PAS #13 · Roll rudiments
Thirteen Stroke Roll
13 main strokes over 4 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.
RR LL RR LL RR LL R
Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.
What the thirteen stroke roll is
Six double strokes resolving onto an accent, normally written across three beats. Useful for rolling through a bar line into the next phrase.
How to practice it
- Six doubles resolving onto an accent — keep the doubles at one height all the way through.
- Breathe and keep the shoulders loose; tension builds over longer rolls.
- Practice at a slow open tempo first, then close it up towards a smooth sound.
Where it leads
The thirteen stroke roll belongs to the roll rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the fifteen and seventeen stroke rolls and long concert 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.