8 rock or funk drum beats with 16th Note Accents for grade 5 and up

These 8 drum beats will test your ability to add accented notes to the two handed hi hat pattern, whilst also negotiating tricky bass drum rhythms and open hi hat combinations.

Start off slowly and build it up when you are comfortable with the grooves at low speed. Improve your timing and measure your progress with a metronome. You should start as low as 40 or 50 bpm, but probably easier without a click, or double it up to an 8th note click, because the slow click will be tricky to play to.

7 drum beats for keeping light time

Recently I played drums in a musical at my local Theatre. I hadn’t really done this kind of work before, apart from once a long time ago. I encountered quite a few sheet music directions that I was not used to – and a few that I had never heard of. One of the things I saw was ‘light time’, or ‘keep light time’. This was pretty straight forward and easy to know what it means (play a very soft drum beat to help the singer keep time), but this post is here to show you the types of beats I relied as a basis for these sections.  What I have for you here is 7 drum beats containing the drum sheet music of the kind of beats I played in these sections.

Construction of a basic drum beat in 7 steps

We are going to learn a basic drum beat. It’s one that you will have heard before.

I’m going to break it down into one thing at a time, or two things, and show you how it’s constructed. It’s a great way for beginners to learn how to play it, and how to count it properly.

These are the instructions for each line of the sheet above:

  1. Let’s start by just playing the Hi Hat. Play it closed with your right hand, and count 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +.
  2. Now just play the bass drum. Count 1 2 3 4, but only play the bass on beat 1 and 3. You can loop this round and around.
  3. Count 1 2 3 4 again, but this time play the snare drum on 2 and 4. Again, loop this until it’s easy.
  4. Now it’s going to start sounding like a beat. Count 1 2 3 4. Play the bass on 1 and 3, and the snare on 2 and 4. So it will go bass, snare, bass, snare. This is probably the most used sequence in drumming, so loop it and get really comfortable playing it.
  5. OK, let’s go back to the hi hat, and combine it with the bass drum. Hi hat on 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +. Bass on 1 and 3.
  6. Just one more combo before the full drum beat. Hi hat on 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +. Snare drum on 2 and 4.
  7. Finally, we will now combine everything we have learned, to make the most popular basic drum beat. Hi hat on 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +. Snare drum on 2 and 4. Bass on 1 and 3.

Related: Construction Of A Basic 16th Note Hi Hat Drum Beat In 7 Steps

Related: 10 Basic Rock Drum Beats

Related (Premium): Grade 1 Rock Beats Ebook – The lesson you have just been through is featured in the ebook as an A4 printable handout for students.

Accent Techniques – Down, Tap, Up, Full Strokes

When you play accents, you should ideally use 3 different stick strokes. These are tap stroke, up stroke, and down stroke.

Tap Stroke

You would play a tap stroke if you have just played a quiet note with that hand, and the next note with that hand is another unaccented note.

The tap stroke stick position should start about an inch or a few cms away from the snare drum. Move the stick straight down and hit the drum quietly, before coming straight back up and returning to the starting point.

Up Stroke

You would play a tap stroke if you have just played a quiet note with that hand, and the next note with that hand is an accent.

The up stroke should start in the tap position, and play a tap stroke, but instead of returning to the start position, the stick should end up much higher, somewhere between a 45 and 90 degree angle to the snare drum.

Down Stroke

You would play a Down stroke if you have just played an accent with that hand, and the next note with that hand is an unaccented note.

The stick position should start somewhere between a 45 and 90 degree angle to the snare drum. This stroke should be a loud stroke. Move the stick quickly to produce the loud stroke and finish in the starting position of the tap stroke.

The downstroke produces accents, which look like this: >

Full Stroke

You would play a Full stroke if you have just played an accent with that hand, and there is another accent to follow with that hand. The full stroke, which is played just like a down stroke, but instead of finishing in the tap position, the stick comes back to the starting position of the down stroke. So it plays a loud beat and comes straight back for another one.

Related:

→ The sheet in this post is Page 2 of this ebook: 10 Pages Of Accent Exercises With 16th Notes – PDF Ebook (includes double strokes exercises)
→ 16th Note Hi Hat Grooves With Accents
→ Reading Buzz Rolls And Double Stroke Markings

What happens when you opt for gaffa tape instead of bass drum impact pads

Having visited various rehearsal studios around the UK, I have seen this happen so many times.

I believe that it is a common thought to skimp on buying a bass drum impact pad, and choose gaffa tape instead. Please don’t do this!!

The idea of the pads is to prolong the life of a bass drum skin, by adding an extra layer of material where the bass drum beater hits. The problem with using gaffa tape (aka gaffer tape, duct tape), is that it wears away very quickly and becomes extremely sticky after a day or so of drumming. This then causes your bass drum pedal beaters to stick to the drum when playing and leaves a residue on the beater heads. After the stickiness has worn off, you can play the bass drum like normal again without it being an issue.

In conclusion, putting gaffa tape on a bass drum skin only serves the purpose of wrecking the aesthetics of the bass drum skin, and spoiling the surface of your bass drum pedal beaters, and perhaps prolongs the life of the bass drum head by approximately 1 day.