There is no rule that you have to play the Stone Stick Control for Snare Drum exercises in numerical order. Why didn’t I think of that earlier? I use the first 3 pages (pages 5 – 7) of the Stone Stick Control book a lot – especially for warm ups and practicing drum set. See: Stone Stick Control for Drum Set. I also use a metronome almost always when I practice. Well, my metronome was set at one tempo to practice all 72 exercises. Consequently, that means I could only go as fast as the most difficult exercises (numbers 70 & 71) would allow.
I am able to play single strokes faster than double strokes. And I can play double strokes faster than triple strokes etc. So what I have done is change the Stone Stick Control order. I divided the exercises into groups of single, double, triple, quadruple and sextuple. Now I can set my metronome to a different tempo for each group. Much more effective. Especially for achieving maximum speed. Here is the break down of the Stone exercises:
You may also want to see: Triplet Stick Control Exercises
For anyone still unfamiliar with this book, the following is a review from Amazon:
George Lawrence Stone Stick Control is the original classic, often called the bible of drumming. In 1993, Modern Drummer magazine named it first in the top 25 drumming books of all-time. In the words of the author, this is the ideal book for improving “control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution, and muscular coordination,” with extra attention given to the development of the weak hand. This indispensable book for drummers of all types includes hundreds of basic to advanced rhythms and moves through categories of single-beat combinations, triplets, short roll combinations, flam beats, flam triplets and dotted notes, and short roll progressions.