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Drum Fundamentals 2

The second part of our hands-on tutorial

Read Part 1 here

I hope you've been practicing your up, down, tap and full strokes as they are going to come in handy with this
months lesson, which involves tackling grooves.

Getting Started
Getting the right positioning of your kit is all-important. Make sure that all of your drums and cymbals are easy to
reach. You don't want to be overstretching when you're playing. It may look very 'rawk' to have your cymbals six
foot above the kit but invariably you'll end up breaking your back trying to actually hit them. As a result your
playing will suffer not to mention your health, so it's best to just keep it simple.

Place your feet on the appropriate pedals and adjust the stool - or throne - so that your thighs are flat whilst you're
resting on them. Pivot on the ball of your foot when playing, drawing the power you need from your whole leg and
not just your ankle. Once you start to 'groove' your legs will automatically bounce and not stick rigidly to the
pedals.

Cross your hands over (left over right or vice versa depending on your set up) so that your hi-hat hand is above
your snare drum hand. Now that you're all set to go, let's take a look at some basic patterns.

Groove 1 - click here for notation

OK, here's you're bread and butter pop/rock groove. Simple, yet essential. All of the rock/pop grooves that you will
play are just variations on this pattern. If you've never read music before this is the easiest way to understand
what's going on. The top line, indicated by the X's are notes to play on the hi-hat (play them as tap strokes). The
bottom line is the bass drum and the middle is the snare (play the snare as a full or down stroke).

We are in 4/4 time, which means that there are four crotchet beats to each bar. As you can see, there are four
black notes spread between the bass and snare drums in each bar - these are the crotchets. The hi-hat is playing
eight notes to the bar - these are quavers or 1/8th notes. When counting out the bar adopt the practice of saying
'1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and' whilst playing the groove.

Start of by playing the bass and snare drum alone, which should sound on the 1,2, 3 and 4. The bass drum should
be on 1 and 3, the snare on 2 and 4. This is known as the backbeat. Once you are comfortable playing this, add
the hi-hat that will be played on all the beats that you are counting (1-and-2-and-3-and-4and).

Always play to a click if you have one. Start at around 80bpm (beats per minute) using either a metronome, a beat
on a keyboard or, as a last resort, songs from a tape or CD.

Once you are a master of this backbeat consider yourself well on the way. Now try these.

Groove 2 - click here for notation

In this groove the bass drum plays an extra note just before the second snare drum of the bar. So the backbeat
translates to your counting pattern as 1, 2, 3-and-4 (remember beats 2 and 4 are on the snare drum).

Groove 3 - click here for notation

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This time around the bass drum beat moves to an earlier place in the bar. Count the back beat as follows 1, 2 -
and-3, 4 (remember the snare is on 2 and 4).

Groove 4 - click here for notation

This last pattern incorporates the use of a rest! Hang on, it's not that worrying. Simply count the backbeat like this
1, 2-and, and-4 (snare drum beats!).

And finally...
Got it? Great! Now that we've managed to work out the maths of it all it's time to play all these patterns over and
over until we're grooving to the max! Make sure you use a click to keep yourself in time and try to let the beat flow
through you. Relax at the kit, enjoy it, don't over play. Music is about having fun, OK?

Right, you have your orders now get down the shed and start rocking!

Click here to see full-sized notation. Download it by right-clicking the image.

Neil Hart - ACM

Visit ACM here

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