It’s groove of the week time!

This week’s groove sounds relatively simple, but the coordination required to pull it off may trip you up. We have a busy, accented, 16th note hi-hat pattern, rim shots & ghost notes and, 16th note bass drums to work with.

Get The Groove

Let’s start by looking at the basic groove that was built upon to create this week’s groove.

Note that we’re playing rim shots on beats 2 & 4 already. Hopefully you can already play this groove. Our first change will be to add in a ghost note on the snare. The ghost note will be on the “ah” of 2. Try to get a big contrast between the rim shots (loud) and the ghost note (soft).

The star of this groove is the hi-hat pattern, let’s add a basic version of the hi-hat pattern to this beat.

The hi-hat pattern has now changed to playing the first three 16th notes of each beat: 1 e & 2 e & 3 e & 4 e &. This makes the groove sound a lot busier. Play this groove very slowly at first (40-50bpm) and count all of the 16th notes.

Once you can play that then we can add the finishing touches. The first one just adds a bit more movement to the groove: accents on the off beats.

This is a fairly subtle change. I’m accenting the hi-hat on the “&”s of each beat but it’s not super loud. I achieve this by playing the first two hi-hat notes on top of the hi-hat with the tip of the stick and I play the “&” with the shoulder of the stick on the edge of the hi-hat. The sound is actually generated from the arm movement. If you watch the video closely you’ll see my right arn is moving back and forth. This is a technique most drummers use to add accents to their hi-hats and to make them sound more like a shaker.

The final finishing touch is an open hi-hat on the “&” of 4. I keep the arm movement mentioned above happening so that I get a full sound from the open hi-hat by accenting it as I open it.

Taking It Further

You’ve just spend time working on an awesome sounding hi-hat pattern, why not practice it with some more grooves?

The first variation just allows you to get more comfortable with the hi-hat pattern.

The second variation changes up the bass drum pattern.

The third variation adds the “ah” of two back in on the snare drum, but this time it’s not ghosted and has a syncopated bass drum on the “&” of 3.

The final groove challenges your bass drum/ hi-hat co-ordination. Take this one slow.

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #64. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.