Breakfast Rhythms – Learning to read and play drum fills and snare rhythms
Breakfast rhythms are great for all primary school ages, and they can be fun for high school and adult ages too to help with the initial barrier of learning the rhythms. By saying the rhythm and seeing it at the same time, you will be associating the sound with how it...
Reading and Playing Buzz Rolls and Double Strokes
Some snare drum sheet music writes out buzz rolls with a Z through the stem. I don’t write it like that because my software doesn’t have that feature, but many others write it my way too anyway so I’ve got used to writing using 3 slashes instead (3...
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)...
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...
8 snare drum sight reading exercises for grade 2
If you already have some drum sheet music reading knowledge, try to read the sheet music and play the bar of music, and then listen to the mp3 audio to see if you are right. These are unofficial exercises to help prepare for the Sight Reading Element of Rockschool...
Easy beginners snare drum piece – sight reading exercise with crotchets and quavers
There are just two note grouping patterns (if you can count the 1st one), and the whole snare drum piece uses various combinations of these. Most beginners pick this up quite quickly, and it’s a great way for them to understand the ‘twice as fast’...