Groove Of The Week #11

It’s that time of the week where we get groovy! Here’s groove of the week #11:

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Groove of the week #11 is brought to you by I’m The Only One by Melissa Etheridge, Dazed & Confused by Led Zeppelin, and, countless Blues Songs. Let’s get into it.

Get The Groove

This beat is based on the eighth note triplet. A lot of Jazz & Blues & early Soul music is based on the eighth note triplet and it’s important to become familiar with it. It was also heard in a lot of pop and rock music from the 1960s and 1970s as the music was heavily influenced by blues and soul music.

Listen to bands like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Queen, & The Jimi Hendrix Experience and you’ll hear the triplet feel come up quite often. More recently, Duffy, Ed Sheeran, Meghan Trainor and Alicia Keys have had hit songs with the triplet Feel.

Let’s start by counting the triplet Hi-Hat:

Count Out Loud

Next, lets add the bass drum on 1 and 3 and the snare on 2 & 4:

Keep Counting

Once you are comfortable with that basic groove, then you can add the remaining bass drums.

The Full Groove

This is a great sounding groove and one of my favourites to play with a band. Try it out at your next blues jam session.

Taking It Further

A common thing to do with an eighth note triplet hi-hat pattern is to add the occasional 16th note triplet to it. Check out these two examples:

Side order of 16th notes during beats 1 & 3
Bonus 16th notes during beats 2 & 4

Have a listen to “Bring It On Home To Me” By The animals for ideas on where this is used.

Another thing we can do to spice up this groove is add accents to the hi-hat pattern. Let’s start with the basic one:

Accents on the beat

Accenting the main beat helps to drive the groove along even more. Try this one for more fun:

Quarter Note Triplet Accents

Accenting every other note highlights the quarter note triplet and makes for interesting listening. Hear it in action on “Black Velvet” By Alannah Myles. Play the 8th note triplets on the ride cymbal and put the accents on the bell for more fun. Or… try this:

My Head Hurts!

Now we’ve displaced the quarter note triplet accent to create another interesting variation… you can hear something similar to this on the Tears For Fears song “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”. Again try it with the accent on the bell of the ride cymbal for extra fun.

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #11. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, let us know on the contact us page.