Tag: drum beat exercises

Sheet 2 – Easy Reading Beats & Fills

Here we have a drum beat repeated 3 times, then a fill, then another drum beat 3 times followed by another drum fill. The sheet can be then repeated around multiple times, or you could just repeat the first half around for a while and then focus on repeating the second half.

These are great for beginners and especially for those that haven’t moved on to reading drum sheet music properly yet. It will help those that struggle to read the drum music, for example young drum students.

Right handed drummers should play all of the hi hats with their right hand, and all of the snare drums with their left hand. Left handed drummers should do the opposite.

Related: Sheet 1 – Easy Reading Beats & Fills
Related (Premium): This free drum sheet is part of a premium ebook, which you can purchase here: First Drum Book – Easy Reading Beats & Fills

Sheet 1 – Easy Reading Beats & Fills

Here we have 8 drum beats, each lasting half a bar each. We’ll play them each 8 times, which will total 4 bars worth for each beat.

There are 3 drum voices; Hi Hat (the X‘s), Snare Drum (the drum with an S in it), and the Bass Drum / Kick Drum (the one that has a pedal attached to a circle).

These are great for beginners and especially for those that haven’t moved on to reading drum sheet music properly yet. It will help those that struggle to read the drum music, for example young drum students.

Right handed drummers should play all of the hi hats with their right hand, and all of the snare drums with their left hand. Left handed drummers should do the opposite.

Related: Sheet 2 – Easy Reading Beats & Fills
Related (Premium): This free drum sheet is part of a premium ebook, which you can purchase here: First Drum Book – Easy Reading Beats & Fills

(Premium) – First Drum Book – Easy Reading Beats & Fills

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For a free preview of the ebook, click Buy Now and then click ‘Preview’ at the top left of the cover image.

  • 28 Pages
  • 20 Drum Lesson Exercise Sheets

Introduction

People that might find this book useful

  • All ages will be able to enjoy this book as the drumming content will be a challenge for any beginner.
  • Beginners at ages 5-11 should benefit the most from these sheets when starting out, as they take away a lot of the initial reading difficulties.
  • Drum teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students. They can be taught to beginners of any age and also to very young beginners that wouldn’t otherwise understand some of the standard drum notation – especially the drum fills.
  • Drummers can teach themselves to play the drums using the easy to read music

About the book

This ebook has been created after nearly 9 years of teaching the drums and after many of these years developing my own way of writing drum music for beginners so that they could focus on the drumming rather than getting stuck working out which drum to hit. I noticed this problem with almost all of my drum students of school ages from ages 5 to 11 especially (these are the ‘Primary School’ ages in the UK).

After planning to write this book over a year ago, I have been handwriting similar types of sheets and photocopying them for my students to test the water and see which exercises work best. It’s really quick to write out your own sheets and I do encourage writing out your own by hand if there is something that you want to either teach or remember for yourself to play, that doesn’t appear in this book. All you need to do is draw out the symbols as they appear in this book, just on a blank sheet of A4 with any type of pen (I like using a think pen like a permanent marker so it stands out).

Following on from honing the hand drawn drum exercises, they have been recreated using Adobe Illustrator to give them a clean look and so that they are easy to read and well presented as an ebook.

This ebook should get students familiar with how real drum music is laid out, because I have kept everything the same really. So, when moving on to trying to read real drum sheet music, it should start to make sense a lot quicker than usual. My next ebook to try after this might be Beats And Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners because it covers most of the content again in a different way but this time with real drum sheet music notation.

You are freely welcome to print this ebook for personal use or for giving a copy to your students if you are a teacher, but please do not redistribute the .pdf file online.

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8 beginners Jazz worksheets including bass drum and snare triplet patterns for comping ideas – FREE PDF

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There are 8 PDF files here with sheet music including Jazz drum beats. I thought rather than posting them seperately, I would rather group them all as one resource. They were created in 2010 near to when I started teaching and I used sibelius to make them.

Two of the sheets focus on the left foot hi hat and right hand cymbal ostinati.

Two of the sheets focus on only the left hand triplet based patterns used for comping.

Two of the sheets focus on the left hand snare drum and right foot bass drum, used for comping.

Two of the sheets (Full Jazz Grooves) bring it all together for 4 way coordination.

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Page 21 from ‘Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Rock Pop Soul Funk’

Here is a free PDF of page 21 from the drum book ‘Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Unit 1 – Rock Pop Soul Funk’.

The sheet music drum exercises are 2 bar loops containing drum beats with open hi hats that could fit into the styles of rock, pop, soul or funk, in a 6/8 time signature.

Once you are comfortable reading the drum beats in their repeating loops, try memorising the loop and continuing without reading it.

When teaching pupils that can cope with it, I also sometimes ask them to put emphasis on beats 1 and 4 to give it a blues feel.

10 Reggae Drum Beats for Beginners

These drum beats are for any ability, even complete beginner. I would however recommend learning pop and rock first. For example: 10 Basic Rock Drum Beats.

Reggae beats often have an emphasis on beat 3 of the bar. Usually this is from the bass drum or bass drum and cross stick snare. Accents are often used on the hi hats to play louder on beat 2 and 4. In more advanced reggae hi hat work, they adopt a swing feel similar to blues, jazz or country. The cross stick snare is used instead of the full snare sometimes or much of the time if the song is fairly laid back and chilled, which it usually is with reggae! Normal snare hits, or hitting the snare head and rim simultaneously are used in reggae drum fills. You can see some reggae fills in the video below.

(Premium) – Grade 3-4 Drum Book with 17 Drum Lesson Sheets

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People that might find this book useful

– Drum teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students.
– Drummers can teach themselves following on from a strong basic foundation in reading and playing

Contents Highlights

Subdivisions, Counting Methods, Drum Fills, Skip Beats, 16th Note Hi Hat Accents, Double Kick Drum.

Full Contents

4 – Subdivision drum solo / warm up exercise
5 – 16th note counting exercises
6 – Snare drum piece with counting exercise
7 – Short fills to start a song or sections of music
8 – Bass drum skip beats
9 – Snare drum skip beats
10 – 10 rock drum beats with 16th note bass drum combinations
11 – Snare and bass drum skip beat practice beats – with open hi hats
12 – Snare and floor tom piece with sextuplets
13 – Grooves and fills piece in 6/8
14 – 10 drum fills with 6 stroke rolls
15 – 6 drum beats and drum fills exercises
16 – 10 snare drum accent exercises
17 – Part 1 – 9 drum grooves with 16th note hi hat accents
18 – Part 2 – 9 drum grooves with 16th note hi hat accents
19 – 8 beginners double kick drum beats
20 – Intermediate double kick drum beats

About the book

This ebook is a Grade 4 level compilation of 8 years of preparation work for teaching drums. It consists of drum lesson sheets that I have prepared and revised many times to be the best they can be for teaching with. To create the book I selected only the best sheets from my selection of drum sheet music lesson handouts. I printed them all out on my office floor and arranged them into a coherent order.

I have included only the sheets, rather than add lots of teaching text. This is partly to limit the amount of pages printing, and also to give teachers using the books freedom to put their own take on the lesson sheets. This will probably make it harder for self taught players, so to anyone getting stuck reading the book I would recommend building up their reading and counting knowledge online. The 16th note counting exercises on page 5 and 6 should help, and can be used when playing skip beats to help with reading and playing them.

Reading skills are really important if you are teaching yourself with this book. Further to counting 16ths like on page 5 and 6 to snare drum rhythms, you can also use them in drum beats. It’s really helpful when you learn how to do it. To give an example of counting 16ths in beats; on Page 8, Bass Drum Skip Beats, on the first bar you could count “1 & 2 & a 3 & 4 &” to help with the timing. The second bar would be counted “1 & 2 e & a 3 & 4 &”. The kick drum skips are therefore on the ‘a’ after beat 2 on the first bar, and on the second bar the skip beat kicks are on both the ‘e’ and ‘a’ after beat 2. This probably sounds complicated if you’ve never done this before. It’s how many teachers explain note placements, and it’s still how I count new beats that need working out or extra practice.

Final Thoughts

This ebook covers many of the Grade 4 elements, but it’s by no means all-encompassing. There are other ebooks that I have made for Grade 3-4 and I’m sure there will be more. This book is a leap on from “Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book”, but there will be a Grade 3-4 beats and fills ebook soon. This book can also be used either side of these ebooks I have already created in the Grade 3-4 level: “10 Pages Of Accent Exercises With 16th Notes” and “90 Intermediate Drum Beats Focusing On The Bass Drum”.

Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons

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5 beginners classic rock drum beats with counting method

These 5 rock drum beats with quarter note hi hats were written to support my students learning the drum beats on Page 13 of Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Unit 1 – Rock Pop Soul Funk – PDF Ebook, or as a standalone exercise sheet prior to starting the book.

Each of the drum beats has a quarter note hi hat pattern, so often there are kick drums out on their own with no other drum voice played (normally played with a hi hat). This can be tricky for beginners, so that’s why counting is a good idea.

Use the audio examples to hear what they are meant to sound like, and try your best to replicate how evenly spaced all of the drum beats are. Make sure to use the counting guide written above each drum beat until you start to get it – then try without counting.

3 bars of drum beats in 4 with open hi hats + 1 bar fills

The drum fills now last for a whole bar, so we are now only playing 3 bars of drum beats. This prepares the student for another real world example of a different length of fill within a drum beat phrase.

You’ll need to be able to sight read these because they will be difficult to memorise. Feel free to try and memorise them if you have time, as this will also be good practice.

Here is a list of the 5 free sheets, released as a series of posts:

These 5 sheet are from the following premium ebook:
Related (Premium): Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Unit 1 – Rock Pop Soul Funk

4 bars of drum beats in 4 with open hi hats + 2 beat fills on 4th bar

This section is only a slight a variation on the previous. The drum fills now last for two beats, which means the 4th bar only has half a bar of the drum beat. This prepares the student for another real world example of a different length of fill within a drum beat phrase.

You’ll need to be able to sight read these because they will be difficult to memorise. Feel free to try and memorise them if you have time, as this will also be good practice.

Here is a list of the 5 free sheets, released as a series of posts:

These 5 sheet are from the following premium ebook:
Related (Premium): Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book – Unit 1 – Rock Pop Soul Funk