This week we’re upgrading a favourite groove. Let’s take look:

On the surface we’re playing a groove that most people learn in their first few months of playing. However, we’ve upgraded the ride pattern to include some 16th notes and the bell of the ride cymbal and we’re adding an offbeat pedalled hi-hat just for fun.

Get The Groove

Let’s start by taking a look at the basic groove we’ll be modifying.

Hopefully you’re already familiar with this groove. Let’s start modifying it. We’ll start by changing the ride cymbal pattern.

Now we’re playing a common 16th note rhythm on the ride cymbal. This adds a co-ordination challenge between the hands. The left and right hand are playing very different rhythms. You may want to spend time just focusing on the hand pattern.

Go slow with this pattern and get comfortable with it. Listen for accuracy, are your hands really hitting together when they are supposed to?

Once you have this hand pattern down, then try adding the bell of the ride cymbal on the quarter note pulse.

When you can execute this pattern cleanly, then we can add the bass drum back in.

The final touch will be adding the pedalled hi-hat on the off beats. To be able to do this, you may need to go back a few steps. Let’s try adding it to the basic groove first.

You may need to break this down into smaller steps. Play just the ride cymbal, bass drum and hi-hat first. Then add the snare drum on beats 2 & 4. Finally add the 16th note snare drum in. Once you can play this pattern, then we can change up the ride pattern.

Again take this slow and break it down into smaller chunks if you need to.

The final step will be to add in the bell of the ride cymbal to give us the full groove.

Taking It Further

Congratulations on conquering a tricky groove. Now let’s use the ride cymbal pattern and the offbeat hi-hat pattern in some further grooves.

The first groove has the challenge of putting the bass drum on a 16th note.

The second groove has more bass drums on 16th notes but the left hand pattern is a lot simpler.

The final groove features more 16th note bass drums. You may want to focus on getting the footwork correct first on this one.

Follow the steps we used to play the original groove to play these ones. Good luck!

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #61. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.