Category Archives: Drum Lessons

Building Polymetric Grooves Using 3-16 Hi-Hats

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These exercises use dotted eighth note hi-hat accents (3/16s) to develop your polymetric groove vocabulary. Begin by playing the hi-hat accents against a steady quarter-note pulse. This will help you internalize the three-measure phrase and hear the 4-against-3 relationship created by the pattern.

Once you’re comfortable with the accent placement, add continuous 16th notes on the hi-hat while maintaining the accents, then incorporate snare drum backbeats to build complete grooves. Focus on keeping your time solid and your accents clear as the pattern cycles through all three measures. Practice each exercise slowly at first, then gradually increase the tempo while maintaining consistency and control.

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Basic Subdivisions (video)

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It’s so important to be able to play different note values evenly within tempo. In order to internalize the subdivisions it’s helpful to play them against a quarter note. In this video we’ll play quarter notes with our feet and the subdivisions (Quarter Notes, Eighth Notes, Eighth Note Triplets, and Sixteenth) as alternating single strokes. We play the quarter note under all the subdivisions in order to establish that as our anchor. This video is especially valuable to beginners.

 

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Group Bucket Drumming Lesson Plan

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If your looking for an easy lesson plan for a group drumming class I recommend buckets. Bucket drumming is easy to pickup and you can easily buy 5-gallon buckets in bulk at places like Lowes or Amazon.

We can easily get different tones out of a bucket by turning the bucket upside down and hitting it with a drum stick. If we strike the bucket towards the center we get a lower pitch. If we hit the rim and the bucket simultaneously, we get a higher pitch–closer to a snare drum. Drummers call this a rim shot. Striking only the rim of the bucket is another option for the higher pitch–which might be easier for beginners.

I created a simple lesson plan with three parts that segments the students into three groups:

  1. Pulse
  2. Bass
  3. Snare

The pulse part can be played on the rim or on the sides of the buckets. The snare part is played utilizing rim shots and the bass part is played by striking towards the center of the bucket. Here are the parts:


 

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Note: In case you don’t read notation I included the number counts that correspond to the notes. The rhythms repeat indefinitely. The video below demonstrates a class playing the three parts together:

Building Grooves Using 3-16 Hi-Hats (FREE PDF)

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These exercises, which utilize 3-16 hi-hat accents, will help build your polymetric groove vocabulary. We’ll start with playing the hi-hat accents against a quarter note to get familiar with the three measure phrase–notice the 4 against 3 pattern. Then we’ll mix in the measure positions with 16th notes on the hats and snare drum backbeats in order to create more usable grooves. Enjoy!

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