PDF – 10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats

This sheet is one of 2 bonus warm up sheets in the book 40 Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats and Fills Exercises. Before getting stuck into exercises usually lasting for 4 or more bars, we focus here on 1 bar at a time, looping each drum beat for a while and making it comfortable to play.

Here is a video showing how to play these 10 exercises:

You should focus on mastering each beat on this sheet before moving onto the rest of the book. When it starts to get more comfortable, introduce the metronome at around 60-70bpm and settle down into a groove for a bit. Try increasing the speed after a while. The skip beats are the snare drums or bass drums that slot in between the 8th note hi hats. The ‘skip’ should be exactly in the middle of the space between the hi hats. when added they should sound like even 16th notes between the hi hats and the skip beats. Concentrate hard on acheiving this even spacing to make your beats sound tight.

Often snare drum skip beats are played as ghost notes. This is not notated, but you should also go through the sheet again trying this.

You can also view the next sheet in the book for free: 10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats with 16th note hi hats.