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Snare Drum Piece – Jan 2018

Here is some drum sheet music of a snare drum piece, which can be played by a solo snare or a snare line group.

The snare piece starts off in 3/4 timing and then moves into 4/4. There are various dynamic changes. There are also plenty of techniques involved. In bar 2 there is a flam. Bar 3 sees the first buzz roll. Bar 4 has a rim hit on the last note. Bar 8 has a drag at the end. Bar 9 and 10 are repeated 4 times and feature accents. Bar 11 starts the quietest section in pp, which means very quiet (pianissimo). Bar 12 sees the first rest, and the final techniques are found in the final bar, which are ghost notes.

How To Read Dynamics in Music

Here is a list of dynamic markings you might encounter in drum sheet music. This list will be updated as more dynamic markings are thought of, and will start out as a basic list of fundamental dynamics notation.

pp (pianissimo = very soft/quiet)
p (piano = soft/quiet)
mp (mezzo piano = medium quiet / medium soft)
mf (mezzo forte = medium loud)
f (forte = loud)
ff (fortissimo = very loud)
a wide version of this shape: < (crescendo = gradually getting louder)
a wide version of this shape: > (diminuendo = gradually getting quieter)
> these arrows above the notes are accents, which indicate that you play loud on this note only.

(Premium) – 10 Snare Drum and Floor Tom Pieces – Book 1

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Summary

This book was written over the course of 1 year for a group of youth drummers (Montgomeryshire Youth Music Drumline) in Powys, Wales. I have compiled the year’s pieces into an ebook that can be used by other drum teacher, or by self taught drummers. The pieces are similar to Snare Drum Sheet Music style pieces, but with the added timbre of a floor tom. You can achieve quite an epic cinematic sound by combining the two drum voices in unison. Difficulty levels from Grade 1 to Grade 3-4.

People that might find this book useful

Drum groups, drum workshops and drum ensembles – Youth groups or adults
Drum teachers are completely free to print the book or single sheets for their students.
Drummers can teach themselves following on from a strong basic foundation in reading and playing
Drummers that need to perform for school or competition etc.
Drummers looking to improve their rhythms for drum fills and snare drum sheet music
Groups of drummers can perform together using a snare and floor tom each, or by using any other two drums

Rules for sharing this content

When you purchase the book, you will receive a .pdf file that you can keep and use forever.
You can email the .pdf file privately to your students
You can print out unlimited copies for your students or for yourself
You cannot resell the .pdf or distribute the .pdf file online in any way (not even for free). This also applies to exported images, photos or scanned copies of the book

About the book

The 10 pieces are performance pieces for drums, with no backing. Drum groups, or individual drummers can perform these pieces. They have been written to sound good as standalone pieces – they are not just practice exercises. The pieces do not focus on many dynamics, but they do cover many techniques, rhythms and some rudiments, from quarter notes to sextuplets and triplets, and from flams to drags and buzz rolls.

Some of the pieces have multiple parts, which may be played together. So, if your group has varying ability levels, some can play part 1, some part 2, and some part 3. Not all the pieces have 2 or 3 parts. Please check the contents page to match up the pieces. I have compiled the book in order of difficulty. The levels go from about grade 1 up to grade 3-4 level.

Reading Tip: I developed the writing over the year. For pieces with two stave lines – the top line is the snare and the bottom line is the floor tom.

Final Thoughts

This book is a follow on from “10 Snare Drum Pieces – Book 1”, written in 2015. That book was for snare drum only, and in the last 2 years has been purchased by 60 people from all around the world, many of which are teachers themselves who are using the book to teach their students or drum groups with.

I hope this new ebook will inspire more groups of this type. I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s been done with groups of drummers, each playing a snare and floor tom, but I do think it is very rare to see it. I hope to inspire other groups to adopt this idea. I’m sure this won’t be the first and last book of it’s kind, because I intend to continue teaching the MYM Drumline for many years to come, and I will be writing new pieces for the group regularly.

Recommended reading for use with this ebook:
→ Accent Techniques – Down, Tap, Up, Full Strokes
→ Reading Buzz Rolls And Double Stroke Markings

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Group Snare Drum Piece with 3 difficulty levels (Piece 2, Book 1)

<ahref=”http://tlmusiclessons.bandcamp.com/album/10-snare-drum-pieces-book-1-audio-pdf-sheet-music-download”>10<br /> Snare Drum Pieces – Book 1 – Audio &amp; PDF Sheet Music Download<br /> by TL Music Lessons</a></p> <p>

This snare drum piece has a military sound to it.When played at 90bpm, the piece is fairly short at 45 seconds and could be learned from memory with a good amount of practice. The rhythms change often so this is not easy. The primary aim for the drummer is to sight read the sheet music whilst playing.

Level 1

The first difficulty levels has cotchets and quavers, and crotchet rest. In other words, it has quarter notes, eigth notes and quarter note rests. There is one dynamic change and also some use of accents.

Level 2

The second difficulty level includes crescendo dynamics and beginner to intermediate rhythms.

Level 3

There are crescendos and other dynamic changes on the intermediate difficulty level, which also include buzz rolls and intermediate rhythms.

10 Bar Snare Drum Piece with Dynamics – Beginners Grade 1-2

There is a free PDF download with this post, which you may use to print out the sheet music.

Instructions

The first line contains a mixture of 16th notes, 8th notes, and quarter notes, and the dynamic is p, which means quiet.

On the second line, there is a long crescendo, which means to gradually get louder. The rhythms are the same in both bars, so focus is definitely on playing the crescendo correctly.

On the third line, the dynamics increase to mf, which means medium-loud. On the second bar, there are rim hits on the snare drum, which is achieved by hitting the rim of the snare drum with the drum stick. This is not to be confused with a cross stick snare drum, which would be hard to play in relation to the rest of the bar.

On the fourth line, there is a mini crescendo from quiet to medium loud, which is then repeated exactly the same. The second bar with the divide symbol means to ‘repeat the previous bar’.

On the last line, the dynamics carry on as medium loud. There are accents (the arrows above the notes), played on the snare rim. This means to play the rim as before, but hit them a bit harder than normal.

16 bar Snare Drum Exercise – with dynamics – Grade 1-2

This is a short snare drum piece lasting 16 bars consisting of grade 1 and grade 2 level snare drum rhythms.

The snare drum sheet music focuses on using plenty of dynamics, which are for volume changes in the music.

The dynamics include:

p (piano = soft/quiet)
mf (mezzo forte = medium loud)
f (forte = loud)
< a wide version of this shape is a ‘crescendo’ (gradually getting louder)
> these arrows above the notes are accents, which indicate that you play loud on this note only.