This article is about the drum roll, a percussion technique. "Drum Roll" is also the title of the autobiography of James Blades.

A drum roll is a method a percussionist employs to produce a sustained sound on a drum. Rolls are used on other percussion instruments such as the marimba and xylophone to sustain the sound, where it can be likened to tremolo on string instruments.

The snare drum roll

The most common snare drum roll is the closed daddi-mammi roll. The open daddi-mammi roll is played with double strokes alternating between the left and right hands; the closed roll is produced by applying more pressure and loosening the grip slightly to allow the sticks to bounce more than twice against the drum skin and produce a more continuous sound. One drum "rudiment" is to slowly begin a roll, which generally is started by consciously hitting the drum twice with each hand, then fluidly switching to a double bounce, and eventually increasing in speed to where the sound is a near-solid buzz.

Other than the open daddi-mammi there are many other rolls which are practised as drum rudiments. In the table below, lower-case letters represent grace notes (drags, flams etc) and hyphens represent rests.

The Timpani roll

Rolls on timpani are almost exclusively single stroked. Due to the instruments' resonance, a fairly open roll is usually used, although the exact rate at which a roll is played depends greatly on the acoustic conditions, the size of the drum, the pitch to which is it tuned and the sticks being used. For example, wooden sticks will generally require a faster roll than felt ones.

The Marimba roll

These are similar to the timpani rolls in that they are done nearly the same way and are both singly-stroked. Yarn mallets usually can be rolled much more easily on a marimba than plastic ones can be on a xylophone, because the extra reverberation of a marimba will mask the silent gaps between strokes. For this reason, the rolls can be much slower and still effective. But for xylophone and orchestra bells a much swifter roll is required, especially for rubber or plastic mallets. A bass mallet with the orchestra bells will add extra vibration to aid in the smoothing of the sound.

To get these faster rolls, percussionists (keyboard and snare and timpani all) often resort to using the muscles of their fingers instead of those of the wrists. The fingers have a shorter rotation length and can move faster with less effort than the wrist. Finger muscles are usually not as well developed, so percussionists, especially of the middle or high school age, will be seen twirling or rolling their sticks and mallets through their fingers rapidly. And more often than not, dropping them. This differs in some way from the twirling majorettes perform.