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...
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...
10 drum exercises, each consisting of a 1 bar drum beat followed by a 1 bar drum fill. Play each line at least twice. Ideally, play each line 4 or more times to really work on them, and revisit the sheet several times.
At grade 5-6 you should have good knowledge of triplets, 16th notes and sextuplets, and you will need to be able to switch seamlessly between them. This exercise works on changing between triplets, 16th notes, and sextuplets like usual subdivision exercises, but with...
Start going through the sheet slowly, and work up to being able to practice this sheet all the way through as one exercise. You might want to brush up the Reading Drum Notation sheet to help with reading this sheet. Related: 10 Beginners drum fills lasting 1 bar...
Play Right hand on all crotchets (1/4 notes), and Right Left on all of the Quavers (8th Notes) – (opposite for left handers). Young beginners players could count the crotchets as Tea, and the quavers as “Cof-fee”. You might want to brush up the...
Slowly play the Snare twice then Tom 1 twice. Snare, High Tom, Floor Tom. To play this fill, you have to do a flam on the snare drum and then a flam on tom 1 for 1 beat each. To play this drum fill, play a flam on Tom 1 then a flam on the floor tom, lasting for 1 beat...
Each line is 1 drum fill, consisting of 16 x 16th notes. What we are doing with this sheet is diving that total number of 16 into various number combinations for different drums. Whilst all music could be related to maths, this exercise is a blatant use of numbers to...
Here are some creative examples of how you can expand on the ‘Paradiddile-diddle in sextuplet sixteenth notes’ exercise 1 from Grade 7 technical exercises. There are accents (>) underneath each line of rhythms to watch out for. There are also ghost...
Here are some practice drum fills. Repeat each one until the drum fill flows nicely. You could also try playing 1, 3, 7 or 15 bars worth of drum beats leading up to playing each drum fill. This would replicate playing them in a song.
