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Beginners 16th Note hi hat warm up

16th note hi hats are a rock and pop drumming staple. They can be heard in hit songs such as Mr. Brightside by The Killers, Everlong by the Foo Fighters, and Parallel Universe by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They are also used on intros to songs such as in Run To The Hills by Iron Maiden and The Game by Disturbed. English Summer Rain by Placebo is another track with 16th note hi hat beats throughout.

How to play the warm up sheet

You could learn each line seperately and then try to play the whole exercise sheet in one go, or you could loop each line for as long as you want to. What we are working towards is the last two lines of the sheet. The other ones are building up to them, but could also be used in their own right as build ups in songs.

Line 1 – Just focussing on the hi hats and making sure to accent beats 2 and 4 so that you are preparing to move to the snare drum.

Line 2 – On beats 2 and 4 of the bar, right handed drummers should move over the right hand to the snare drum and no hi hat should be played at the same time. The next hi hat after the snare drum crucially should be the left hand. This often gets played wrong by students and the sticking ends up as RLRL RRLR (and then gets stuck), instead of RLRL RLRL.

Line 3 – Back to the same as line 1 but adding in bass drums on beats 1 and 3.

Line 4 – Ok, here is the main drum beat. Bass drum on 1 and 3 and snare drum on beats 2 and 4. Make sure to keep alternating the sticks and moving the right hand back and forth between the snare and hi hats when the snares are played, and keep the left hand raised and staying where it is for the hi hat notes

Line 5 – Same as line 4 but now we are turning it into a disco beat or a rock groove by adding bass drums to the snare drums. This is pretty similar to Mr. Brightside by The Killers, but in that song the hi hats get messy with open hi hats and extra snare drums.

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Beginners 2 bar drum grooves with open Hi Hats

I’ve had a bit of writers block lately and felt like I didn’t have it in me to work on another drum book at the moment. When I sat down to actually work on something I realised there was no block at all! It’s just been quite busy and I felt like I didn’t have the time or energy but just like with learning the drums, building a drum book happens by making lots of small additions, and it’s also quite fun too. So, exactly this for learning an instrument, this should be remembered. Small steps to learning and improving eventually builds into something substantial and just getting started is often the hardest step to creating something meaningful. It’s the same with saving money, lots of regular saving over a long time soon adds up to something meaningful, which is perhaps boring or frustrating on the first thought of not spending it and only saving a small amount, but it’s quite exciting when you see it grow and when it earns interest too.

So, for this warm up exercise sheet, you could play these with or without the open hi hats. I suggest to drum teachers to introduce open hi hats fairly early because otherwise pupils can get quite anti-hi hats if they are young so adding them into lessons early on may avoid this. However, some pupils are either too small or just really stuggle with holding down the hi hats with their foot so if there is this problem from day one, then just lock the hi hat into the closed position so it doesn’t distract too much from actually learning the drums.

Exercise 1 is a dance / pop / disco / rock beat that is in loads of songs like Eye of The Tiger, Another One Bites The Dust and Stayin’ Alive (especially with the open hi hat).

Exercise 2 is a general rock groove that is quite funky with the open hi hat and would work well in soul music or any pop / rock style too.

Exercise 3 is a hard rock groove with quarter note hi hats with a smooth open hi hat part.

Exercise 4 is a pop drum beat that has plenty of space for the vocals and builds tension, not too much going on in the middle of the bar.

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You can download the pdf of this for free here: Beginners Drum Warm Up Exercises. Whilst you are there please subscribe to the mailing list if you are interested in more free pdf content like this.

Sheet 5 – Sheet 5 – Beginners Drum Warm Up Exercises

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.

More Like This

Follow the links below to view more sheets in this ebook collection.

← Sheet 3

Free PDF Download

You can download the whole ebook as a pdf for free, or you can pay what you want, here: Drum Warm Up Exercises for Beginners.

10 Practice Pad Exercises – beginners to intermediate

Free Printable PDF

About 10 Practice Pad Exercises

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.

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
Use with and without a metronome
For practice pad or snare drum

Sheet 3 – Beginners Drum Warm Up Exercises

Free PDF Download

Beginners Drum Warm Up Exercises

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.

← Sheet 2

Sheet 2 – Drum Warm Up Exercises for Beginners

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Download the PDF for ‘Sheet 2 – Drum Warm Up Exercises for Beginners’.

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.

← Sheet 1

Sheet 3 →

Sheet 1 – Drum Warm Up Exercises for Beginners

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Download the PDF for ‘Sheet 1 – Drum Warm Up Exercises for Beginners’.

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.

Sheet 2 →

Drum Warm Up Exercises for Advanced Beginners – Sheet 1

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.

View Sheet 2 →

Drum Lesson Warm Up – 6th Jan 2026

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.

View Sheet 3 →

← Back to Sheet 1