These 10 practice pad exercises are redesigned and edited exercises from the ebook Beginners Drum Book 2023. I have designed these to be useful for reading on a mobile screen as well as for any other device. It also looks good printed out, which you can do if you purchase 10 Practice Pad Exercises (PDF).
Can be used as warm ups or for drum lesson content
Many of the exercises can be played slowly by beginners and faster by intermediate players
I have selected these 6 exercises because they give a good insight to the book as well as being a really useful resource on it’s own. Perhaps a drum teacher would print this off for their pupils to work on, or a drummer might want to focus on rock drumming and use this on it’s own for several sessions.
The difficulty levels range from about grade 3 to grade 6, which I would say is advanced beginner to intermediate.
Below is a copy of the other two pages. You can also get the PDF file from here: https://payhip.com/b/JESGw
The difficulty on this sheet goes slightly higher with adding 8th notes to the drum beats and the drum fills are a little more advanced too, especially the rhythm of the crash and bass drum hits at the end. A drum teacher can help with this. Once you hear the rhythm it shouldn’t be too hard. You can hear the same rhythm of the ending crash cymbals (in the penultimate bar of this sheet) at the start of a famous song called We Found Love by Rhianna. Whenever I see this rhythm in any music, I always think of this song! I’m sure the rhythm has stronger roots elsewhere, perhaps in Latin American carnival type music, but that’s just what sticks in my mind.
To further disect the final line of fills, you also will need to play a triplet at the end of the first bar whilst counting ‘4 trip let’ and on the second bar there is a flam on beat 2 followed by a floor tom on beat 2 +.
Going back to the start, it’s also important to observe the driving accents on the beat, which should be played on the floor tom, and not really the bass drum. This also goes for the second line. Lines 3 and 4 could also be played with these driving accents on the ride cymbal if you would like to.
This beginners drum warm-up exercise includes easy drum beats with quarter note ride cymbals. The quarter note ride cymbal drum beats start off sparsely, like they are not complete drum beats, and then build into more of a basic beat with a kick-snare-kick-snare rhythm. The drum warm up then finishes with a fully formed drum fill, which tries to stay easy at the same time as being mildly challenging and musically interesting.
This 10 bar warm up sheet is for beginner drummers to learn and practice with at the start of a drum lesson or at the start of a practice routine. Once the sheet has been roughly learned, the drummer should try to play all of the way through the sheet in one go. No repeats are neccesary unless you want to.
This drum warm up sheet continues on from Sheet 2 by developing the paradiddle-diddle theme on the final exercise. Before that, we work on a marhing snare or practice pad style exercise, and then move onto an accent based triplet snare pattern and then the drum groove too, in the style of Hold The Line by Toto, which is featured in RSL Grade 5 drums 2018 sylabus.
Advanced beginners drum warm up exercises for use in drum lessons, or for starting a practice or learning sessions.
Advanced beginners drum warm up exercises for use in drum lessons, or for starting a practice or learning sessions.
This is the first sheet in a collection of drum warm up exercises that will be made into a pdf ebook. You can use and print the main image on this website for educational use, or you also have the option of purchasing a PDF copy of Drum Warm Up Exercises for Advanced Beginners – Sheet 1.
In the sheet there is a snare drum rhythm exercise that has be made to sound good when repeated. Drummers should aim to increase the speed once comfortable with the rhythms. Likewise for the other exercises too. Start off slow and build up confidence and ability before going fast.
The flams exercise should be played by playing R L R L on all 8th notes, which is why one of the flams is played with the left hand playing the louder part of the flam, because it’s on one of the off-beat 8th notes. The second bar could be played R L R L or the 8th notes could be changed into paradiddles, meaning the second flam would be played with the left hand on the stronger note. Left handers will need to do the opposite to all of this.
The swing beat could easily be made harder but this could be the first time some drummers have been introduced to it so I’ve kept it fairly simple. The 8th notes are to be played with swing on the ride cymbals. If you don’ know what that means, have a listen to The Pink Panther theme tune and listen to the ride cymbals.
Drum lesson warm up for advanced beginners and early intermediate levels.
Since posting this, I have focussed on creating an ebook with similar content, so the title has changed a little bit and it’s now the 2nd exercise sheet of the book. You can use the image on here and print it if needed, or you can also purchase PDF of Sheet 2 – Drum Warm Up Exercises for Advanced Beginners to Early Intermediate.
This Drum lesson warm up for advanced beginners and early intermediate levels is a summary of some of the exercises I worked on today with my students. This will probably be of use to any drummers wanting some original exercises to work on as part of a drum lesson or to self learn.
There are two exercises with sextuplets, accents and the use of a paradiddle-diddle (RLRRLL).
There are exercises based on one drum beat with examples of how you can develop it.
This collection of 50 beginners drum beats features in my ebook Beginners Drum Book 2023. I am planning to update this book at some point so the 50 beats may change or become more than 50, but if I do create a newer version, the 2023 version will still be included as a pdf ebook. We start off fairly easy and by beat 21 the beats do get quite hard, learning Jazz beats with 4 way co-ordination. This selection of 50 beats can be learned as one topic, or it can be something to dip in and out of. Here are all of the sheets with all 50 beats, but if you would like the printable pdf, then you will need to purchase that here.
An interesting style of drumming that has become popular recently is live breakbeats or human drum ‘n’ bass music. Bands like Nerve and Shobaleader One have been on the cusp of the movement and players like Johnny Rabb and Jojo Mayer have been using their considerable chops and applying them to electronic sounding, yet still very acoustic, beats for decades. Playing in this style can be a lot of fun because it is improvisational like jazz, technical and chops heavy like metal or prog, and very flashy with a prominent and featured drum part.
To get into this style you can start in a couple of places. Drum and Bass beats are traditionally either created by sampling existing music off of a turntable, or by programming rhythms into a drum machine. In this selection of exercises we will focus on recreating the drum machine sound, rather than the sampled sound. Programmed beats are sometimes called steps because of the 16 steps (16th notes on which you can apply sounds) of an old loop sequencer drum machine. These exercises all feature essentially the same 3 core steps. These are classic rhythms that permeate much of electronic music and can be embellished in many ways to come up with more interesting grooves. These first 3 patterns are demonstrated here:
The hi-hat or ride cymbal can be used with any of these steps. We can also change the value of the cymbal pattern from 8ths to quarters to change the feel. Try to work these basic beats up to at least 160bpm if not higher for an authentic sound.
For slower tempos, more cymbals keep up the energy level. 16ths would be the next logical step.
For a layered texture, add in hi hat with your foot. Drum machines can play lots of notes simultaneously, so layering in another cymbal pattern helps keep up the illusion of a programmed beat.
Keep in mind that drum machines have no soul. Counterintuitively, the less human feeling or groove you can impart to these patterns the better they will sound in a drum and bass context. Try to play all the cymbal notes at the same dynamic level and keep everything steadily right down the center of the beat. Once you master these patterns, you can begin to add ghost notes, hi hat openings, fills, and other elements to make things more interesting. More advanced step patterns, classic breaks, break manipulation strategies, and extended techniques, can be found in Live Drum & Bass – Breakbeats and Electronic Music for Real Drummers available from Hudson Music and Amazon.com
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