NoteAtlas

PAS #8 · Roll rudiments

Six Stroke Roll

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

R LL RR L

Six Stroke Roll in standard drum notation with sticking letters, right, left, left, right, right, left44RLLRRL

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 six stroke roll is

An accented single stroke, two double strokes, then another accented single. The two accents at the outside make it a favorite for moving around the kit in fills.

How to practice it

  • Both accents are single strokes; the two doubles in between stay soft and even.
  • Practice it as R, then LL RR, then L until the shape is automatic, then join it up.
  • Put the accents on the snare and a tom, and it becomes one of the most-used fills in rock and funk.

Where it leads

The six stroke roll belongs to the roll rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the seven, ten and eleven stroke rolls and two-handed fills. 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.

Six Stroke Roll drum notation
Six Stroke Roll in standard drum notation — sticking R LL RR 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.