hit those notes harder. Full details in the drum notation guide.

Single Ratamacue drum notation
Single Ratamacue in standard drum notation — sticking llR L R L, notated on the snare line.

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.