Free Drum Lessons
Wrapping Your Head Around Syncopated Notation
To a lot of drummers, syncopated notation (and playing the notation, for that matter) seems to be an alien concept. However, taking a step back to examine a few of the most common syncopated patterns can ease our syncopated woes. They're not as difficult to read as they may appear at first glance.
Syncopated 'E' Drum Fills
This lesson explores four drum fill ideas that feature the crash and bass to accent the Es.
Basic Linear Training Exercise with Stewart Jean
The third lesson in our exclusive Musicians Institute Hollywood lesson series, this time Stewart Jean explores exercises that are designed to help you feel a repeated linear pattern of three sixteenth notes that travel over the bar. By doing this exercise you will be able to feel syncopated linear patterns in all possible sixteenth note subdivisions.
"AH"nother Take on Drum Fills
Drummers are often locked into the technique of playing a crash cymbal on beat 1 when coming out of a drum fill. There's a good reason for that: it works well in a lot of situations.
Exploring the "& ah" Drum Lesson
This lesson explores adding a syncopated crash on the "ah" of beat 4.
The Groove
We've all got that go-to beat that we play first every time we sit down at the kit. Here's my most recent go-to beat. For whatever reason, I've been attached to this groove lately. It's a lot of fun to play and is full of ghost strokes. What could be better than that?
Orchestrating a Syncopated Rhythm
Learn six drum fills based on the same rhythmic pattern. The re-orchestration technique allows you to create many drum fills with different flavors.
Syncopated Drum Fill Pattern
This lesson takes a syncopated drum fill pattern and moves it around the kit. There are a lot of possibilities with this pattern. Try moving this pattern around the kit in your own ways to create more grooves.
Syncopated 9/8 Grooves
In this drum lesson, learn a funky beat played in 9/8, techniques for counting 9/8, and also some cool variations of the 9/8 groove.
Ain't It Fun - Paramore - Chorus Lesson
Slapping the open hi-hat on the up-beats throughout the chorus really lights this song up. Further building that fun sounding energy, this groove uses a triplet swing feel (or sixteenth-notes to broken-sixteenth-note-triplets metric modulation, for those of us drum geeks!).
How To Play Jump - Van Halen Guitar Solo On Drums
This week's lesson goes over the drum part for the guitar solo portion of Jump by Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen claimed this was his favorite guitar solo he never wrote.
How To Play Best of You - Foo Fighters - Outro
This is a high-energy song, as many Foo Fighter's songs are. The outro repeats a refrain on beats 1 and 2 throughout the entire outro and throws quick, syncopated fills on beats 3 and 4.
