The decline of the double stroke

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
I'm no expert on new music being made, but it seems to me that you hardly ever hear drummers playing stuff that incorporates double strokes anymore. I guess I'm talking about most "popular" music, and excluding anything jazz here. Anyone agree with this? Double stroke fills can really make you sound like a pro if you nail them just right. I'm making an effort to use them more, when appropriate, and especially when soloing.
 
Whenever I'm on a practice pad or a couch or a pillow or my knees or... you get the idea; anywhere but on a kit, it's my default rudiment. I love playing them and don't totally suck at them. I can get them to morph into a nice buzz roll smoothly, too, but I practically NEVER use on the kit when I'm playing with the band. Problem is the volume hit; I get so much more power going for fast single-strokes (and even those I don't do that often) that they just never come up.
 
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How we covet what we dont have!

My default rudiment too. I'm often referred to as the ' guy who plays all that double stroke stuff". How I long for machine gun singles acoss the toms.. and backwards.. and forwards.. dream on Aydee..

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A good double stroke _roll_ is hard to reproduce with a computer. That's one of the things we can bring what a computer can't. I wonder why we hear it less and less... x)
 
I believe you may find more double stroke work in triple rhythm base music vs eights or 16ths. So it depends on what your listening too. Denis
 
Double strokes, paradiddles... it's still all out there being used. Sure, if we're talking about a Pink or Jonas Brothers song probably not, but rudiments still hold their place in contemporary music.
 
I tend to use them whenever I'm doing some hihat fill-ins (e.g. small 32nd note fill-ins between the backbeats in a standard 8th note hihat groove), but other than that I really don't use double strokes at all on the kit (other than drag-type stuff on the snare, but that's not really a double-stroke)
 
could you give me an example of some songs with double stroke rolls ?

This is really where I wanted this thread to go. They're out there. The Police's "Walking on the Moon" double strokes on the hi hat come to mind (great place to use doubles, on the hats)
I'm hard pressed to name many more. Bruford in his Yes days used them.
I'm interested in examples of the double stroke, especially in music made within the last say 15 years. We really need a resurgence in drumming sophistication.
 
i like using them, but they bore me if i over use them. nice if phrased properly in fills/beats..
 
Excluding when I play jazz, I use it for dynamic situations like slowing down, reducing overall volume and that sort of stuff. Steve Gadd and Vinnie use alot of double-stroke rolls when they play, but they're so good at it that it sometimes sounds like singles.

Actually, after reading the thread-title again, I use alot of double strokes. I use them in almost every song I play. I play alot of 6 stroke rolls(2 doubles), blushda(1 double), paradiddles(2 doubles) etc. I thought it was about the double-stroke Roll.
 
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i've heard travis barker use them in a couple blink-182 songs. i've heard chad sexton use them in 311. i've heard branden steineckert play them when he was with the used.

i play them pretty often in my own band when we do jazzy or blues songs.
 
I'm unsure of when to use them really in the stuff I play most frequently. I use a lot of double strokes on the kick but pad the rest of the fill out with singles usually...
 
I think I've noticed a similar trend. I know that it could be considered generalizing to say that there is NO popular music that features double-stroke rolls on the drumset, but if you listen to top 40 radio you won't really hear them. If you think about it, though, they don't really have their place in basic dancable beats, except maybe for in fast dance music when there is a fast snare roll used as a crescendo effect. Also, I think someone previously stated that it can be difficult to play them at a high volume, which discourages some drummers from applying them to loud popular music.

There are still drummers who are pushing the envelope and adding more complicated, but still groovy, drum parts to popular songs. Check out Kris Myers of Umphrey's McGee on the intro to Nemo. He's not afraid to play loud double stroke rolls

http://ia341017.us.archive.org/1/it...-ck21.fr2le.flac16/um2007-12-29d2t04_64kb.mp3
 
I think that double strokes are alive and well, just not in fills. There is a lot of ghosting going on in popular music that uses double strokes. However, I totally agree that fast singles have all but replaced the double strokes used in most fills. I actually noticed this is my own technique recently. When I was younger, I'd use doubles all the time, but now I just single those fills. I don't know if it's because I have more control over my fast singles now than I did then, or what.

With that said, since I realized it, I have started re-adding some into my live performances. I'm amazed at how slow and unnatural they feel compared to the fast singles, considering I used to use them endlessly.
 
Don't listen to top 40 to judge, its barely music. That's just someones job not a genuine creative effort 99% of the time. It does not reflect what is actually going on with technical practices is in modern music AT ALL.

In extreme metal a lot of people double stroke their fills as a way to rest their chops between single stroke blastbeat riffs without dropping the intensity of straight 16ths.

As someone said, ghost notes are very alive with double strokes... I see more and more younger people picking up on how to syncopate double stroke rolls into fills with accents on the 2nd hit of the RH and broken right hand patterns filled in with left hand double stroke ghosting.
 
My first reaction, was, well, you're right! I can certainly think of a few name players who are well regarded for their playing ability, but I don't think can do a proper double stroke roll.

But then I thought, but really, how many double strokes do ever hear in classic rock?

"White Rabbit" by the Jefferson Airplane is about the only example of extensive use of double stroke rolls in classic rock. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, etc, pretty much never used them.

Ian Paice, and a few others, of course, incorporated them into parradiddle based fills and other such things, and as noted Steward Copeland has a brief double stroke in "Walking on the Moon". But overall, examples of the the double stroke in popular music have been few and far between since rock supplanted jazz as the more popular form of music. We're talking a handful of examples in what is hundreds and hundreds of songs that have been radio hits or otherwise well known songs in the past 50 or so years.

With the popularity of the Jojo Mayer DVD, and other educational DVDs that incorporate double stokes, I don't think drummers themselves have lost the desire to know how to use them. It's pretty clear they are still something many drummers find useful to know.
But once you join a rock band, how often are you really going to use them? There are plenty of drummers who can shred at home or in clinic or in their side projects, but play it pretty straight in the band they're known for being in.

Side note: Two other examples: On the 1st Pearl Jam album, their original drummer threw in some double strokes on the hi-hat. And Trent Reznor programmed some double strokes rolls on the hi-hat on the first Nine Inch Nails album "Pretty Hate Machine."
 
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