With this quick and easy accent exercise, you can practice the 3 most important strokes used all the time in drumming - the tap stroke, up stroke, and the down stroke.

Tap Stroke

The tap stroke stick position should start about an inch or a few cms away from the snare drum. Move the stick straight down and hit the drum quietly, before coming straight back up and returning to the starting point.

Up Stroke

The up stroke should start in the tap position, and play a tap stroke, but instead of returning to the start position, the stick should end up much higher, somewhere between a 45 and 90 degree angle to the snare drum.

Down Stroke

The stick position should start somewhere between a 45 and 90 degree angle to the snare drum. This stroke should be a loud stroke. Move the stick quickly to produce the loud stroke and finish in the starting position of the tap stroke.

In this exercise, the downstroke produces accents, which look like this: >

Full Stroke

Not featured in this exercise is the full stroke, which is played just like a down stroke, but instead of finishing in the tap position, the stick comes back to the starting position of the down stroke. So it plays a loud beat and comes straight back for another one.