Beginners 2 bar drum grooves with open Hi Hats

I’ve had a bit of writers block lately and felt like I didn’t have it in me to work on another drum book at the moment. When I sat down to actually work on something I realised there was no block at all! It’s just been quite busy and I felt like I didn’t have the time or energy but just like with learning the drums, building a drum book happens by making lots of small additions, and it’s also quite fun too. So, exactly this for learning an instrument, this should be remembered. Small steps to learning and improving eventually builds into something substantial and just getting started is often the hardest step to creating something meaningful. It’s the same with saving money, lots of regular saving over a long time soon adds up to something meaningful, which is perhaps boring or frustrating on the first thought of not spending it and only saving a small amount, but it’s quite exciting when you see it grow and when it earns interest too.

So, for this warm up exercise sheet, you could play these with or without the open hi hats. I suggest to drum teachers to introduce open hi hats fairly early because otherwise pupils can get quite anti-hi hats if they are young so adding them into lessons early on may avoid this. However, some pupils are either too small or just really stuggle with holding down the hi hats with their foot so if there is this problem from day one, then just lock the hi hat into the closed position so it doesn’t distract too much from actually learning the drums.

Exercise 1 is a dance / pop / disco / rock beat that is in loads of songs like Eye of The Tiger, Another One Bites The Dust and Stayin’ Alive (especially with the open hi hat).

Exercise 2 is a general rock groove that is quite funky with the open hi hat and would work well in soul music or any pop / rock style too.

Exercise 3 is a hard rock groove with quarter note hi hats with a smooth open hi hat part.

Exercise 4 is a pop drum beat that has plenty of space for the vocals and builds tension, not too much going on in the middle of the bar.

Free PDF Download

You can download the pdf of this for free here: Beginners Drum Warm Up Exercises. Whilst you are there please subscribe to the mailing list if you are interested in more free pdf content like this.

Grade 1 Rock Beats – Free PDF ebook

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This short ebook gives you 1 page of the break down of how a basic drum beat is contructed and then 3 pages with 10 rock drum beats on each page.

The first of the 3 core pages of beats is with 8th note closed hi hats. The second page is the same beats again but with open hi hats (the note heads with cirles around them). The 3rd page has different beats with quarter note hi hats (really has that rock sound), which can also be played as half open hi hats or closed hi hats.

I hope this free ebook is helpful for students and teachers looking for a few quick sheets to get them started with. I also hope that you will enjoy the quality of the free ebook enough to try some of the premium drum ebooks.

Computer Games Music – PDF Ebook – Drum Sheet Music [includes Drum Loops Pack]

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Also available for Guitar, Bass, and Ukulele

Full drum sheet music for 9 computer music songs transcribed from the MIDI drum loops used on the album ‘Computer Games Music’ by TL Music Lessons.

Also includes drum loops MIDI and Audio pack.

Audio on Spotify

About the Sheet Music

The drum sheet music has a wide range of ability levels from complete beginner (Canon in C), right up to grade 8 with some complicated syncopation at high speeds. All of the drum loops were created specifically for these songs, by me, a drummer! Hence, I tried to make the majority of the beats playable by a real drummer. I was able to transcribe and transpose most of the beats without altering them, but there were some that would need extra hands, such as the hand claps and clave polyrhythms, so these have been left out or modified where I thought appropriate.

I think this book would be usefuly for anyone wanting to enjoy playing drums along to music whilst reading drum sheet music at the same time. Whilst I can transcribe known songs, this was fun for me to do and release to you, without having to worry about copyright issues.

These could potentially be used as performance pieces in schools, or maybe even exams as a free choice piece if you ask an exam board. Feel completely free to use the audio as a backing track by downloading it from itunes or bandcamp etc and usin it to play along with.

Music makers and music producers can feel free to use the drum loops audio and midi as they wish. You may freely use them in your own compositions. School pupils may also use the drum loops pack as they wish for school projects or coursework – just ask your teacher if this is ok and within any guidelines.

About The Music

Last year I made an album of 10 songs to teach with, and created 6 ebooks for the instrument parts. This year, I made an album of 11 songs called ‘Computer Game Music’.

This year I exported the MIDI files from 8 of those songs, plus 3 new ones, and began adding synths to the MIDI in my music production software Abelton Live 9 to create music that I think would sound good in computer games. I found it quite easy, quick and enjoyable to do when I initially messed about with one of the songs for fun. I then decided to start the project, which only took about a month of spare time to create the new album of songs. I also added drums and bass guitar to the tracks to finish them off.

The drums were created by me in Abelton using the MIDI piano roll and a drum rack. I really enjoyed this! I then transcribed the drum loops into actual drum sheet music for people to learn to play along with the music if they wanted to.

The drum sheet music has a wide range of ability levels from complete beginner (Canon in C), right up to grade 8 with some complicated syncopation at high speeds. All of the drum loops were created specifically for these songs. I tried to make the majority of the beats playable by a real drummer. I was able to transcribe and transpose most of the beats without altering them, but there were some that would need extra hands, such as the hand claps and clave polyrhythms, so these have been left out or modified where I thought appropriate.

Music makers and music producers can feel free to use the drum loops audio and midi as they wish. You may freely use them in your own compositions. School pupils may also use the drum loops pack as they wish for school projects or coursework, if this is within the guidelines of the work.

I hope that the songs can be used by a range of abilities. I would say most or all ability levels would find challenges throughout the album, depending on which instrument you look at. They are all quite challenging in places.

I hope that the songs can be used by more advanced players. Initially the previous album of music was created for grades 1-3 (guitar and ukulele only), but now for this new one, I would say most or all ability levels would find challenges throughout the album, depending on which instrument you look at. They are all quite challenging in places.
I also hope that the songs can be used as backing tracks for performances, for example in schools, and possibly as part of marked school performances or maybe even as free choice pieces in grade exams.

I also hope that my students will enjoy listening to the album after getting to know the songs in their different style.

Whilst the songs have not been created for any particular computer game, I will try to get some of the music featured in actual games. I think they would work well with platform and retro type games.

8 beginners Jazz worksheets including bass drum and snare triplet patterns for comping ideas – FREE PDF

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There are 8 PDF files here with sheet music including Jazz drum beats. I thought rather than posting them seperately, I would rather group them all as one resource. They were created in 2010 near to when I started teaching and I used sibelius to make them.

Two of the sheets focus on the left foot hi hat and right hand cymbal ostinati.

Two of the sheets focus on only the left hand triplet based patterns used for comping.

Two of the sheets focus on the left hand snare drum and right foot bass drum, used for comping.

Two of the sheets (Full Jazz Grooves) bring it all together for 4 way coordination.

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