PAS #11 · Roll rudiments
Ten Stroke Roll
10 main strokes over 3 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.
RR LL RR LL R L
Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.
What the ten stroke roll is
Four double strokes followed by two accented singles — the only even-numbered roll besides the six stroke, and it ends with both hands accented.
How to practice it
- The two singles at the end are both accented — the only roll on the list that finishes with two.
- Keep the four doubles exactly even before the accents, or the ending sounds rushed.
- Practice it with the accents split between snare and floor tom to hear them clearly.
Where it leads
The ten stroke roll belongs to the roll rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the eleven stroke roll and longer measured 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.