Tag: bass drum skip beats

40 Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats and Fills Exercises ebook – Grades 3-8

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Introduction

This book contains drum beats and drum fills in the styles of Hip Hop, Rap, Grime and Funk, Soul and Rock/Pop. The book has some grade 3-4 level exercises and also some harder ones, ranging from Grade 5 to Grade 8. The book would be an ideal add on for anyone studying Grades 5-8, as many of the skills are needed at this level. To achieve grade 8, the exercises would need to be played precisely, with correct dynamics, speed and fluidity.

Video

You can use this video as a guide for when you are practicing the book but get stuck on a particular exercise – just look up the timestamp link below. Like I say later in the video, the book is not designed to be played in one go and you should focus on 1 or 2 sheets per session and really drill down those grooves and get the fills correct and precise. Precision is key with all of these exercises, no matter what speed you play them at.

Free PDF Sheets to browse or use before buying the book

People that might find this book useful

  • Drum teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students. They may like to select only some pages to teach if the students are not up to Grade 6 level. The flicks between ability levels and is not necessarily in order of ability. To achieve grade 8, the harder exercises would be played fluently and precisely at speed.
  • Drummers can teach themselves following on from a strong foundation in reading and playing at Grade 3 and above.
  • Drummers that want to learn funk and hip hop beats and fills in depth

About the book

The structure of the book is based on one of my favourite books “40 Beats and Fills Exercises (Grade 1-2)”. There are 40 exercises over 11 sheets, and I have also included 2 bonus sheets with basic skip beats with 8th note hi hats and 16th note hi hats, which adds an extra 20 exercises, but I’m not counting those in the title.

I created the book so that my students could study skip beats at grades 3-4 level and also for my students working on Grades 5, 6 and 8 (I usually skip grade 7) to work on alongside their grades.

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoy working on this book or teaching with this book. Stick the metronome on and get into the groove. Repeat for less or more than 4 times for each exercise, it’s up to you. To extend the exercises, try playing the beats on the ride cymbal and adding in left foot hi hat ostinati.

Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons

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10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats with 16th note hi hats

This sheet contais 10 basic skip beats, with 16th note hi hats. They do get a little tricky towards the end. The two basic beats sheets should be mastered (or at least not a real struggle) before moving on to the rest of the skip beats book, because it does get harder (there is some basic stuff too). You can also play these with 8th note hi hats, which is a lot easier.

Here is a video showing you how to play all 10 of these drum beats:

As the video shows, you should aim for a RLRL pattern with the sticks (opposite for left handers), and therefore play the back beat snares with the right hand on beats 2 and 4, and any skip beat snares with the left hand (on the e or the a, if you are counting 1 e + a 2 e + a…). You should bring the left arm underneath or to the left of the right hand (depending on your drum set up positioning) to play the skip beats.

I would also recommend to play each beat a lot more than 2 times each! If you are doing these types of beats for the first time, you might like to break down each beat into sections. One way of doing this is to break down the bar into 4 sections and just play each section seperately (e.g. each section lasts for 1 beat). Nail each beat of the bar and then try to glue a couple of beats together. There are a few combinations like play beats 1 and 2 together, or 2 and 3 together for example. You could also practice looping the beats for a while and you could practice with various metronome speeds. You can also play ghost notes on any of the skip beat snares not on beats 2 and 4.

View the full book: https://payhip.com/b/63jF

10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats

This sheet is one of 2 bonus warm up sheets in the book 40 Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats and Fills Exercises. Before getting stuck into exercises usually lasting for 4 or more bars, we focus here on 1 bar at a time, looping each drum beat for a while and making it comfortable to play.

Here is a video showing how to play these 10 exercises:

You should focus on mastering each beat on this sheet before moving onto the rest of the book. When it starts to get more comfortable, introduce the metronome at around 60-70bpm and settle down into a groove for a bit. Try increasing the speed after a while. The skip beats are the snare drums or bass drums that slot in between the 8th note hi hats. The ‘skip’ should be exactly in the middle of the space between the hi hats. when added they should sound like even 16th notes between the hi hats and the skip beats. Concentrate hard on acheiving this even spacing to make your beats sound tight.

Often snare drum skip beats are played as ghost notes. This is not notated, but you should also go through the sheet again trying this.

You can also view the next sheet in the book for free: 10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats with 16th note hi hats.