The Everything Drums Book by Eric Starr

Author:Eric Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2003-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

If you set up your kit right-handed, you will use your right hand to ride. Ride patterns are steady, repeated rhythms designed to give cohesion and, in terms of what we actually hear, high end frequency (Hz) to a beat or groove. Beats played without a ride pattern tend to sound spare or even empty; they also have less tonal color. All of the beats in this book are written with an ‘x’ note head in the ride hand.

Rock beats are 98 percent kick and snare. Typically, the bass drum covers notes that may occur anywhere on beats one and three, while the snare drum covers notes that occur anywhere on beats two and four. This is not an ironclad rule, though.

The following beats (FIGURE 11-1) utilize only eighth notes and quarter notes. You may ride on either the hi-hat or the ride cymbal when playing these beats. If you choose to ride on the cymbal, you must chick the hi-hat with your foot on the downbeats of two and four. When riding on the hi-hat, make sure you keep the hi-hat cymbals clamped together tightly.

Playing quarter notes on the bell of the cymbal is also common. When drummers do this, they often turn their hand in a palm-flat position so as to strike the bell of the cymbal with the shaft of the stick. Otherwise, any cymbal riding you do is best done using the thumbs-up position.

These are but a few variations on a theme. Try creating your own beats utilizing quarter note and eighth note combinations. You can also try combining these beats to create two- and four-bar phrases.

Spicing It Up

Now let’s try some more advanced beats. The following grooves use sixteenth notes to spice things up. As you will see in the first beat of the first pattern, there is the familiar eighth/two sixteenths rhythm written in. The tendency will be to play the hi-hat with the bass drum on the ah, but you can avoid this by practicing the interaction between the hi-hat and bass drum out of tempo.

Again, looking at beat one of pattern one, you will see that the hi-hat and bass drum play together on the downbeat and the upbeat only. Say the following out loud when you practice this rhythm: “Together, together, bass; together, together, bass,” and so on. As silly as it may seem, by saying this out loud as you practice, you will learn this pattern much more quickly. Once you learn the beats in FIGURE 11-2, experiment with the same ride variations you used in FIGURE 11-1.

The following beats (FIGURE 11-3) use hi-hat variations that include open and closed sounds. Open refers to the sound you get when you partially ease up on the hi-hat pedal as previously described. Closed refers to a tightly clamped-down hi-hat; this is done by using your foot to press down firmly on the pedal. The open sound is designated by an o written above the note. The closed sound is designated by a “+” also written above the note.

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