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I have been trying to improve my single stroke rolls and was wondering if someone had any tips, or new approaches that could open new perspectives...
So far I practise with paradiddles, 3,4,5,7,9and 13 strokes and open ended rolls with various groupings in mind. That's pretty much it.

Any ideas ?

I think you pretty much covered it. The only thing I do is to try and limit the "size" or height of my stroke. The shorter/tighter I can make it, the faster the speed. Short, repeated flam-like bursts of 4-8 strokes have helped. Believe it or not I also lay off practice for a day every once in a while which tends to "refresh" the muscle/brain/coordinative connection and allow me to attack again. Make sense? Maybe not. For what it's worth-- hope it helps.

Hi Tone,
You might know this one already: One of my teachers in Ghana would always push me further than my limits. One of the things he did was have me play (at the same time as him), fast continuos rolls for some minutes. Time yourself for a minute or two. It's harder than it sounds, after a while it feels like your arms are gonna drop off! I always found that after this exercise it felt like my hands were stronger and it was much easier to articulate the different sounds.
Pavlo

Remembering back to my snare drumming days, we used Mnemonics when practicing and switching odd count rolls.
5 roll - "Middle of the night"
7 roll - "In the middle of the night"
9 roll - "In the middle of the little night"
11 roll - "In the middle of the middle of the night"
15 roll - "Have you ever seen a drummer in the middle of the night?"

Made it very easy to switch spontaneously between various rolls counts, and to learn to recognize the sound pattern of those rolls, without having to get involved in actually counting those odd counts..


Attached is a page from "The Conga Drummer's Guidebook" by Michael Spiro
......forgive me Mike, posted without your permission...somehow I think you wouldn't mind...consider it a sample...
I highly recommend his book!

Anyway the exercise is not specifically for rolls, although it consists entirely of 4 count and triplet rolls.
Looks long, but is basically a repeat of first 4 measures, using open tones, slaps, muffs, bass.
To be used with a metronome at increasing speeds, and to be executed with both hands, with emphasis on tone quality.
This is primarily a strength, speed and stamina exercise.
Try doing entire exercise with 4 repeats on each left & right hand....a workout!

The key to this exercise is "phrasing from the upbeat "
Look at the final note of each open, slap, muff, bass sequence.
It contains the tone of the next sequence, and that is how the series of rolls are "phrased".
the phrasing of each roll sequence does not start on the one count.
It's a concept he goes into in depth in the book, and reiterates throughout.

You'll have to click on image, then "zoom in".
If it looks like something you would want to use...print it.

Hope this of some value.

Regards
~Joseph

very good information thanks for sharing that info with us.