The six-stroke roll is six notes — R L L R R L — with accents on the R's at positions 1 and 4. Played as 8th-note triplets, it covers two beats per repetition and feels like two waves cresting.
Once it's in your hands, it unlocks a huge amount of fusion vocabulary. The basic pattern stays on the snare; the variations move the LL groups around the toms, add the bass drum on the final L, and end on a crash. Vinnie Colaiuta and Dave Weckl live inside this phrase.
Exercises
2A — Six-Stroke on Snare (8th-note triplets)
Two reps of RLLRRL per bar — four triplet groups total. Sticking: R L L R R L · R L L R R L · R L L R R L · R L L R R L. Once it's clean, take the LL of each group to a tom for fills.