Week 2 - September 2010

Well what do you think of the new look blog? It's better I think, easier to read, wider in format - do drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Ok, so this week we've been looking at playing grooves picking out the 16th notes with our bass drum. We first looked at this groove :-

We played it with our lead hand on the hi hat and then picked out the bass drum beats on the 1, the 'a' of 1 then the 'E' and the 'a' of 3 - Remember the third and fourth bass drum beats are in-between the hi hat beats but make sure that the hi hat beats stay constant.

Then we changed the hi hat patterns, as shown below. 

Remember, all of these exercises are to develop your left hand playing, left hand co-ordination and cross-independence. 

Welcome Back!

A very warm welcome back to everyone having drum lessons this term. I hope you all had a great summer.

As I've said in the introduction, I'm now teaching at the new Shop in Bishops Stortford shop on Mondays. I've added a new introductory section for the new drummers in Stortford - with the relevant links for them.

This week we've been going back over basics to iron-out any bad habits and to get you back into the swing of things.

A walk-through of the Intermediate Warm-up can be found here.

Then, we looked at playing double-stroke rolls - with a single arm movement but playing a double with your hands (played of bounced).

Finally we looked at playing simple 8th note grooves but with your left hand leading on the hi hat.

A list of grooves to work through can be found here.

We then added a couple of extra more 'funky' grooves as below :-

PS. I will be posting up the notes from the last few lessons in July over the next few days - watch this space.

See you next week.