Grace notes: the Drag

Drags drum rudiments - This lesson drum sheet, dedicated to snare drum Rudiments & fundamentals, contains the various Drags: Single and Double, Ruff, Drag paradiddles, Ratatap, Ratamacue.

Video drum lesson preview   Drags drum rudiments

Introduction to the drum lesson: Drags drum rudiments

The Drag, just like the Flam, doesn't have a precise musical lenght value, and it's made by a hand double weak stroke very closely followed by a stronger stroke by the other hand. In drum sheet music the Drags are represented by two small notes with a legato tie put just befor the principal note. As in Flams, for a correct execution, the stick that plays the principal stroke starts from a superior height than the stick that plays the double, weak strokes.

The Drag, when coupled with triplets, is named Ratamacue; for a better understanding of the Ratamacue, you should study it after the lesson about triplets.

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This drum lesson dedicated to Drags drum rudiments is a part of the published basic drum lessons.
The basic drum lessons, the first part of this method for drums, deal with the right posture, which is the basic condition to develop speed, endurance and precision with your playing. The style and the role of drumming have evolved with time, but the basic drums technique hasn't changed much, and all the great drummers still build their own style from the same basis of musical theory.

Topics in the basic drum lessons and in the online drum lessons published drum sheet music are: Rudiments & Fundamentals, Coordinated independence, Basic drum beats, Snare drum studies, Drums grooves, and Songs drum parts, with transcriptions of songs and grooves by John Bonham, Phil Collins, Stewart Copeland, Steve Gadd, Ian Paice, Jeff Porcaro.