Tag: drum beats

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

(Premium) – 90 intermediate drum beats: Bass Drum Independance with 16th Notes – PDF ebook

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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.

Metal Beats – Part 2

All these metal grooves are intended be played with a double bass drum pedal. You should already have done a lot of work with the double bass drum pedal before attempting these. If these look too difficult you could try 8 Intermediate Metal Double Bass Drum Beats.

There is a mixture of blast beats and simple double bass drum beats on this sheet. Play them all slowly to start with and then keep building up the speed. Ideally, use a metronome to record your progress, and practice this sheet over several weeks at least.

Related: Metal Beats – Part 1

Metal Drum Beats – Part 1

All these metal grooves are intended be played with a double bass drum pedal. You should already have done a lot of work with the double bass drum pedal before attempting these. If these look too difficult you could try 8 Intermediate Metal Double Bass Drum Beats

There is a mixture of blast beats and simple double bass drum beats on this sheet. Play them all slowly to start with and then keep building up the speed. Ideally, use a metronome to record your progress, and practice this sheet over several weeks at least.

Related: Metal Beats – Part 2

Two Bar Metal Grooves – Sheet 2

These are metal grooves that use the double pedal in an interesting way.

This sheet is ideal for a drummer that has been learning the double bass drum for a while, and has some reading knowledge. Hopefully this will give some people a few new ideas for creating their own double kick grooves.

Fast double kick drumming sounds great when executed with precision. Just remember, focus on accuracy and timing above speed, so start off practicing them slowly and correctly first.

Related: Two Bar Metal Grooves – Sheet 1 →

7 Drum & Bass Drum Beats

Repeat each line multiple times. You will need to be grade 5-6 level for this sheet. There is a lot of syncopation. Drum & Bass is generally fast paced, so start off slow and get the beats right first and then gradually up the speed until they are sounding fast.

The slashed Hi Hats on the 5th and 6th line mean to play double strokes on those Hi Hats. For example 1 slashed Hi Hat = 2 notes, played with a double stroke.

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.