The difference between drags, ruffs and single stroke fours

Drum teacher Jason Horsler explains the differences bewtween drags and ruffs using gracenotes. ''it still feels uncomfortable to me to be absolute either way (when defining drags and ruffs) but i do have heaps of respect for tommy igoe and the people who have influenced him in his long career as well as educators like craig lauritsen sometimes i think the term ruff is broader - an umbrella concept for anything that has more than one grace note. so it goes: flam ruff (the drag type - rrL) ruff (the three stroke hand to hand type - rlR) ruff (the fourstroke hand to hand type rlrL) etc. the main thing to remember is that all of these are principle notes preceeded by non countable (non metric) grace notes. also remember that drumkit is a young instrument and the evolution of ideas was not smooth or perfectly standardised so what one book or authority calls one thing may not match with others. jason''