Triple Stroke Roll

Grip & Sticking

Also called triples.

Three strokes per hand: R R R L L L R R R. The middle stroke is the troublemaker — you get it by letting the first stroke rebound, guiding the second one low with the fingers, then pushing the third one out. Done right, three even notes per hand; done carelessly, a diddle with a hiccup in the middle.

Triples give you an even burst of three against a pulse of two, and they are the honest road to a proper multiple-bounce buzz roll — the soft sustained snare passages in orchestral music come from exactly this finger control. A fast triple run around the toms sounds like a machine-gun roll with shape, and triplet-flavoured fills sit on this sticking naturally.

Metronome at 60 bpm, accenting the first stroke of each triple and keeping strokes two and three low and equal — accent-tap-tap. Use a free-stroke motion: full stroke down, low rebound, then a pushed landing stroke. If the triples collapse into diddles, your stick height is too high or the tempo too fast; drop both and rebuild at a boring speed.