A blog to help with learning and teaching Drums. Written by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Books.
Right handers should play ‘Right Left Right Left’ in a continuous pattern with the hands. Bring your left arm over to the left so both hands can play on the hi hat comfortably and without crossing the arms. The right hand would play the snare drum.
Left handers: lead with your left hand and the snare will be played with the left hand also.
A bass drum skip beat is where the bass drum is played in between the high hats. The skip beats create syncopation, and is often used in funk drumming.
This sheet has a useful selection of different bass drum skip beat combinations. You could either treat the sheet as a series of 1 line exercises, or as 1 full exercises.
Related: Snare Drum Skip Beats
Skip beats are intermediate and above drum beats where the snare drum skips in between a regular 8th note hi hat ostinato.
The word syncopation is often used to describe the sound these kind of drum beats.
Skip beats can be heard in many styles of music, including funk, rock, drum and bass, pop, hip hop, and soul.
Try to master each drum beat seperately first, then start combining different grooves back to back with each other to make interesting drum loops or drum grooves.
Related: Beginners Snare Skip Beats
Related: Bass Drum Skip Beats
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.
In this reference sheet, you will learn about Repeat Bars, Alternative Endings (1st time bar, 2nd time bar etc) and various other repeat markings that you will encounter reading drum notation / drum sheet music.
Segno (The Sign) 
Coda (CODA) 
Dal Segno (D.S.) Go to the sign
Da Capo (D.C.) Go back to the beginning
D.S. al Coda Go to the sign, then follow ‘To Coda’ marking
D.C. al Coda Go to the beginning, then follow ‘To Coda’ marking
D.S. al fine Go to the sign, then play to the end
D.C. al fine Go to the beginning, then play to the end
Da Coda (TO CODA) Go to the CODA
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
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 make up the drum fills. You may hear of styles like ‘Math Rock’, where sometimes all the instruments explore this technique of coming up with and exploring rhythms, time signatures and phrases from a mathmatical stance, in a deliberate and focused way.
For example, an easy drum fill around the kit would be 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16. That’s the drum fill that most drummers are taught first. 4 snares, 4 high toms, 4 medium toms and 4 floor toms.
Play every exercise with a continuous Right Left Right Left sticking (this is the opposite if you are left handed).
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.
This is a reference sheet for students of all ages and abilities at whatever stage they are at with their instrument. It’s a handy printable sheet, which could be displayed on a wall at home or in a classroom.
Learn and revise the names of all of the note values and rests and what they look like.
Free PDF Download for this sheet →
This sheet is a very useful reference sheet for anyone that wants to read music. As you come across things in your own sheet music and exercises, you can turn to this sheet to check what things mean.
This sheet will help students of most intruments that read music because it is not specific to drums. The sheet includes images or rests and notes, and their modern or classic names, and also the value of the notes or rests.
This can be useful as a reference sheet for students to keep on your computer, phone or tablet, or you can also print it out and stick it on the wall or keep it somewhere handy.
