Jazz Drumming Rudiments Where to Start

Rudiments are stickings that result in a particular sound. Learning them is helpful. But--and too few do it--improvising at the drums involves practicing improvising. Choose a tempo, a feel, or a style, and improvise for an hour. Let your imagination take over. Put your cell phone on record. When you hear something you like, remember it. Get so you can play it without thinking. make it one of your "words."
 
jazzerooty said:
Rudiments are stickings that result in a particular sound. Learning them is helpful. But--and too few do it--improvising at the drums involves practicing improvising. Choose a tempo, a feel, or a style, and improvise for an hour. Let your imagination take over. Put your cell phone on record. When you hear something you like, remember it. Get so you can play it without thinking. make it one of your "words."
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so true!!!!

learning rudiments didn't teach me how to improvise...it gave me the tools to improvise with

@jazzerooty alludes to the process of learning actual improvisation above. Use the tools within that
 
I think the All-American Drummer Wilcoxin book would be a great place to start. It starts out with short solos with different rudiments as a sort of overarching theme. And then it gets to combining them within longer solos toward the end. Try to find some videos online of people playing them and match the sound as closely as possible. It's going to take a lot of (frustrating) repeating individual measures over and over, and then grouping measures together until you gradually get the whole thing. Both with and without a click.
 
Another thing. The guys who're are realy serious about rudiments and hand development, can benefit from having an accomplished instructor. When I was studying Wilcoxon's Swing Solos, I went back to my old teacher, Ellliott Fine, and had him assign a solo a week. That way I had a deadline, along with Elliott's advice on how to execute each solo better. That was invaluable.
 
VF-8DN said:
I'm practicing jazz for a quiet time now and I'm not a rookie but I have some trouble with practicing rudiments. My concentration is good but I don't know if I'm practicing them right. Is there any traditional jazz drumming workout routine telling where to start?
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Wilcoxon Drum Method and/or Rudimental Swing Solos, and/or Book 2 of Haskell Harr. Those are the books people did use. It might take a little creativity to put them in a jazz idiom.

There are good drum set books by Joe Morello (Rudimental Jazz) and Joe Porcaro (Drum Set Method), that have a lot of rudimental applications in them.

There are also a lot of systems for use with the book Syncopation, that use rudiments-- most of them are associated with Alan Dawson, I've also written a ton of them, as have other people. Get the book by John Ramsay with Dawson's name on it.

There's also Dawson's Rudimental Ritual.

VF-8DN said:
I'm thinking ok, I have to practice comping or syncopation or rudiments or phrasing, etc. I hope you'll understand my problem. The other thing is how can I maintain my speed do I have to practice everything every day, I don't think so because that would be impossible.
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Do what you can, that seems right to you, I guess. It takes a lot of work, not an impossible amount of work. A lot of drummers get up to an entry-level professional standard with it in a few years.
 
My primary private instructor in high school and the head of my university's percussion department both studied under Dawson and I was taught the Dawson method. Heavy use of rudiments applied around the kit, Ted Reed's syncopation used as swing patterns as 'figures to hit' with rudimental applications applied as well. He was a master. George Tuthill (Oregon State U head of percussion dept.) stated, 'He made it all look so easy.'
 
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