Tag: beats and fills exercises

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.

Related: 10 beginners drum beats with 2 beat drum fills exercises

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).

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

Practice sheet for learning to play drum beats in 6/8 time

Here is a selection of beginner drum grooves in a 6/8 time signature. After practicing through the sheet at least once, try and work on playing with a metronome at various speeds. You may need to work on one bar or one line at a time if you need to practice some parts more than others, or if you would struggle to play the whole sheet in one go.

Open Hi Hat Grooves Practice Piece with Fills

This is an open hi hat groove practice exercise with short drum fills every 4 bars to keep it interesting to play.

There are a few ways to play the open hi hat. You can open it quite wide and hit on the top or the edge, or open it a couple of cm wide for somewhere in the middle, or open it a little bit to get a nice sizzle. The screw underneath the bottom hi hat cymbal can generate more of the sizzle sound when it is screwed tighter, creating an angle on the bottom cymbal.

Related: For some easier open hi hat exercises, try these: Off Beat Open Hi Hat Grooves

7 Short Drum Fills

These drum beats and drum fills exercises are for drummers that have learned how to play basic beats and fills already. A strong foundation in Snare Drum Sheet Music would be extremely useful here due to the style of the drum fills being based on snare drum rhythms.

After the first bar of drum beat, there are two ‘repeat the previous bar’ markings. Here the drummer may either copy the first bar, or develop the beat slightly. Each exercise should be repeated at least once before stopping and trying the next one.

Improvisation Test examples and ideas for Rockschool Grade 2 Drums exam

Unofficial rockschool preperation ideas for improvisation part of the Grade 2 drum exam.

Students should improvise (make up your own on the spot), but if you are stuck knowing what to do for bars 2-4 on the improvisation practice before the exam, then these should help you. Drum teachers are welcome to print these excercises out and teach them to your pupils in drum lessons.

You will get given 1 bar of a drum beat, then 2 blank bars to improvise drum beats in and then 1 blank bar for a drum fill to be played in.

The last drum fill should be played as R L L R L L R L L R, with accents on the Right hands and ghost notes (very quiet taps) on the left hands. Reverse sticking for left handed players.