These exercises, which utilize 3-16 kick drum patterns (dotted 8ths), will help build your polymetric groove vocabulary. We’ll start with playing just the kick drum pattern against a quarter note to get familiar with the three measure phrase–notice the 4 against 3 polyrhythm. Then we’ll mix in the measure positions with 8th notes on the hats and snare drum backbeats in order to create more usable grooves. Enjoy!
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Here’s a challenging drumming independence exercise that also sounds musical. It’s a sixteenth note paradiddle between the snare and kick drum where the right hand is replaced by the kick drum – KLKKLKLL – That frees the right hand–which is playing every third sixteenth note on the cymbal stack. The icing on the cake is adding eighth notes with the hi-hat pedal. However, since the pattern is rather busy I decided not to include the hi-hat foot in the notation.
I’ve been working on a series of 3-16 grooves drum lesson videos. 3-16 simply refers to a grouping of three 16th notes. So for example, if we play continuous 16th notes in 4/4 time and accent every third sixteenth note we get an underlying pulse or phrase that resolves itself every three measures. This video demonstrates that idea by accenting every third 16th note on the high hat while keeping an underlying basic rock beat. Try counting out loud when practicing these exercises so you can hear the three note pattern in relationship to the time in four. The accents will always fall in this order: “downbeat”, “a”, “&”, “e” creating an over the bar line 3 measure phrase. This video is a great introduction for this type of playing. Download Lesson PDF
I had a great time working with students and my band Outside Pedestrian during our jazz workshop at The Drum Lab in Laguna Hills, CA. It was great teaching along side Dr. Anthony Fesmire (Guitar), David Lockeretz (Bass) and our special guest for the event Ron Kobayashi (Keys).
Here is a clip from drum student Donovan Hess during his second take of Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man.