If you have a double bass drum pedal (double kick pedal) and are looking for some exercises to get started with, or to help you practice the basics, then these will be useful to you. These exercises would also be good for anyone that has been playing with a double kick or two bass drums for a while, because they can be played at fast speeds too – making the dificulty level harder.
Tag: bass drum exercises
Intermediate Drum Warm-Up – Part 1
You may also be interested in this drum book: Intermediate Beats Fills and Exercises, which focusses on Rock, Pop, Funk, and progressive styles.
Following on from the Drum Lesson Warm Up posted a few days ago, this intermediate drum warm-up is for drummers that have reached a higher level of ability (about Grade 4-6 but could be used by higher grades too).
Exercise 1 – Intermediate Snare Warm-Up
Each of the 4 lines starts with a paradiddle, then the second half changes each time. The first line is singles, the second line is doubles, the third line is 4 with each hand and the 4th line is a 3-3-2 pattern (RLLRLLRL).
Exercise 2 – Paradiddle Drum Beat with Sticking Patterns on the Drum Fill
Using the sticking from exercise 1, we change the paradiddles into a drum beat by moving the right hand to the hi hat and the left hand to the snare drum. The drum fill then borrows the sticking we used in exercise 1, from the second half of each line.
Exercise 3 – Funk Rock Drum Beat and Drum Fill working on fast double bass drum with 1 foot
A rhythmic bass drum pattern with 16th note hi hats followed by a drum fill that works on the bass drum.
Exercise 4-7
You can continue onto exercises 4-7 here: Intermediate Drum Warm-Up – Part 2.
8 funk rock drum beats with 16th note hi hats
To play these drum beats you must follow a RLRL pattern on the hi hats, and move over to the snare on beats 2 and 4 with the right hand (all opposite for left handers). The bass drum foot is doing all the work here but you will also need to make sure to lock in tight where the bass drum is played together with the left hand on the hi hat, as these can sometimes go out of sync.
As the year draws to an end, we still have 4 weeks of lessons left to prep for exams and I have some Grade 5 drummers taking their exams in Feb/March. To give them a break from their pieces and bolster their playing, reading and listening ability of Grade 5 level, I’ve been getting them to play these 8 drum beats. We’ve done a mixture of reading, groove recall and also playing from memory. The beats are not easy at first, but they get easier. We’ve also expanded the exercises, for example play a crash on the first bar and play each beat 3 times and then make up a drum fill for the 4th bar, either a whole bar or part of the bar.
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Bass Drum Skip Beats
A bass drum skip beat is where the bass drum is played in between the high hats. The skip beats create syncopation, and is often used in funk drumming.
This sheet has a useful selection of different bass drum skip beat combinations. You could either treat the sheet as a series of 1 line exercises, or as 1 full exercises.
Related: Snare Drum Skip Beats
(Premium) – 90 intermediate drum beats: Bass Drum Independance with 16th Notes – PDF ebook
At just 8 pages, this mini ebook gets stuck in to 90 different combinations of 16th note bass drum patterns in 2/4 bars. They are to be practiced individually in loops before moving onto the next groove. These are excellent for developing your kick drum technique and for building up an internal bank of bass drum rhythms that will tend to come out in improvisation and songwriting.
Contains 90 Unique Repeating Drum Beats, which work many 16th note combinations of bass drum patterns. The hi hat and snare stay simple and the same for every drum beat, so this is very much a focus on building up your bass drum technique, and overall kick drum skills.
This ebook is aimed for drums at Grade 4 level and above. Increasing the speed will provide challenges for even grade 8 drummers.