Does anyone know of any drumming games? Maybe something involving rudiments or technique.

Our drumline is having a lot of problems working on improving these things - or actually were just having a lot of problems in general but that's off topic... Anyways, I just need something fun to bring to practice that is fun but still helps you practice drumming.

Heres one: Its called the Add-on game.

Start with center snare, have him/her play the rudiment/lick/phrase, then add on second snare. When they have it right, add on another... and so forth and so on. Not really the most fun game, but it works... sometimes.

Or perhaps another variation of that. Have someone start a small little phrase/lick w.e, and play that like 2 times through. Then the next person attempts to play it once through, if they get it correct, they can add their own little bit on in addition to the normal phrase/lick at the beginning. And so on and so forth.

Just an idea

do something simple.
start with a slow triplet roal. with all of the drummers playing. later speed it up. its a game of who has the best chops. when they mess up or slow down they are out. or if they cant play anymore or their arms fall off they are out. the winner is the one playing the longest

We used to do rudiment relays. You split into equal teams, and place a snare/bucket/something to hit, for each team across the parking lot. The teams line up and the first person from each team runs to the drum and plays a rudiment, and runs back and tags the next person in line. This continues until all members of a team have played a different rudiment. Fun Times.

We have this fun game where we do lots and lots of pushups if we tick. We have a blast with it. The PushUp Game. It's pretty infamous. Run an excercise or rudiment like chopping spree and then whoever ticks goes down and does ten and has to be in by the next one or they're pretty much screwed. Otherwise, we don't do games unless we do addons with a roll. snare starts and then you add on the roll. if you come in fuzzy you start all over. it's motivation.

here's my favorite:
its the same as "horse", but with a drumline, called "stick". just get a pad/drum/something that you can hit with a stick. one person lays down a 4 measure phrase, and the next person has to match it, and you go around the circle. the people who dont match it get a letter. its fun when your bored.

I know of one called "Paradiddle Race". It goes between two people playing about 8 measures of the same paradiddle exercise. Then the next 8 bars are the same but the person who finishes first wins. (always making sure sound quality is still in tact though! )

Play the add-on game with rudiments as other drummers know what your talking about and just have to remember the order. That can be fun. An add-on game with licks is not to great because you have to remember all sorts of things.

You can do "pig" (or "idiot" or what ever you prefer to call it) Make up a x. 4 beats long phrase if you are 3 players (make sure the number of beats and the number of players are un-even). The phrase can for example contain different rudiments. The first player plays the first beats, number two plays beat two, number three play beat three, player one now plays beat four, player two plays beat one and on and on and on... The player who makes a mistake is given a letter. Continue until someone is marked "pig".

This will teach them to play together with a common pulse. And they get to play a lot of rudiments

Check out the Practice Forum and look for some chop builders, those could be easy to turn into a game. One I found is called the pyramid of pain, they do a check of 1 measure of sixteenth notes with alternating sticking. then they go into 1 measure of triplet roll. Then again with the check but then 2. So in essence, it goes like this:

Check
1 measure of triplet roll
Check
2 measures
Check
3 measures
Check
4 measures
Check
And so on...

This could easily become a good competition, especially if there are stakes, like losers have to do a number of pushups equal to the number of measures the winner went up to. Or the last one out buys sticks for 2 people in his section or something. It can be really fun. That's only one though, check out the practice forum.

Well, it's not a drumming game, but we have wrestling contests in the mud to keep the morale of the line up. We also have one cookout a year. Those things are so much fun--anyway--maybe you should just set up fun stuff to do unrelated to drumming so people get excited about being on the (insert your highschool/college(I hope its not a college) name here) drumline.

We have started having "diddle wars." It is a match between two people and the longer they can keep clean diddles with increasing speed going, they win. It is a great way to practice diddles and even more to practice keeping them clean.

We also play stretch. Its like Twister and Freeze Tag combined, oh yeah and throw in a set of drumsticks.

i havent tried this yet... heres an idea

the two best rudimentalists (i dont know if thats a word lol) are captains... and they pick teams (they have to be even or someone has to go twice so they even out)

everyone puts a dollar in the pot and you go from there (top 2 get 2/3 and 1/3 of pot)

this will happen each day at the end of percussion camp

there is going to be 12 people in battery... so if everyone is there this will be fine. there's a drum for every team and each person has to take the pair of sticks and play 2 bars of a certain rudiment. first you go 6 on 6... and the winning team goes 3 on 3... then all three go at once.
for each day of percussion camp there is a different rudiment

ill try this in our upcoming camp and see how it works out... but the money is a motivational tool to get better lol

When I went to ECU band day we played something and I guess you could call it a game. The line plays a simple sixtenth note pattern with accents you go for a while then the captain/instructor points to someone, they come out and play a lick while the rest of the line gets quieter. You do that until everyone goes. It helps the line play together, warms-up your hands, and it's cool to hear what people come up with.

We just play "Roll Till' You Die." Pretty self-explanatory.

I like the one off of Drumline, not to annoy by bringing up the movie for the 18,567,832,459th time, but the Eighth note thing they do is cool, 4 eight notes, then double bounce 4 8th notes. Keep getting faster,2 people play on one drum.

"Play Paradiddles as fast as you possibly can" is another good one.

you can play roll suicides. Itts kinda like the pyramid of pain but you do one count of 16th notes then a one count roll then two counts of 16th notes then a two count roll and so on. We usually go up to 10 then go back down. Its actuall more of a ladder than a pyramid but whatever.

We play a game between the snares and tenors, and basses if they're sideways. It doesn't work on tecnique, but it really is a good cardiovascular workout. It's called snareball. You take a tennis ball or superball (golfballs work too, but they can easily break something... or a head, drum head and human head) Anyways you take a ball and you hit it off of your drum drum into the air. It's basically hacisac with marching drums. With a group of at least 4 people in a circle or just scattering it gets realy realy competetive. That plus you will be amazed at how much it works your back and legs, and how much of a cardio workout it is... especially with tenors. You'll have butt tons of fun playing it.

I don't know if this is exactly what you want but..we call it the accent game...and both people (2 person game) start doing taps with one hand and the one person...probably the teacher or whoever will play any random accent and the other person has to do his/her accent right after

Friends and myself took a band trip and we were in a restaurant and we were bored. one friend had a backpack with a pad, we all had stix (not sure why though) and we broke the stuff out and i taught them pyramid of pain, thanks to this website. we played those until the food came, and then after. We were doing it elimination style. the furthest i ever made it was like 42 measures of rolls, and i won its good times, and the name of the excercise is very fitting.

we split cadances between two people, one plays left hand, other plays right


its fun

we play an end of the year game that our band director hates

bust your heads
either during the last competition or right after, everyone tries their damnedest to play through their heads.

of course the 5th bass keeps his heads intact so that the seniors can sign it and hang it in the drum room

Race 3 Camps by buzzing them. Two people go head to head and whoever nails the final rimshot wins.

basketball with a flat basketball so its kinda like rugby. tenor bass armada vs the snares woot

We played a game where we'd make a story out of rudiments like one person would say "I went on a" and then play a short shopping spree and then the next person would say "and bought" and play a swiss cheese etc. it was pretty funny.

Well my line just have a drummin freestyle battle on a table or anything we can find and people just join in, it's fun, people learn how to do more rudiments or tricks, it's a fun experience. Take it from me

When it was time to play game, it wasn't time to drum... we played nut-ball; everyone sits in a circle and spreads his legs, and we try to hit each other by bouncing a basketball off the ground in just the right way. There was also sac-tap tuesday; on tuesdays it was not a punishable offence to hit a guy where it hurts except during rehearsal.

I'd also do "drum-battles" with the bass line. We'd set up a pad on a stand, and see who could play the worst, easiest lick with the most arrogant, ridiculous attitude... we'd talk terrible crap and play something like a buzz and an out-of-tempo paradiddle, while saying, "Yeah, I'm the best!" making a spectacle for the horn players to watch during meals.

During a sectional at band camp, we took office chairs and tracked down the hallway playing on pads. Then there was race-to-the-finish-let diddles, where the snareline would see who could get to the end of our triplet diddles exercise first.

...generally screwing around.

My friend and I like to play catch with sticks thrown off of the tenors. That actually got me an award from the seniors last year. We also just sit around and split licks.

There's also a random thing we do whenever the time is right; one person will be playing the tenors or something in the drum room and mess up really badly, then throw their sticks on them and let them hit the floor. Then, everyone just throws their sticks on the drum, and eventually other stuff like books, coins...brooms...So there's a pile of sticks, mallets, random junk, and a broom on the floor.

Yes, we're rather destructive.

Not really a game but My friend is pretty amazing at doing paradiddlediddles. We were at band camp and waiting for auditions so he grabed his pad and sticks and went around seeing who could paraddiddlediddle faster with random people in the hall.

Playing vitamin exercises until our arms fall off was something we enjoyed doing. Last man standing gets the twinky. =D

This has absolutely nothing to do with technique or anything, but you could always throw in a good ole' drumstick/ mallet tossing competition =]

Our tenor sets are on the walls with the bottom facing out. So one day Myself and another one of my friends decided hey who can throw a stick into the spock drum from across the percussion. It was a lot of fun. We eventually moved up to throwing a ball of yarn. After that i think we played baseball in our percussion. It rocked

four and forever is always fun.

four counts of sixteenth notes and 32nd note roll for whoever can go the longest. good times.

"Free Basics" or "Pac Man Basics."

Basically the yard lines, hashes, and sidelines are the only places that you can be. One person is it and starts on the center X. Everyone else must MARCH around the field CORRECTLY and try to get away from the person who is it. The it person has their sticks at set position and everyone else has them at their sides. Everyone must move at tempo with a metronome going, and you can go in any direction at any step size (including jazz running) as long as you march correctly. If you're caught marching incorrectly or off step, you have to mark time for 32 counts. When you're tagged, you have to march to the center X and hold there for 60 counts. Then you start throwing in tempo changes. and if anyone crashes into each other, it's pushups. It's a great focus game, and fun as heck too.

I have one that blew my mind the first time I played it.
one guy plays x amount of notes say 8. then your job is to fit y amount of notes within those 8. say 11. your first and last note must line up, and all must be evenly spaced. Time will become quantified in ways you didnt even know existed.

My friends and I in Auxiliary play a drumming game while the pit warms up called "Fred".

You sit in a circle, and you need at least 3 people to play. The exercise itself is just straight 16th notes with an accent pattern of 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 4 6 1. When you play the game, instead of finishing it with an accent on the right hand, you do a rimshot and pass your right stick to the person on the right. Then you tap off faster and start again.

Once you get your stick back, you play the exercise with diddles on the accents. Then again with diddles after the accents. The whole time getting faster. Whoever messes up is out. Try it!

Splitting any exercises, cadences, rudiments, etc. is always fun.

ok so you play this exercise in 4/4
fam accent fam accent flam flam | flam accent flam accent Flam flam| flam accent flam accent flam accent flam accent | flam flam flam flam flam flam flam flam | Flam
flam accents are in eight note triplet form
flams are in eith note form
you play that for a while then one person says another triplet basses rudiment and the next rep you have to replace the flam accents with it
then some onelse says a non triplet based rudiment and the next rep it replaces the flams (still with the new triplet rudiment)
and then you keep changing the rudiments
when you break you lose

I've recently learned the paradiddle race, and played add-a-lick, which are pretty fun.


And of course we throw our sticks against things and try to catch them again. Probably a bad idea.

I have one for my percussion section. It's called "Look up from your darn books and watch the Conducter for goodness sakes your playing gosh darn quarter notes."

Lol, nevermind. If you have seen the movie (please spare me) "Drumline" there's a part where the section leader and Mr. Wannabe, Nick Cannon, just play a simple Quarter notes for 4 counts, then roll for 4 counts, and they get faster and faster each time without looking down! Person that loses it, um, loses.

Actually those are eigth notes followed by diddles. Its in 1 measure with a tempo increase..all though it could be broken down into a 2/4 measure.

Something thats fun is outrageous tempo changes in cadences and exercises..such as doing eigths at tempo 100 then bump it up too like 180 then down to 80...Its a good way to note tempo inconsistencies as well as dynamic transitions from slow to fast to slower.

Ooohhhh...Diddles, rolls, it's all the same to me! Lol.

there is a difference. Diddles are 2 notes played on the same hand on after another. A roll can be diddles, singles, etc

either way, its in the rudiments