How to Tell If Your Double Strokes Are Even (and Why Yours Are Not)

Diagnosis · Double strokes · Updated 2026-08-16

Search for how to fix double strokes and you will find real advice. Search for how to know whether yours are actually even and the advice runs out fast. That gap matters, because most double stroke advice ends the same way: keep going, it will even out as you speed up. Nobody tells you how to confirm it did. Your ear is the worst judge available here, because it hears the pair as one event and fills in the second stroke, which is exactly the stroke that is failing.

This is the measurement half. You get a symptom table mapping what you hear to what is mechanically wrong and how to confirm it, a millisecond reference for the gap between stroke one and stroke two at every practice tempo, a per-hand protocol that finds the hand capping your roll, and an honest range for where wrist strokes hand off to rebound. The standard remedies are here too, but last, on purpose - a fix applied before you know which failure you have is how drummers lose a year to the wrong exercise.

Even means two things, and they fail separately

A double has two properties worth measuring and they are independent. Dynamic match: does stroke two hit with the same peak volume as stroke one? Spacing: does stroke two land one full subdivision after stroke one, or arrive early and crush into it? The beginner failure is a quiet second stroke at correct spacing. The intermediate failure is the reverse - a loud second stroke arriving well short of its subdivision, which sounds clean at speed and turns to buzz as the tempo climbs. The crush table below puts numbers on how early that is at each tempo.

A third fault gets mistaken for uneven doubles and is not an evenness problem at all: the pair sitting early or late against the beat as a unit. That is placement, covered in rushing versus dragging and in drum timing accuracy in milliseconds. Even doubles can rush, and well placed doubles can be lopsided inside, so separate the two before fixing either.

A four-question triage before you touch any tool

Run these in order. They need a pad, a metronome and about six minutes, and they usually tell you which row of the table below is yours.

1. Play doubles at 80 BPM and listen only to stroke two: Set 80 BPM and play RRLL as 16th notes, which puts every stroke 187.5 ms apart. Listen only to the second stroke of each pair: quieter or duller means a dynamic problem.
2. Play the pattern with only the second strokes sounding: Same tempo, but strike only stroke two of each pair, with stroke one a silent motion at the same height. Weak or late isolated strokes mean stroke two has never been a real stroke.
3. Move to a surface with almost no rebound: Play the same doubles on a pillow, a folded towel or a dense low-rebound pad. A double that disappears on a dead surface was never controlled, it was a bounce you were harvesting.
4. Run each hand alone to its ceiling: Play doubles with the right hand only and raise the tempo until stroke two collapses, then repeat with the left. The difference between those two numbers is the most useful figure in this guide.

The diagnostic table: symptom, cause, confirmation

Each row pairs what you notice with what it usually indicates mechanically and with a way to confirm it. Guessing at the cause is how drummers drill the wrong correction for months.

What an even double looks like as a number

Even spacing is not a matter of feel. It is the subdivision, from one formula: milliseconds between strokes = 60000 divided by (BPM multiplied by notes per beat). Doubles are usually practiced as 16th notes, four per beat, so at 120 BPM the gap is 60000 divided by 480, or 125 ms exactly. Strokes closer together than that are not even, however good they feel.

Read the right-hand columns before choosing a target tempo. A roll at 160 BPM in 16ths is 640 strokes per minute, 320 from each hand, every pair 93.75 ms apart. The figures in the rudiment tempo chart are commonly used practice ranges drummers openly disagree about, not a standard anyone enforces.

A crushed second stroke is best measured as a percentage of the ideal gap, because the same fault produces a smaller absolute error as the tempo rises.

Compare your hands one at a time, because the roll is capped by the slower one

This measurement explains most double stroke plateaus and almost nobody runs it. A roll alternates hands, so it cannot be cleaner than the weaker hand's ceiling, and drilling the roll as a roll only trains the stronger hand to compensate.

1. Silence one hand: Play only the right hand's doubles: strike 16ths one and two of each beat, rest through three and four. The rests are the point, forcing each pair to start from a stop instead of coasting on the other hand's momentum.
2. Raise the tempo in 5 BPM steps: Hold each tempo for 60 seconds before moving up, because a minute exposes the fatigue failure eight bars hides. Stop at the first tempo where stroke two loses volume, arrives early or drops out.
3. Repeat with the other hand, ideally on another day: Fatigue from the first test contaminates the second. If both happen in one session, rest five minutes and run the weaker hand first, so you measure ability rather than tiredness.
4. Take the lower number as your real roll tempo: Log both ceilings with the date. The roll caps at the lower of the two, not the average. If the left holds clean 16ths to 90 BPM and the right to 96, that 6 BPM gap is about 10 ms of spacing, 166.7 ms against 156.25 ms, invisible to the ear and obvious on a measurement.

Six BPM between your hands is a difference almost nobody can hear, yet it sets the ceiling for the ten double stroke roll rudiments in the PAS list of 40, numbers 6 through 15, the whole diddle family, and every flam and drag rudiment containing a diddle. Close the gap by giving the weaker hand reps at its own ceiling tempo, not at the stronger hand's pace, where it only rehearses failing.

The wrist-to-rebound handoff, and why doubles often stall between 100 and 140 BPM

At slow tempos both strokes of a double can be full, separately controlled motions. Above some tempo that stops being available and stroke two has to come from a rebound the fingers meter. That handoff is where most plateaus live, because the technique that got you there is the technique that cannot take you further.

Treat that band as a common report, not a rule. Where your own crossover sits is individual. It moves with stick weight and taper, head tension, pad density, grip and hand size, and it can differ between your two hands. Some drummers change closer to 110 BPM, others hold two distinct strokes past 150.

The standard remedies, applied after the diagnosis

None of this is new or mine. What the usual advice leaves out is which remedy to reach for and how to know it worked, so match each one to the row you confirmed above and re-measure a week later with the same test at the same tempo. A remedy you cannot re-measure is a hope, not a plan.

• Accent the second stroke. For a quiet stroke two, play RRLL with the accent deliberately on strokes two and four. It is a corrective exaggeration, so stop once unaccented peak levels match.
• Isolate the hands. Practice each hand alone at its own ceiling tempo, never at the tempo the stronger hand enjoys. A weaker hand improves fastest at the edge of its own ability.
• Work below the transition band, not inside it. If your cliff sits at 130 BPM, do the technical work at 100, where the gap is a roomy 150 ms, then climb in 5 BPM steps with a pass or fail criterion at each one. Attach it to a structured practice pad routine.
• Check the grip before the pattern. A crushed second stroke very often comes from squeezing right after stroke one. Test fulcrum pressure at the tempo where the crush appears, not at a comfortable one.

What to log so next month's you can tell the difference

Evenness improves slowly enough that memory is useless as a comparison. Five numbers logged monthly under identical conditions beat a year of impressions, so keep surface, sticks and time of day constant.

Measure the second stroke instead of guessing at it. Drum Coach₊ by Panda Taps is a rudiment trainer and practice pad companion coming soon for iPhone. It listens through the microphone and scores every individual stroke against the grid, classifying each one as on-time, rushed, dragged, missed or extra with a default on-time window of 25 ms, so a crushed second stroke becomes a number instead of a suspicion. Per-stroke timing histograms show the whole distribution rather than one opaque figure, a double-stroke evenness view compares the right hand against the left, and an accuracy-gated ladder of 12 tempo rungs advances only after two reps at 90 percent or better at the same tempo, never on a timer. All 40 PAS rudiments are included with notation, sticking, accents and audio demos. Everything runs on device, audio is analyzed and never recorded or uploaded, and there is no account, no ads and no analytics. It is not the only app that listens to drumming, and several others offer per-hit feedback too. Learn more about Drum Coach₊.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if my double strokes are even?

Test two things separately. For volume, record yourself and compare the peak level of the second stroke against the first. For spacing, compare the measured gap between the two strokes against the subdivision spacing for your tempo, which is 60000 divided by the tempo multiplied by the notes per beat. At 120 BPM in 16th notes that gap is exactly 125 ms.

Why are my double strokes uneven fast but fine slowly?

That pattern usually means you are still throwing two full wrist strokes at a tempo that needs a controlled rebound for the second stroke. The handoff commonly falls somewhere around 100 to 140 BPM in 16th notes, though the exact crossover is individual and moves with sticks, surface, grip and hand size. A sharp accuracy cliff at one specific tempo points to a missing technique change rather than insufficient practice.

How many milliseconds apart should the two strokes of a double be?

Exactly one subdivision. Divide 60000 by the tempo multiplied by the notes per beat. For 16th notes that is 250 ms at 60 BPM, 150 ms at 100 BPM, 125 ms at 120 BPM, 107.1 ms at 140 BPM, 93.75 ms at 160 BPM and 75 ms at 200 BPM. Anything meaningfully shorter than that figure is a crushed second stroke, however clean it sounds in the moment.

Why does my left hand give out before my right?

Hand asymmetry is normal, but it matters because a double stroke roll is capped by the weaker hand rather than the average of the two. If the left holds clean 16th doubles to 90 BPM and the right to 96, the roll caps near 90. Test each hand alone to its ceiling on separate days, log both numbers, and give the weaker hand reps at its own ceiling.

Keep reading

• Drum Timing Accuracy in Milliseconds: How Close Is Close Enough?
• Drum Rudiment Tempo Chart: What BPM to Practice At
• The 40 Drum Rudiments: The Complete List