Tag: skip beats

40 Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats and Fills Exercises ebook – Grades 3-8

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Introduction

This book contains drum beats and drum fills in the styles of Hip Hop, Rap, Grime and Funk, Soul and Rock/Pop. The book has some grade 3-4 level exercises and also some harder ones, ranging from Grade 5 to Grade 8. The book would be an ideal add on for anyone studying Grades 5-8, as many of the skills are needed at this level. To achieve grade 8, the exercises would need to be played precisely, with correct dynamics, speed and fluidity.

Video

You can use this video as a guide for when you are practicing the book but get stuck on a particular exercise – just look up the timestamp link below. Like I say later in the video, the book is not designed to be played in one go and you should focus on 1 or 2 sheets per session and really drill down those grooves and get the fills correct and precise. Precision is key with all of these exercises, no matter what speed you play them at.

Free PDF Sheets to browse or use before buying the book

People that might find this book useful

  • Drum teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students. They may like to select only some pages to teach if the students are not up to Grade 6 level. The flicks between ability levels and is not necessarily in order of ability. To achieve grade 8, the harder exercises would be played fluently and precisely at speed.
  • Drummers can teach themselves following on from a strong foundation in reading and playing at Grade 3 and above.
  • Drummers that want to learn funk and hip hop beats and fills in depth

About the book

The structure of the book is based on one of my favourite books “40 Beats and Fills Exercises (Grade 1-2)”. There are 40 exercises over 11 sheets, and I have also included 2 bonus sheets with basic skip beats with 8th note hi hats and 16th note hi hats, which adds an extra 20 exercises, but I’m not counting those in the title.

I created the book so that my students could study skip beats at grades 3-4 level and also for my students working on Grades 5, 6 and 8 (I usually skip grade 7) to work on alongside their grades.

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoy working on this book or teaching with this book. Stick the metronome on and get into the groove. Repeat for less or more than 4 times for each exercise, it’s up to you. To extend the exercises, try playing the beats on the ride cymbal and adding in left foot hi hat ostinati.

Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons

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10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats with 16th note hi hats

This sheet contais 10 basic skip beats, with 16th note hi hats. They do get a little tricky towards the end. The two basic beats sheets should be mastered (or at least not a real struggle) before moving on to the rest of the skip beats book, because it does get harder (there is some basic stuff too). You can also play these with 8th note hi hats, which is a lot easier.

Here is a video showing you how to play all 10 of these drum beats:

As the video shows, you should aim for a RLRL pattern with the sticks (opposite for left handers), and therefore play the back beat snares with the right hand on beats 2 and 4, and any skip beat snares with the left hand (on the e or the a, if you are counting 1 e + a 2 e + a…). You should bring the left arm underneath or to the left of the right hand (depending on your drum set up positioning) to play the skip beats.

I would also recommend to play each beat a lot more than 2 times each! If you are doing these types of beats for the first time, you might like to break down each beat into sections. One way of doing this is to break down the bar into 4 sections and just play each section seperately (e.g. each section lasts for 1 beat). Nail each beat of the bar and then try to glue a couple of beats together. There are a few combinations like play beats 1 and 2 together, or 2 and 3 together for example. You could also practice looping the beats for a while and you could practice with various metronome speeds. You can also play ghost notes on any of the skip beat snares not on beats 2 and 4.

View the full book: https://payhip.com/b/63jF

10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats

This sheet is one of 2 bonus warm up sheets in the book 40 Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats and Fills Exercises. Before getting stuck into exercises usually lasting for 4 or more bars, we focus here on 1 bar at a time, looping each drum beat for a while and making it comfortable to play.

Here is a video showing how to play these 10 exercises:

You should focus on mastering each beat on this sheet before moving onto the rest of the book. When it starts to get more comfortable, introduce the metronome at around 60-70bpm and settle down into a groove for a bit. Try increasing the speed after a while. The skip beats are the snare drums or bass drums that slot in between the 8th note hi hats. The ‘skip’ should be exactly in the middle of the space between the hi hats. when added they should sound like even 16th notes between the hi hats and the skip beats. Concentrate hard on acheiving this even spacing to make your beats sound tight.

Often snare drum skip beats are played as ghost notes. This is not notated, but you should also go through the sheet again trying this.

You can also view the next sheet in the book for free: 10 Basic Hip Hop and Funk Skip Beats with 16th note hi hats.

8 funk rock drum beats with 16th note hi hats

To play these drum beats you must follow a RLRL pattern on the hi hats, and move over to the snare on beats 2 and 4 with the right hand (all opposite for left handers). The bass drum foot is doing all the work here but you will also need to make sure to lock in tight where the bass drum is played together with the left hand on the hi hat, as these can sometimes go out of sync.

As the year draws to an end, we still have 4 weeks of lessons left to prep for exams and I have some Grade 5 drummers taking their exams in Feb/March. To give them a break from their pieces and bolster their playing, reading and listening ability of Grade 5 level, I’ve been getting them to play these 8 drum beats. We’ve done a mixture of reading, groove recall and also playing from memory. The beats are not easy at first, but they get easier. We’ve also expanded the exercises, for example play a crash on the first bar and play each beat 3 times and then make up a drum fill for the 4th bar, either a whole bar or part of the bar.

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Drum Practice Routines – Sheet 1

Here is a sheet that is ideal for drum teachers to give their grade 3-4 students to practice as ongoing homework for perhaps a half term, or 4-6 weeks. Rather than giving them something new each lesson to practice, this substantial sheet can be given to practice alongside a song or their homework for a grade they might be working towards.

There are several sections, covering many of the techniques and requirements of the Grade 3 level, and a lot of it crosses over to Grade 4 too, so I’d say Grade 3-4. The following techniques and exercises are included on the sheet: Paradiddles, Accents, Skip Beats, Flams, Stepped Hi Hats, 4 way coordination, Syncopated Rhythms, Drum Fills, Improvisation.

(Premium) – Grade 3-4 Drum Book with 17 Drum Lesson Sheets

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People that might find this book useful

– Drum teachers can print the book or single sheets for their students.
– Drummers can teach themselves following on from a strong basic foundation in reading and playing

Contents Highlights

Subdivisions, Counting Methods, Drum Fills, Skip Beats, 16th Note Hi Hat Accents, Double Kick Drum.

Full Contents

4 – Subdivision drum solo / warm up exercise
5 – 16th note counting exercises
6 – Snare drum piece with counting exercise
7 – Short fills to start a song or sections of music
8 – Bass drum skip beats
9 – Snare drum skip beats
10 – 10 rock drum beats with 16th note bass drum combinations
11 – Snare and bass drum skip beat practice beats – with open hi hats
12 – Snare and floor tom piece with sextuplets
13 – Grooves and fills piece in 6/8
14 – 10 drum fills with 6 stroke rolls
15 – 6 drum beats and drum fills exercises
16 – 10 snare drum accent exercises
17 – Part 1 – 9 drum grooves with 16th note hi hat accents
18 – Part 2 – 9 drum grooves with 16th note hi hat accents
19 – 8 beginners double kick drum beats
20 – Intermediate double kick drum beats

About the book

This ebook is a Grade 4 level compilation of 8 years of preparation work for teaching drums. It consists of drum lesson sheets that I have prepared and revised many times to be the best they can be for teaching with. To create the book I selected only the best sheets from my selection of drum sheet music lesson handouts. I printed them all out on my office floor and arranged them into a coherent order.

I have included only the sheets, rather than add lots of teaching text. This is partly to limit the amount of pages printing, and also to give teachers using the books freedom to put their own take on the lesson sheets. This will probably make it harder for self taught players, so to anyone getting stuck reading the book I would recommend building up their reading and counting knowledge online. The 16th note counting exercises on page 5 and 6 should help, and can be used when playing skip beats to help with reading and playing them.

Reading skills are really important if you are teaching yourself with this book. Further to counting 16ths like on page 5 and 6 to snare drum rhythms, you can also use them in drum beats. It’s really helpful when you learn how to do it. To give an example of counting 16ths in beats; on Page 8, Bass Drum Skip Beats, on the first bar you could count “1 & 2 & a 3 & 4 &” to help with the timing. The second bar would be counted “1 & 2 e & a 3 & 4 &”. The kick drum skips are therefore on the ‘a’ after beat 2 on the first bar, and on the second bar the skip beat kicks are on both the ‘e’ and ‘a’ after beat 2. This probably sounds complicated if you’ve never done this before. It’s how many teachers explain note placements, and it’s still how I count new beats that need working out or extra practice.

Final Thoughts

This ebook covers many of the Grade 4 elements, but it’s by no means all-encompassing. There are other ebooks that I have made for Grade 3-4 and I’m sure there will be more. This book is a leap on from “Grades 1-2 Beats & Fills Drum Book”, but there will be a Grade 3-4 beats and fills ebook soon. This book can also be used either side of these ebooks I have already created in the Grade 3-4 level: “10 Pages Of Accent Exercises With 16th Notes” and “90 Intermediate Drum Beats Focusing On The Bass Drum”.

Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons

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Funk Grooves – Grade 5

You’ll need to be able to read the sheet music to play these funk drum grooves.

These funky beats are versatile and can be played in various scenarios or even different styles of music.

Use these funk drum beats for some new inspiration or ideas for adding flare to basic funk beats.

  1. The first beat adds accents on the hi hat to add some dynamic depth.
  2. The second beat adds in open hi hats – the hi hat should be played with the right hand only (or left if you’re a lefty).
  3. The third beat has quiet drags on the snare, slightly open hi hats and accents, and ghost note skip beats.
  4. The fourth beat has just skip beats and open hi hats.
  5. The fifth beat uses two hands for the hi hats, and the ones with the slashes through are doubled up using the double stroke technique.
  6. The sixth and final beat has a similar style to the third beat.

Beginners snare skip beats

Here we have 7 basic pop/rock drum beats with an added ‘skip beat’ snare hit, which slots in between the 8th note hi hats. It’s in the same place on each drum beat. It’s on the ‘a’ of counting “2 + a“.

The counting would then be 1 + 2 + a 3 + 4 +. Some drummers don’t count that way. It’s useful to start doing that and it makes sense after a little while. You count the 8th notes as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +, and for 16ths you count 1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a. You pronounce the e as a capital E and the a as the sound of the small letter a, which sounds like a short ‘ah’.

The skill level for these exercises is about grade 2-3, or higher if played fast.

The beats could be used in a range of styles including pop, rock and funk.

Related: Snare Drum Skip Beats

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.

Bass Drum Skip Beats

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