Timpani Roll Practice Exercises: Roll and Control

This exercise is tricky because you need to maintain the roll on one drum while playing the individual notes at the same time.

Your ability to shift from right and lead to left hand lead will improve by practicing this carefully.

This exercise continues to develop your rolling technique and it helps you to develop control so that you can reach a large distance between the drums and play at the dynamic you want instead of having everything sound like triple forte.

Here’s the Roll and Control Exercise for Timpani

• Tune A C D E
• Always roll on the A but don’t roll on the other drum when it comes: Just play it once and go back to the roll
• Practice at all dynamic levels

Now play it in reverse

• Left hand lead
• Play the roll on a constant high E and play the single notes on the other drums with your left
• If your left hand is weaker than your right you need to practice this exercise a lot
• Don’t forget to practice at all dynamic levels from ppp to fff.