10 Weeks! ..... I just wanted to take this opportunity to formally say a huge thank-you to you all for taking the time out of your busy lives to come and have drum lessons. You're all doing so well and progressing at a fantastic rate - WELL DONE EVERYONE!
OK, we did some groove exercises this week. The idea behind this is that I want to get you out of the habit of following what I write on the board without really understanding what it is we're doing and more importantly why we're playing what we're playing ('Karaoke drumming' if you like).
What you play, in terms of a groove, is usually determined by what is going on in the song - what the bass guitar is playing or what riff the guitarist is playing etc. Our job is to make a groove out of what we hear and to give the song a pulse and drive it along. We do this with a 'BACK BEAT' on the snare drum usually (but not always!) on the '2' and the '4' and bass drum beats emulating the beat of the song.
However, what we play on the Hi Hat is largely our choice. We make the judgement call as to whether we play just the quarter notes - as in a Heavy Rock track, or a busier Hi Hat pattern with for instance 16th notes on the Hi Hat as we would in an RnB song.
Work through the following exercises playing four different Hi Hat patterns with the grooves. Watch out for some 'Back-Beat displacement', a Back Beat on '3' and I've snuck in a 2 bar groove at the end.
