Kenny Washington Inverted Roll

Here's a quick little phrase that I've been playing for years, but for some reason never thought to share with you wonderful people.  It's an idea I got from Kenny Washington that is built on an inverted roll.

An inverted roll is simply a roll in which the first note of each double stroke is on the "&", rather than the downbeat.  So, instead of: RRLL RRLL....  you'd play RLLR RLLR

Kenny, however, leaves off that single note on the downbeat and simply starts straight in with the double strokes on the & of 1, which gives the whole thing a nice kick.  It's worth trying it in different parts of the bar, as well as different parts of the phrase, though it works particularly well on the & of 1, and the & of 2.

I'm toying with the idea of tying the blog into YouTube a little bit more, so there is a video down below demonstrating this idea.