Tag: Drums

6 Skip Beat Drum Grooves With 8th Note Hi Hats

If you are new to these kind of drum beats, check out some of the easier looking sheets on the skip beats page.

This is a great drum sheet for drum students that enjoy playing basic bass drum and snare drum skip beats and want to progress with them further. These drum grooves explore some of the creative concepts that can be applied to these kind of drum beats.

There is plenty of syncopation and dynamic texture in the drum beats, so they are interesting to listen to and play. A good bass player would enjoy locking in with these types of funk drum grooves.

You could of course use these in different styles, such as fusion or rock. Drum & Bass would use these types of beats, played really fast.

Learn to play the basic foundation Jazz drum groove

We are going to concentrate on the fundamental parts of playing Jazz drum beats.

We are only going to concentrate on the right hand, and the left foot.

Step 1 – Right hand

With your right hand, play the ride cymbal 4 times.

If this is too easy you can skip this and go to step 3. If not, repeat this for a while without stopping to get used to how long each bar lasts for, and used to counting too.

Step 2 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

Step 3 – Left Foot

Now we will play the stepped Hi Hat by quickly pressing down on the hi hat pedal with the left foot, so that it sounds similar to when you play a closed hi hat with your sticks.

We need to only play on beat 2 and 4. So count 1 2 3 4, but don’t play anything on 1 or 3.

Repeat this for a while without stopping

Step 4 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

The role of the Stepped Hi Hat in Jazz

In Jazz we will make use of all 4 limbs by using the left foot to play the hi hat.

The main function of the left foot will be to keep a steady regular beat on 2 and 4.

Even when things get crazy with 4 way co-ordination, comping and improvising with triplets and other syncopated rhythms, the left foot usually holds it all together with the 2 and 4 rhythm. This is both for the band to stay in time, and perhaps also for the listener to help make sense of whats going on by putting all the syncopation into context.

Step 5 – right hand and left foot – Bringing together the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat

So we are going to do Step 1 and Step 3 at the same time, to form the groove we are trying to acheive in this step by step lesson.

  • On beat 1, play the Ride.
  • On beat 2, play the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat with your left foot.
  • On beat 3, play the Ride.
  • On beat 4, play the Ride and Stepped Hi Hat with your left foot.
  • And then repeat this for a while without stopping…

Step 6 – Use a metronome to improve timing

Now put on a metronome at a similar speed to what you have been playing, and play along for a while. Keep counting.

Overview

When you feel confident in doing this at various speeds with and without a metronome, you are then ready to start building on this foundation Jazz groove by adding in snare and bass patterns.

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

How to stop drum mutes and drum silencer pads from falling off

I teach drums quite a lot in different schools, and one thing that has been neccesary is drum mutes to go on the drums to reduce the volume of the kit.

One problem that has occurred is sometimes the pads fall off the toms or snare when playing.

To solve this problem, buy some velcro circles or strips of velcro and place two on each drum skin, one at 12 oclock, and one at the 6 oclock position, near the edge of the skin. Place the opposite side of the velcro on top, and then press on the pad on top.

You will now have removeable pads, which don’t fall off when drumming.

Sometimes the adhesive on the velcro wears out, or the velcro pad doesnt stay stuck to the mute pads. You could use some heavy duty glue to stick the velcro to the drum mute pad to solve this issue.

8 rock or funk drum beats with 16th Note Accents for grade 5 and up

These 8 drum beats will test your ability to add accented notes to the two handed hi hat pattern, whilst also negotiating tricky bass drum rhythms and open hi hat combinations.

Start off slowly and build it up when you are comfortable with the grooves at low speed. Improve your timing and measure your progress with a metronome. You should start as low as 40 or 50 bpm, but probably easier without a click, or double it up to an 8th note click, because the slow click will be tricky to play to.

7 drum beats for keeping light time

Recently I played drums in a musical at my local Theatre. I hadn’t really done this kind of work before, apart from once a long time ago. I encountered quite a few sheet music directions that I was not used to – and a few that I had never heard of. One of the things I saw was ‘light time’, or ‘keep light time’. This was pretty straight forward and easy to know what it means (play a very soft drum beat to help the singer keep time), but this post is here to show you the types of beats I relied as a basis for these sections.  What I have for you here is 7 drum beats containing the drum sheet music of the kind of beats I played in these sections.