Lines 1-3
The first drum fill that most drummers learn is 4 groups of 16th notes around the kit, which is 4 hits on the snare drum with a RLRL sticking, then 4 on the high tom, 4 on the medium tom, and 4 on the floor tom. On this sheet we also have this pattern at the start but it’s all on the snare drum (16 snare hits in total) and there are bass drums on the 1st note of each group of 4 snares.
For the rest of the exercise sheet, this full bar of 16th notes is used again but on different drums, or to develop the patterns, some of the 16th notes have been taken away completly, such as on beat 2 of bar 4, or on bar 6 where there are 8th notes rests whilst the bass drum plays on its own.
The notation is kept fairly simple for it to be enjoyable to play as a warm up exercise, which should include elements of repetition. This is acheived by playing the bass drum on the 1 2 3 4 pulse throughout the exercise sheet.
Lines 4-6
There are crash cymbals introduced in the second half of the exercise sheets which ae added to give added challenges. , and also so that the 4 bass drum hits per bar don’t sound too repetative.
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