KN HA

AC ICE

Reach your drumming dreams i he id fab ife.

Gain confidence b ea i g he ke ki ha ea a e.

Fix your weak hand a d b i d eci e, f id i e.

Learn the 5 biggest tips f a i g g ica .

STOP wasting time. G fa e ! Reach g a .

The 3-Part Daily Practice Routine
Know what to practice, and achieve consistent growth in just 30 minutes every day!

Let’s Get Started

We all have busy lives, and learning the drums most definitely is a time investment. But
you don’t have to spend hours and hours practicing every day to grow on the
instrument. When you know the correct things to practice…and the correct way to
practice them… you can progress consistently and steadily day after day - even
with just 30 minutes of practice each day!

I guarantee you that if you stick with me and practice the skills, techniques, and
exercises presented in this guide…you will grow a ton. I’ve seen it in my own practice
and in every student who implements these methods. You can do this, too!

The 3 Parts of Well-Rounded Practice

PART 1: Hand Technique (p.2-4)

• Get smooth, relaxed rebound by learning the right way to grip.

• Fix the weak hand with a special exercises to work hand-to-hand evenness.

• Build precision so that your timing improves (just by working the hands!).

PART 2: Coordination (p.5-15)

• Build foot technique and independence with foot coordination patterns.

• Apply rudiments to the kit in musical ways.

• Accomplish left foot timekeeping in rock grooves.

• Learn jazz & Latin with the “Syncopation Method” (and transform your
coordination in the process!).

PART 3: Music (p.16-17)

• Learn the 5 biggest tips for playing musically and learning songs well.

• Explore 15 world-renowned studio drummers and the records they played on.

• Check out 20 fun & easy songs to get started listening to and learning.

Remember that our daily goal isn’t to practice everything in the guide. (That would
be crazy!) Instead, we want to choose one thing from each of the 3 categories each
day so we can keep our practice narrow and focused. This is how you grow quickly!


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Part 1: Hand Technique

Grip Loosely!

All of the exercises and rudiments you practice mean nothing if you’re not gripping
well, so get your grip squared away first. Form a loose “fulcrum” (gripping point),
allowing some space in your hand. There should be a gap between thumb and
first finger (left image).

Check out this collection of lessons on the YouTube channel delving into details
like thumb placement, finger placement, how to increase rebound, how to play
doubles… you name it! I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to play with loose
grip that allows your sticks to maneuver around the kit effortlessly. Put in the work to
make this happen!

Practice Tips:

• We’re using these rudiments as tools. They are the “what,” but remember that
the “how” is more important. We’re using these to work on grip, looseness, and
achieving smooth rebound (and we’re practicing them SLOWLY!).

• Practice these around the kit. Just orchestrate them randomly once you’re
feeling solid just on the snare. Be able to play them on different surfaces while still
maintaining loose grip and great rebound.

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 • Practicing anything on the kit can still count as hand technique if that’s what
you’re focusing on while practicing. With that in mind, play basic grooves and
basic fills over and over again while watching your hands closely (i.e. - the “Money
Beat” below)

• Remember that each day you’re picking ONE thing from this category to focus on
and grow in within each session. Don’t try to cover everything in one day.

• Method book recommendation: Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone

SINGLES

DOUBLES

PARADIDDLES

BASIC GROOVE

The “Money Beat” (aka, the “Billie Jean” beat):

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 The Complete Singles-Doubles-Paradiddles Exercise!

Here’s a great daily exercise routine to work your hands. The cool thing about this is
that it works all three primary rudiments, right hand and left hand leading. Plus
you can add your own variations like accents or dynamic changes - Or you could even
add different sticking patterns that aren’t any of these 3.

Here’s how it works: We play 3 measures of the rudiment, then we play a new pattern
in the 4th measure that flips the sticking around so we can repeat with the opposite
hand. Then we repeat the entire 8 bar exercise as many times as we want, cycling
through the different rudiments or other patterns you might come up with.

Play everything evenly (no accents) so that the entire exercise just sounds like
robotic singles. This is how you develop even, well-controlled hands. Then you can
always add in accents of your choice later on.

(The stickings for each of our main three rudiments (singles, doubles,
paradiddles) are color coded. Every 4th measure we use the same sticking each
time to turn the pattern around.)


R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L
R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R
R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L

( ................ ................
Rudiment (RH Lead)
R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L
R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R
R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L L R L L R L L R L L R L R R

( ................ ................
TURNAROUND
L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R
L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L
L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R

( ................ ................
Rudiment (LH Lead)
L R L L R L R R L R L L R L R R
L R R L L R R L L R R L L R R L
L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R L R R L R R L R R L R R L R L L

( ................ ................
TURNAROUND

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Part 2: Coordination

Practice Tip:

• Getting your limbs coordinated is not rocket science. It just takes patience and
repetition. Yes, it can be frustrating and painful when you just can’t quite get your
feet to do what you want them to. But work hard at this, because it’s all worth
it. This is how you get to where you can play anything you want to play.

• I’m about to throw a bunch of stuff at you here. But remember that our goal is to
pick one “coordination thing” to work on every day. Don’t try to get through all
of this immediately. Take your time.

Foot Rudiments

SINGLES

DOUBLES

PARADIDDLES

Bonus Tip: Once you get comfortable playing these with your feet, get creative and
add in the hands. You could start by playing 8th note time with your right hand, and
you could even add in a backbeat (snare hit on beats 2 & 4) with your left hand. This
is a really fun challenge, and it really pushes your independence.

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Rudiments Between Hands / Feet

You’ve learned singles, doubles, and paradiddles between your two hands and two
feet, but it’s now time to mix them up between hands and feet. This is challenging to
do smoothly and steadily, but practicing this is worth it. You build a LOT of
coordination and limb independence doing so.

Singles Between Hand & Foot:

Doubles Between Hand & Foot:

Paradiddles Between Hand & Foot:

Bonus Tip: Like we can do with the foot rudiments, add in something interesting with
your right hand. You could play 16ths or 8ths as timekeeping, plus you could add in
left foot quarter notes. If you pull that off, you’re really pushing your coordination.
Limb freedom will skyrocket at this point!


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Rudiments Over a Foot Ostinato

Time to take the rudiments to another level! Try playing singles, then doubles, then
paradiddles over a couple of different foot patterns. Start with these below.

Basic foot quarters pattern [Listen to the Recording]

Bossa Nova pattern [Listen to the Recording]

Samba-style pattern [Listen to the Recording]

Practice Tips:

• Remember that the snare 16ths can be any hand pattern. You could play it just
with one hand, or you could use both to play the patterns I mentioned. Or you
could totally switch it up to create your own hand patterns. You could also mix in
accents and create dynamic changes.

• Same goes for the foot patterns. Create your own, too!


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Grooves w/ Left Foot Timekeeping

For this section we’re going to use some basic grooves to work the left foot. After all,
the most common context of left foot action is timekeeping during a groove. We need
to be able to play whatever we want with our left foot while playing anything else
with our other limbs.

Here’s how these groove exercises will work:

Step #1: Add left foot (hihat chick) on 2 & 4 to whatever grooves you’re already
working on. If you’re totally new to this, start with the most basic groove.

Step #2: Add left foot on beats 1 & 3 so that you’re playing every quarter note.

Step #3: Now practice switching your left foot pattern over from the “beats” to the
“ands.”

TIP: Remember to focus on just one of these each day. We’re actually picking just
one thing from the entire coordination section, so you might not even pick one of these
if you opt to do foot rudiments instead. Either way, you get the idea. Don’t try to
master all these at once. Take your time.

Groove #1 (basic groove):

8
Groove #2:

Groove #3:

9
Groove #4:

Groove #1 (w/ RH on hihat):

10
“Syncopation”-Style Exercise

This pattern is similar to what you might find in the method book “Syncopation” by Ted
Reed. The goal here is to read the rhythm (our “melody”) and play it in different
contexts that utilize the whole kit. Check out the practice tips below.

Practice Tips:

• Practice reading the rhythms first. For instance, m.1 is “1 - - AND - AND 4 -” or (1-
and-2-and-3-and-4-and - bold counts represent the notes) Click here to listen to
what the rhythm exercise above sounds like.

• Then practice playing the rhythms in different groove contexts. More on this
on the next page…


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Let’s take that first measure of the exercise, and I’ll show you a few totally different
ways you can play it…

ROCK

Melody Rhythm played on kick (bottom space)

Snare backbeat on 3 (middle space)

Right hand on ride or HH

[Listen to the recording]

Melody Rhythm split between kick & snare (long notes kick, short notes snare)

(In our context the “split” means we’ll play all quarter notes on kick and all 8th notes on
snare.)
[Listen to the recording]

LATIN

Bossa Nova (rhythm played as cross stick on snare - middle space)

Right hand on ride

Left foot 2 & 4
[Listen to the recording]

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JAZZ

Remember that we’re “swinging” the 8ths instead of playing them straight as written, so
we’re actually playing them with a triplet feel. Listen to the recordings to make sure
you’ve got the feel right.

Melody Rhythm played on snare (middle space)

RH ride, traditional “spang-a-lang” ride swing pattern

Left foot HH 2 & 4
[Listen to the recording]

Melody Rhythm played on kick (bottom space)

[Listen to the recording]

Melody Rhythm split between kick and snare (short notes snare, long notes kick)

[Listen to the recording]

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So take these methods and apply them to the full exercise (p.11), and you’ll get
tons of productive coordination practice just out of this simple exercise.

The options are limitless with what you can do with this, and I’ve had students even
create their own methods of playing these kinds of exercises. Remember that flexible,
versatile methods that can grow with you are the best. This is a prime example of
that. You can practice this same exercise from page 11 over and over again for years,
learning new skills from it each time. Have fun and stay creative!

I honestly believe that you can massively improve your coordination solely with
what you have in your hands in this PDF. You can’t go wrong with practicing anything
in this guide, and these exercises and patterns will serve you well for a long time if you
practice them diligently.

Practice Strategy Tip (don’t forget this!)

Don’t try to practice all this stuff at once! Pick one thing to grow and excel at. Then
move on to something else.

Either choose one specific thing from each of the 3 categories every day, or choose
a few things from one category. Just don’t bite off more than you can productively
chew. :) I personally recommend doing one thing from each category. That creates a
well-rounded, fun practice session where you don’t easily get bored.

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Coordination-related method book recommendations:

• Realistic Rock by Carmine Appice | This is a great beginner rock method that
quickly becomes advanced. It’s a versatile book with multiple ways of playing
every groove and exercise, so it can grow with you. It’s also a very fun way to build
your rock vocabulary. (The rock groove exercises #1-#4 a few pages ago were very
similar to exercises you might find in this book.)

• Syncopation by Ted Reed | This book is full of exercises like the “Syncopation-
style” exercise a few pages ago. You can practice these rhythms so many different
ways that you’ll never run out of something to work on. This is a legendary
method, and so many drummers have build deep coordination by working this
stuff.

• Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer by Jim Chapin | Another

legendary method, this method dives into advanced coordination as it relates to
jazz and bebop. These exercises are some of the hardest I’ve ever played, but
they’ve been an integral part of my coordination growth.

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Part 3: Music

The coordination section of this guide is deep, but music can go even deeper.
However, I can’t spoon feed you this stuff. What music you listen to and what songs
you learn is all up to you! Having said that, here are some tips for making serious
musical progress on the drums to balance out all that technical facility you’re now
gaining! (And on the next page you’ll find some drummer / song recommendations.)

5 Tips for big-time musical growth…

1) Listen to a new song through headphones every day. You don’t have to learn it
and play it on the drums immediately - Just listen to it. Practice listening for details
in the recording. Pay attention to the exact drum parts, and ask yourself “why did
the drummer play that?” A lot of times the drum parts directly relate to the melody
of the song and the other parts the other musicians are playing.

2) Grab “5 steps to learning any song by ear in under 60 minutes,” which teaches
you exactly how to listen skillfully. Ultimately the guide teaches you how to learn
any song in under an hour, with the eventual goal of conquering a song in just a few
minutes. Learn the unique, 5-step method that teaches you ANY song by ear in
60 minutes. Download the guide right here!

3) Save the musical part of your practice for last. Also remember that this part of your
practicing doesn’t need to be physical practice every day. You can work hard at
your hand technique and coordination, then reward yourself afterward by just
chilling and listening to music. Some days you may choose to practice a song,
other days you may choose to just listen. The point is to activate the “musical,”
creative side of your brain.

4) Find a favorite band or favorite artist, and dig their stuff. Then find out what
drummer played on most of their recordings, and see what else that drummer
worked on. Sometimes you find that a particular drummer is the common thread
amongst music you like. This is a great way to find a favorite drummer. A lot of
times these studio guys fly under the radar and aren’t as well known as other
“band” drummers who make their living touring. You may find, though, that a
particular studio drummer is actually your most-listened to drummer and the player
who influenced your playing the most.

5) Check out this video on the channel about how to play simply, tastefully, and
musically without being boring. These tips were major turning points for me.
Once you learn to listen, your playing automatically becomes more mature and
tasteful. Enjoy! WATCH: Make Your Simple Groove Sound PRO in 3 Steps -
WITHOUT Being Boring!

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15 Great drummers to check out…
These guys are some of my favorite world-renowned studio players - my favorite
types of drummers to get into! Clicking on them will take you to their credits on
allmusic.com where you can see what records they’ve played on. Chances are
you’ll find one of your favorite albums.

• Aaron Sterling
• Steve Jordan
• Paul Mabury
• Jim Keltner
• Paul Leim
• Josh Freese
• Peter Erskine
• Vinnie Colaiuta
• Steve Gadd
• Scott Williamson
• Will Denton
• Shannon Forrest
• Chris McHugh
• Dave Grohl
• Jeff Porcaro

20 Fun, easy songs to learn…

If you need a nudge in the right direction to get started with intentional music-listening,
start with these songs! Here they are on a Spotify playlist. Enjoy :)

• The Power of Love (Huey Lewis & The News)

• Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac)

• September (Earth, Wind, & Fire)

• 24K Magic (Bruno Mars)

• Come Together (The Beatles)

• Livin on a Prayer (Bon Jovi)

• Enter Sandman (Metallica)

• Don’t Bring Me Down (Electric Light Orchestra)

• Rolling in the Deep (Adele)

• Baba O’Riley (The Who)

• Beat It (Michael Jackson)

• Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes)

• Miss You (Rolling Stones)

• Vultures (John Mayer)

• With or Without You (U2)

• Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)

• Purple Rain (Prince)

• Back in Black (ACDC)

• Heartache Tonight (Eagles)

• Billie Jean (Michael Jackson)

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