Double Ratamacue
Learn How To Play The Double Ratamacue Drum Rudiment!
This next free drum lesson on the 40 drum rudiments, teaches you how to play the double ratamacue, a drum rudiment from the drag family of drum rudiments. In the video, Lionel Duperron teaches you how to practice the double ratamacue on a single surface, and how to use it to come up with your own double ratamacue based drum beats and drum fills.
If you’ve learned how to play the single ratamacue, you’ll have no problems in mastering the double ratamacue. The double ratamacue is basically a single ratamacue with a drag ruff played in front of it.
The double ratamacue naturally alternates within itself and is played in 6/8 time signature here. Playing in 6/8 means you’ll have 6 counts where the 8th notes take the click. Thus, the first double ratamacue on the sheet music below starts on count 1 and ends on count 3, while its second drag ruff is played on count 2. The second double ratamacue starts on count 4 and ends on count 6, while its second drag ruff is played on count 5.
Once you’ve learned how to play the double ratamacue with ease on a practice pad or a snare drum, you can move on to learn how to play some 6/8 time signature drum beats and drum fills based on the double ratamacue.
To make sure you learn the following drum beats properly, we’ll be teaching them to you in a step-by-step approach. Follow the steps described for each drum beat and you won’t have any problem mastering the double ratamacue drum beats.
In the following drum beat the double ratamacue is broken up between the hi-hat and the snare drum. Start by playing the double ratamacue on a single surface like the hi-hat. Once you’ve gotten the right feel for it, add the bass drum on counts 1 and 4. When you feel pretty confident in the way you’re executing this last step, move the hands from the hi-hat to the snare drum to play the shots on the “let” of count 2, on count 3, and on the “let” of count 5. On count 6 you play a stroke on the floor tom.
With exercise #2 you’ll learn how to play a 6/8 tom-tom drum beat. This 6/8 tom-tom drum beat may seem hard to play at first, but it actually has the same underlying rhythmic structure as the previous one. So, if you took your time with the previous one, you should learn how to play this one with a lot more ease.
From count 1 to count 3, you can start by playing the grace notes on the hi-hat while keeping the remaining pattern of the double ratamacue on the hi-tom. From count 4 to count 6, do the exact same thing but using the snare drum instead of the hi-tom. Once this feels comfortable to you, move the strokes on the hi-tom and on the snare drum to the drums notated on the sheet music below. Move one stroke at a time, making sure everything feels solid before moving the next one.
Once you’ve mastered the hand pattern, add the bass drum on all 8th notes. Since this pattern has a lot of things happening with your hands, start very slow. Increase the speed of your metronome only when you know how to play the whole pattern. It’s better to play things accurately at slower speeds than poorly at greater speeds.
Exercise #3 has the double ratamacue applied to a 6/8 drum fill. The grace notes are all kept on the snare drum while the remaining strokes are spread around the drums. When performing this double ratamacue 6/8 drum fill, you have to be extra careful in the sections where you’re going from either the hi-tom to the mid-tom or from the mid-tom to the hi-tom.
These transitions can lead to a full head-on collision between your hands. This is possible to avoid if you work on this pattern slowly at first. Focus on playing consistent strokes without clicking your sticks, hitting rims, or worst, your hands.
The last exercise on this free drum lesson has the double ratamacue applied to another 6/8 drum fill. In case you haven’t noticed, the double ratamacue has been used with the same rhythmic pattern since exercise #1. This is one of the wonders of playing drum set. With only one pattern you create hundreds, if not thousands more, due to the various instruments included on a typical kit.
In this lesson, by adding the bass drum and spreading the double ratamacue between the hi-hat/toms and snare drum, we came across some very cool sounding 6/8 drum beats. By using different melodies between the drums, and adding unison strokes between the hi-hats/cymbals and the bass drum, we created very different sounding 6/8 drum fills. Don’t think for one minute that learning one pattern is just that, one pattern. If you use your imagination there’s no end to what you can come up with.
Once you’re done with the double ratamacue, you can move on to learn the third and last rudiment from the ratamacue group of drum rudiments, the last rudiment from the drag family of drum rudiments, and the last of the 40 drum rudiments – the triple ratamacue.
Drag Based Rudiments |
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| Drag Ruff | Single Dragadiddle | Single Ratamacue |
| Single Drag Tap | Dragadiddle #1 | Double Ratamacue |
| Double Drag Tap | Dragadiddle #2 | Triple Ratamacue |
| Lesson 25 | ||