Here’s groove of the week #10.

This week’s groove is a two handed 16th note groove and it’s basically the main groove from the Simple Minds’ song Alive & Kicking but with accents added to give it a little twist.

Accents added in this manner can bring a groove to life and give it a new feel. Let’s learn this groove.

Get The Groove

The first step in learning this groove is getting the accent pattern correct. Here it is played on the hi-hat:

Next, lets add the snare drum on 2 & 4. Focus on the accents with the right hand before and after each snare drum hit.

Our final step is to add the bass drum. Here’s the full groove:

It you are having trouble with this groove, you may need to practice the groove without the accents first. Try this:

Get the base groove into your muscle memory first and then try adding the accents once you find the base groove easy. You may also want to try the first two examples from the next section as they feature a simpler bass drum pattern.

Taking It Further

Once you are comfortable with the hi-hat accent pattern, try it with different bass drum patterns. Here’s a few to get you started.

For different take on this, you can try putting your right hand on the ride cymbal and playing the right hand accents on the bell of the ride. You may need to play a little slower as the right hand has a long way to travel between snare and ride bell; Hitting the bell consistently may be a problem to start with.

I hope you enjoyed Groove Of The Week #10. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like drum lessons. send us a message on the contact us page.