Learn Drums For Free – Page 14 – A blog to help with learning and teaching Drums. Written by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Books.

1 Beat Snare Drum Fills with drum beats exercises

Sometimes in drum sheet music you will see parts of the music that aren’t written. There may be a space in he music, with an instruction such as ‘develop’, ‘ad lib’, ‘cont. sim’ or ‘fill’. In these examples, there are spaces marked out for drum fills to be played for the duration of 1 beat at the end of the bar.

There are 4 different drum fills to choose from for each exercise. You could pick any fill and mix and match with any exercise.

By learning and playing through these exercises, you will build up an understanding of the type of fills you could add in as short little breaks in the drum beats to add interest to your drumming. 1 beat fills could be used at the end of a section, or during a section of music for a bit of variation in the groove.

10 Drum Beats in a 6/8 Time Signature

Objective: To develop a vocabulary of various bass drum and snare variations that are usable when playing in the 6/8 time signature.

Variations: The right hand could be moved to the floor tom or ride, and accents / ride bell / open hi hats could be added

About the drum beats in 6/8

The first drum beat is the standard beat to play for many when playing in 6/8 and is a good place to start. The bass drum is on the first beat of the bar, and the snare drum is on the 4th quaver beat of the bar – these are the beats where the emphasis is in 6/8. You tend to count it with emphasis like 1 2 3 4 5 6.

The hi hats are playing on all 6 quaver beats of the bar, which is the same on all of these drum beats.

About the 6/8 time signature

Beat 3, 4, 5 and 6 all give a strong indication of a ‘swing’, or ‘shuffle’ feel to the beats. This is easy to do in 6/8 because it can easily feel like you are playing triplets, with a perceived time signature of 2/4 or 4/4. This is why the 6/8 time signature is sometimes used in blues and jazz music. It is also a popular time signature in musicals, especially in slower pieces where the crotchet beat would be too slow if notated with triplets. The same goes for blues, where instead of having a very slow “1 trip let 2 trip let” feel, the slow 1 2 3 4 5 6 is sometimes preferred, especially if staying in that feel for the whole song. Going back to musicals, and also for classical songs or any groups with a conductor, a 6/8 time signature is more efficient and clear for a conductor to beat, than a slow piece in 2/4 or 3/4.

8 advanced warm up exercises for drums with patterns and subdivisions

The exercises on the drum notation are for grade 5-8 players. By reading the list of exercise below, you can begin to see clearly how easy they are. This exercise sheet can be used as a continuous warm up exercise.

The ability level would be measured on timing and speed. All drummers should begin slowly before building up the speed. A metronome is recommended.

The 8 Warm Up Exercises: Based on a drum setup with snare, tom 1, tom 2, and floor tom

Each exercise should be repeated as necessary, and could be started slowly and speeded up on repeat.

Play 2 hits on each drum
Play 3 hits on each drum
Play 4 hits on each drum
Play 6 hits on each drum
Play 8 hits on each drum
Play 2 hits on the snare, 4 hits on tom 1, 6 hits on tom 2, and 8 hits on the floor tom
Play 3 hits on the snare, 6 hits on tom 1, 9 hits on tom 2, and 12 hits on the floor tom
Play 4 hits on the snare, 8 hits on tom 1, 12 hits on tom 2, and 16 hits on the floor tom

8 Basic Drum Beats for Beginners

All of these drum beats have featured in hit songs over the years, and they probably have all featured in rock and pop music in every single decade since the styles started.

Drum Teachers can print this out for their new beginner students – it’s a good way of introducing people to reading and learning how to play the most popular drum beats.

The handwritten version is available to make it easier for beginners to start reading drum music, as it’s laid out in a similar way.

There are 8 popular beats with 4 extra variations of the right hand, making it 40 drum beats to learn from one sheet.

Related (Premium): You can find more exercise sheets like this in the premium drum ebook Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners

6 Skip Beat Drum Grooves With 8th Note Hi Hats

If you are new to these kind of drum beats, check out some of the easier looking sheets on the skip beats page.

This is a great drum sheet for drum students that enjoy playing basic bass drum and snare drum skip beats and want to progress with them further. These drum grooves explore some of the creative concepts that can be applied to these kind of drum beats.

There is plenty of syncopation and dynamic texture in the drum beats, so they are interesting to listen to and play. A good bass player would enjoy locking in with these types of funk drum grooves.

You could of course use these in different styles, such as fusion or rock. Drum & Bass would use these types of beats, played really fast.

Learn to play the basic foundation Jazz drum groove

We are going to concentrate on the fundamental parts of playing Jazz drum beats.

We are only going to concentrate on the right hand, and the left foot.

Step 1 – Right hand

With your right hand, play the ride cymbal 4 times.

If this is too easy you can skip this and go to step 3. If not, repeat this for a while without stopping to get used to how long each bar lasts for, and used to counting too.

Step 2 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

Step 3 – Left Foot

Now we will play the stepped Hi Hat by quickly pressing down on the hi hat pedal with the left foot, so that it sounds similar to when you play a closed hi hat with your sticks.

We need to only play on beat 2 and 4. So count 1 2 3 4, but don’t play anything on 1 or 3.

Repeat this for a while without stopping

Step 4 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

The role of the Stepped Hi Hat in Jazz

In Jazz we will make use of all 4 limbs by using the left foot to play the hi hat.

The main function of the left foot will be to keep a steady regular beat on 2 and 4.

Even when things get crazy with 4 way co-ordination, comping and improvising with triplets and other syncopated rhythms, the left foot usually holds it all together with the 2 and 4 rhythm. This is both for the band to stay in time, and perhaps also for the listener to help make sense of whats going on by putting all the syncopation into context.

Step 5 – right hand and left foot – Bringing together the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat

So we are going to do Step 1 and Step 3 at the same time, to form the groove we are trying to acheive in this step by step lesson.

On beat 1, play the Ride.
On beat 2, play the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat with your left foot.
On beat 3, play the Ride.
On beat 4, play the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat with your left foot.
And then repeat this for a while without stopping…

Step 6 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

Overview

When you feel confident in doing this at various speeds with and without a metronome, you are then ready to start building on this foundation Jazz groove by adding in snare and bass patterns.

10 Bar Snare Drum Piece with Dynamics – Beginners Grade 1-2

There is a free PDF download with this post, which you may use to print out the sheet music.

Instructions

The first line contains a mixture of 16th notes, 8th notes, and quarter notes, and the dynamic is p, which means quiet.

On the second line, there is a long crescendo, which means to gradually get louder. The rhythms are the same in both bars, so focus is definitely on playing the crescendo correctly.

On the third line, the dynamics increase to mf, which means medium-loud. On the second bar, there are rim hits on the snare drum, which is achieved by hitting the rim of the snare drum with the drum stick. This is not to be confused with a cross stick snare drum, which would be hard to play in relation to the rest of the bar.

On the fourth line, there is a mini crescendo from quiet to medium loud, which is then repeated exactly the same. The second bar with the divide symbol means to ‘repeat the previous bar’.

On the last line, the dynamics carry on as medium loud. There are accents (the arrows above the notes), played on the snare rim. This means to play the rim as before, but hit them a bit harder than normal.

Developing rock grooves with quarter note hi hats – Grade 2-3

I wrote this sheet initially to give students an idea of the type of things they could do to start off developing the drum beat for the guitar solo in a Grade 3 Rockschool song called Overrated (2012-18 syllabus). This sheet is also good for learning to develop the bass drum around a standard quarter note hi hat rock ostinato.

Start off by learning each bar separately before attempting a full run through. The hands will be playing the same beat in every bar apart from a crash half way through, and a drum fill in the last bar.

Every hi hat is to be played fairly open – enough to get that nice sizzley or slushy sound on the hi hats. You could play them more closed but with a slightly open feel, so they sound more crunchy – this would give a more hard rock sound.

These drum grooves would work well with classic rock and modern rock styles, and would fit with other styles in some situations, like for a slow metal groove or breakdown section, or played in a lively way in soul music, or in pop music (closed hi hats would also work well for pop).

16 bar Snare Drum Exercise – with dynamics – Grade 1-2

This is a short snare drum piece lasting 16 bars consisting of grade 1 and grade 2 level snare drum rhythms.

The snare drum sheet music focuses on using plenty of dynamics, which are for volume changes in the music.

The dynamics include:

p (piano = soft/quiet)
mf (mezzo forte = medium loud)
f (forte = loud)
< a wide version of this shape is a ‘crescendo’ (gradually getting louder)
> these arrows above the notes are accents, which indicate that you play loud on this note only.

6 Essential Drum Exercises – Essential Beginners – Sheet 1 – Drum Workout

These 6 essential drum exercises have been designed to be played by drummers that have already covered these things, possibly separately in their lessons. They are to be played as quick exercises, to build up confidence. Players should feel good about playing these because they will sound good, and they will not have too much trouble playing them.

If this sheet looks too hard, perhaps start out with some beginners drum beats and beginners drum fills that look a bit easier. It shouldn’t take long to get up to playing these exercises though, and could be played by a drummer that’s only been drumming for a month or few. The main thing is that the drummer should find the reading easy, so make sure whoever is learning this is comfortable with reading drum music.

In this sheet, we will put together some basic drum beats with some easy drum fills, and make them sound good.

Related (Premium): You can find more exercise sheets like this in the premium drum ebook Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners