A blog to help with learning and teaching Drums. Written by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Books.
This free drum fills pdf sheet music is from page 11 of the premium ebook Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners.
Each drum fill is an ‘around the kit’ fill, meaning that you play each note grouping on the drums as follows: snare drum, tom 1, tom 2, floor tom.
To help with reading the rhythms, you could try this sheet: 10 breakfast snare drum exercises – phonetic rhythms
Number of Pages: 24
For a free preview, click the Buy Now button and then click the ‘Preview’ link at the top left of the product image.
This beats and fills drum book has been created for beginner drum students to follow from complete beginner up to grade 1 level. This book could either be used by self taught drummers, or it could be used during drum lessons, and practiced by the student in between lessons. Teachers may purchase this book online and print out unlimited copies for their students.
The book is aimed at students of any age, including adults. The minimum age is about 7 years old. This book is for complete beginners that have a little knowledge of reading drum music. The book can be worked on very soon after starting to learn drums. Younger players (age 5+) may struggle to read this book, and would need to be shown the beats and fills and/or start learning to read music in different ways, such as with hand sketched drum beats with clear visual icons for each drum voice (e.g. a pictures or sketches of bass drum, snare and hi hat).
There are 3 main sections: drum beats, drum fills, and various combination exercises of drum beats + drum fills. We focus on establishing a core and fundamental understanding and ability to play basic beginners drum beats and drum fills. Some prior knowledge of reading music will be required if you are working through this book on your own without a teacher.
The drum beats in this book are all aimed at complete beginners with a little bit of knowledge of how to read drum music or they can be taught to read it while working through the book with a teacher.
The drum fills in this book range from easy ‘around the kit’ fills with quarter notes and 8th notes, to more advanced movements, leading up to grade 1 level.
The drum beats and drum fills section brings together the things you have learned in the first two sections of the book. This section is designed to give a more realistic drumming experience, because most songs are not based on just beats or just fills. Master these and you will be well on your way to start playing along with songs.
I hope you find these useful.
Try this similar book, next level up, which is for Grade 1-2:
Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Unit 1 – Rock Pop Soul Funk – PDF ebook
Photo Credit: Image by rawpixel.com
Whether you are thinking of starting your own music leaching business, or looking for ways to improve the management of your self employed music lessons business, these 10 tips have been written with you in mind. All of these bits of advice are related to my own business and are things that I do or have learned throughout the 6 years of teaching music in schools and doing private lessons, while being self employed and organising everything else involved outside of the actual teaching.
Easily manage your schedule online and sync it to your mobile devices. Reschedule lessons on the move and set reminders to pop up at certain times if needed. The main advantage of a digital calendar is that you can schedule recurring lessons to be the same every week, and then modify each one individually if you need reschedule for one week – saving you lots of time writing in the same things into your calendar each week. I use google calendar and sync it with my phone’s calendar.
A todo list that syncs to your phone, like Remember The Milk, is very useful and can help build up your reputation of someone that is reliable, because you will actually follow through with the things you say you will do. There is always something that crops up in the day that needs to be addressed at a later time. A busy music teacher can have hundreds of little tasks in a week that crop up, and adding them to a todo list will make sure they get done.
Structure your teaching into ability levels and topics. Make sure you are covering everything that you should be teaching to the best of your knowledge. Create lesson plans or exercise sheets, or compile ones from books or online lessons. Keep digital files and print as needed. I keep my files in google drive or in dropbox so I can use them on the move. Don’t hand write everything in your own time unless you are only doing it once and photocopying it for future lessons. You should end up with more content than you can carry with you at once. Therefore you might want to structure lesson material into different topics throughout the year, or use or create a series of books that the students can progress through.
If creating your own lesson plans, try to compile them into a book or booklet that can be printed out and stapled or binded together, or used as an ebook. This will mean you won’t need to worry about printing off new lesson handouts every week or so. Even better, the student will be able to visualise their progress as they make their way through the book. Furthermore, you could think about selling your books online. It can be a nice way of passively bringing in an extra income while you are doing other things. I use a company called Payhip to sell my ebooks and premium downloads.
Working through a grade book is a good way of learning and teaching. Make sure you only teach grades that you could do yourself. You should always be at a higher grade than what you are teaching, and ideally be several higher.
Grade 6-8 award ucas points, which are a good incentive to start learning early and have dedication to progress up through the grades before university age, where extra ucas points might prove useful.
If you take your job seriously and want your students and parents of students to take you seriously then I believe you need to make the effort to look smart whilst working. You might also be a musician and have a strong image as well, but it is best to save certain things for the stage. Being your own boss is great so you don’t have to, but people feel more comfortable if you make the effort with your appearance, especially if you work in schools as a peripatetic music teacher.
Music teachers can charge much more than minimum wage, which is great unless they don’t do enough billable hours. To make this job pay a decent wage you need to make sure you are putting full time hours during term time at least. It is easy to fall for the illusion of charging a high hourly rate, and working part time hours, only to end up with a low income at the end of the year.
Keep your dreams, goals, ambitions and love of music alive. You might downsize them as the years pass by, but always remember why you play your instruments and do all you can to be a musician as well as a music teacher.
There is always something new to learn in music. Never stop learning and improving! Make sure you practice – practice what you preach to your students. I also see recording music to a click as practice, and you are also getting a physical end result from it.
I use google contacts, and stay in regular contact about lesson times and news etc. I group them by instrument, and also by which school they have lessons in, or if they have non-school lessons. Emails are the best method of contact I think because you can send to many all at once easily, most people use email now, it is free, and you can attach things. Phone calls are inconvenient to many now, texts are not as easy to send to everyone quickly, and facebook and twitter messages/updates are easily missed.
/>I hope you have found some or all of these points useful and relevant to you. There are many other things I could write about in this list, and I hope to write another one in the future. Meanwhile, have a look around the internet for similar things as there are many helpful bits of advise. One website that I constantly find tips from for running a business, which I would recommend to you, is: www.entrepreneur.com
Related: (www.learnguitarforfree.com) 30 essential productivity apps, business management tools and other apps or websites that help to run an online business and a local music teaching business
This snare drum piece could be played by a single drummer, or as part of a group of drummers. The snare drum piece is an example of a short piece with two snare drum parts of different ability levels. There are 2 difficulty levels; beginners up to grade 1, and grade 2 level.
I run a youth snare drumline group, and regularly produce snare music for various ability levels. The piece could also be adapted to a full drumline if extra parts are written – if you run a drumline please feel free to use this and to write extra parts for it.
Related: Group Snare Drum Piece with 3 difficulty levels (Piece 2, Book 1)
Related: (Premium) 10 Snare Drum Pieces – Book 1 – Levels 1-3
Jazz music can be very difficult. Even these starter beats for Jazz drumming are a challenge, and beginners will probably need a teacher’s help to play these.
The left foot is usually used in Jazz. To keep things simple we are just doing 3 way co-ordination in these 8 Jazz drum beats.
Related: 7 Jazz Drum Patterns with 3 and 4 way co-ordination sheets
Related: Learn to play the basic foundation Jazz drum groove
Related: 10 Jazz Ride Patterns
I saw Gabrielle Aplin live at The Ritz in Manchester on her debut album tour in 2013, so although I don’t watch many music videos, this was on my radar and the images of all the drummers lured me in. Gabrielle Aplin has released this music video ahead of her second album, which includes a room full of drummers playing light up drum along with the upbeat song. Drummers unite and watch this brilliant music video!
Also, here is the behind the scenes video:
Photo Credit: Owen Byrne
Beginners often play the hi hat too loud, and sometimes this is down to where they are hitting on the hi hat cymbals rather than how hard they are hitting. As a result, their playing sounds messy, and their sticks wear more quickly. If this is happening to you, it may be time to address your technique for playing the hi hats.
Regular hi hat sounds should be played using the tip of the stick on the top of the hi hat, half way between the edge and the bell, and range of dynamics can be played here. The left foot should press down quite a bit so that the sound is clean and tight. However, too much pressing down with the foot will give the sound a weird ringing noise, which doesn’t sound good, as well as being tiring pressing down with the left foot for long periods of time.
The area closer to the bell has a higher frequency tone, which is good for a brighter sound. This area is good for styles like soul funk, particularly for adding in open hi hats.
The edge of the hi hat should be reserved for accents or for more frequent use in heavy genres like hard rock and metal. Even in those styles though, variation between the top and edge are effective.
The edge of the hi hat should be played with the thick part of the drum stick, which is called the shoulder. This is the best part of the hi hat to get an open slushy sound – this is used most of the time in metal music and fairly often in rock too.
For most other styles, single open hi hats that close after are best played with the tip of the stick on the top of the hi hat. This gives a crisp clean sound. You will find that these compliment a drum groove nicely, and that playing an open hi hat on the edge is good for times when you want it to stand out more – for example if a band is playing some stabbed rhythms.
To get a nice sizzley jazz open hi hat sound, try hooking on a light chain on the top of the cymbal.
Finally, you need a good set of cymbals! For a good studio recording or live playing, an expensive set of cymbals will always be better. You can still sound good though by following the advice above, as long as you have a set of fairly heavy weighted cymbals, unlike the water thin style cymbals that come with some cheap beginners kits.
I will leave you with this thought: a well played set of cheap hi hats will always sound better than badly played top of the range hi hats.
The ride cymbal can be pretty loud, so always try to lower your stick so that your strokes are fairly close to the ride cymbal – this should help keep the volume from getting out of control and also give you dynamic room at add accents on the ride or the bell when needed. Make sure to hit the ride half way between the edge and the bell with the tip of the stick – NOT the shoulder (keep that arm up!). Play the bell with the shoulder of the stick, or if you want a light bell sound, with the tip of the stick. You can crash the ride too when required. To get a nice sizzley jazz sound, try hooking on a light chain on the top of the cymbal (as pictured in the featured image).
Always “Crash” using the shoulder of the drum stick, on the edge of the cymbal at about a 45 degree angle. Hitting it to the left or right of the middle will help prevent cymbal cracking. Strike with a glancing blow whilst also following through with your stick. Continue the motion left or right depending on where you are going to next. For example, if the cymbal is on the left hand side of the drum kit and you want to get to the ride cymbal next, hit the cymbal at the right of the middle and glance off to the right – you’ll arrive at the ride cymbal much quicker.
You can also play a crash cymbal like a ride cymbal, with the tip of the stick. For example, in Jazz this can provide opportunity for variation when there are a lot of ride based drum beats.
Play these like you would play a crash cymbal.
Like a huge bell from a ride cymbal, these really cut through any mix and are usually played with the tip of the stick or sometimes with the shoulder of the stick. Some players have them positioned upside down. There is no right or wrong way.
These snare drum or practice pad exercises are similar to drum rudiments. The drum exercises work on possible sticking and dynamic eventualities that you may encounter in drum beats and grooves, drum fills, and snare drum sheet music. The exercises also could be used as a warm up, especially from playing snare drum sheet music.
While beginners will be able to play these exercises at their level, advanced players should be aware of using Up Strokes, Tap Strokes, Down Strokes, and Full Strokes so that there is a greater continuity of volume and attack.
Free PDF Download of Grade 1 Rock Beats (includes this sheet)
In this lesson we will run through 10 popular rock drum beats. I will show you how to do variations on each beat, which will extend the contents of the sheet a lot, and give you ideas for practicing. I will also show you how they sound at slow, medium and fast speeds with a metronome. This is my first drum kit video and I am pleased to have included 2 camera angles, to show the feet. However, I was using my old phone to do this and it ran out of storage towards the end of the video, so it cuts off. Hopefully I can sort that out for future videos.
Beat 1 00:26 Beat 2 05:25 Beat 3 07:11 Quarter Note Hi Hats / Ride / Floor Tom Right Hand Pattern: 8:28 Beat 4 09:56 Beat 5 10:53 Beat 6 11:44 Metronome Tips 12:00 Beat 7 12:50 Beat 8 13:36 Hi Hat Stick Height Tips 15:01 Individual Drum Volumes / Self Mixing 15:44 Beat 9 18:30 Beat 10 20:23
Here are 10 different rock drum beats, with notation and audio. These are for any beginners that have learned a basic drum beat, or maybe a few basic beats already and want to learn some more.
Basic drum beats should be repeated for ages to be most effective in truely learning the beats. It isn’t as useful to just read and play them. The most fun way to practice these is to jam them woth another instrument or a backing track. If you are a teacher that can play bass, guitar or piano, try this with your students if you haven’t already. Pupils can tire of repeating a drum beat on it’s own for several minutes (which is needed) but when playing along with another instrument it is fun and enjoyable to play for a while without stopping. Variation on the accompanying instrument can really add to the experience. Students can also do this on their own by putting on a song and just practicing one drum beat along with it, or finding another musician to jam grooves and drum beats with.
First Drum Book – Easy Reading Beats & Fills
Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners
40 Beats and Fills Exercises – Ebook.
These double bass drum grooves can be played by advanced beginners, intermediate players, and above. Double kick beginners should try this very slowly to start with.
These grooves can be played in professional songs, they are mostly generic metal grooves and widely used by metal drummers.
These 8 metal drum grooves are all played with a quarter note hi hat ostinato, which is notated to be played with open hi hats. These should be played slightly open rather than fully open, to achieve that slushy hi hat sound heard in the majority of hard rock and metal songs. Many metal drummers keep the hi hats permanently in this position by setting up the height of the top hi hat cymbal to be only just a slither higher than the bottom one. This enables the drummer to have both feet free to bring the thunder on the bass drum pedals, whilst still being able to play a mixture of open and closed hi hats when needed.
The drum sheet music can be used as seperate exercises (1 per line), or as a complete exercise.
