NA Percussion Education

Thom Hannum’s Triplet Check Patterns are designed to build a rhythmic vocabulary in the triplet feel. Like the Duple Check Patterns, they are a set of basic patterns that will ultimately help students play harder, more complex phrases.

Alex recently came up with a great idea: let’s chart our current proficiency level and the time between now and band camp, and measure the rate of improvement necessary to reach our desired level. The result: our Progress Table.

Here is a copy of the UMass Drumline’s Full-Down-Tap-Up exercise (pdf). It’s used to build a uniform technique by identifying & combining the 4 stroke-types: Full, Down, Tap, and Up-stroke.
Audio Recording of FDTU

Full Stroke
A full stroke starts in the “up position,” with the bead of your stick or mallet 15 inches above the surface of [...]