Free Drum Lessons

How To Play Royals by Lorde

Break away from those straight eighth note or sixteenth note grooves. The groove from Royals applies some creative hi-hat techniques that you can pull from time to time.

Classic Fill From Stairway To Heaven

This fill creatively applies the hybrid rudiment, the herta, around the toms and bass drum for an explosive, instantly recognizable drum fill. In the excerpt below, we've provided the grooves leading up to the fill to make the context clearer.

Green Day's Rock Shuffle from Holiday

This week, we take a look at Tré Cool's rock shuffle from Holiday. The groove rides the low tom lead into the final chorus, while the shuffle in the chorus is completed with the bass drum and snare. Learning this piece is a great start to ramping up your rock shuffle skills.

How To Play The Pretender by Foo Fighters

This week, we're going over the fast-paced, energetic drum part from The Pretender by Foo Fighters. The drum part is easy to understand but takes some work to get up to speed. The transcription excerpt below is provided by Steve Ley.

How To Play Hold The Line - Toto - Drum Fills

Learn 3 classic fills from the classic hit "Hold The Line" by Toto. Yet another example of Jeff Porcaro's masterful work.

Classic Fills from Something From Nothing - Foo Fighters

Taylor Hawkins is known for his fast-paced, explosive drum fills. This week, we're going over two of those fills from Something From Nothing by Foo Fighters. These classic 32nd note drum fills might take some time to bring up to speed. This notation excerpt is provided by Steve Ley.

How To Play Closer To The Edge - 30 Seconds To Mars (bridge)

The bridge from Closer To The Edge by 30 Seconds To Mars uses a catchy, syncopated tom groove. There are some differences in the way it sounds on the album versus the way it's played live.

Conspiracy - Paramore - Verse Beat

The verse groove from Conspiracy by Paramore uses a common hand pattern that can be applied in a number of ways to spice up your drumming.

Adding Flair With Threes - Under the Bridge

Often, drum grooves involve straight 8th notes played on the hi hat or cymbal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's what the music calls for. However, there are many opportunities where adding an additional stroke in-between the 8th notes will improve the song.

Adding Flair With Threes - Hotel California

In part 1, you were introduced to the playing threes concept. This week, we'll continue developing threes coordination and expanding ideas on how to use them around the kit. I'll start with an example from Hotel California – Eagles, which was transcribed by Steve Ley. Then, we'll throw in a couple of fills that fit in context with the three technique used.