Let’s get funky!

This week’s groove takes a fairly common groove and just drops an unexpected snare in the middle to funk it up a bit. This is something that you might use occasionally when playing a groove to change it up a little. To hear a song where this is done constantly, have a listen to “Tighten Up” by The Black Keys.

Get The Groove

Let’s start off by playing a basic version of this groove.

Hopefully you can already play the basic groove. To change it up, we’re going to move the right hand from the hi-hat to the snare drum on beat 1 of the second bar.

That gives us the full groove… however there are a couple more finishing touches we can add… The first one is Rim Shots on beats 2 and 4. This helps to distinguish the back beat from the other snare drum notes.  

The final finishing touch is an open hi-hat on the “&” of 1 in the second bar.

Taking It Further

We can add this surprise snare drum to other grooves. Check out these variations.

Our first groove sees us doing the suprise snare drum trick twice in a row and then having a more sedate end to the groove.

The second groove does the suprise snare drum on beat 1 of the first bar as well as on beat 3 of second bar. Note that we don’t play a bass drum on beat 1 anywhere in this groove. That might feel strange to you. I added a bass drum on beat 3 of the first bar to help anchor the groove.

The final groove sees us adding the surprise snare 3 times in a row. That might be overkill… I suggest sprinkling it into your grooves occasionally. Have a listen to “Sucker” by The Jonas Brothers and you’ll hear it on the 7th bar of the drum break that starts around the 2 minute mark.

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #63. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.