Let’s add some colour to our grooves this week.

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This week’s groove is a funky 2 bar pattern that’s been spiced up with the floor tom and the rim of the snare drum. We recently looked at adding the rim of the snare drum to our grooves on groove of the week #62; you might want to check that one out too.

Get The Groove

This week’s groove is a two bar pattern. Let’s start by looking at the basic groove for the first bar.

This groove features a funky 16th note bass drum pattern. Hopefully you can play this groove already. If not, play it very slowly with a metronome (40-50bpm) and count along as you play.

The only change we’re going to make on the first bar is to add a floor tom on beat 1. The Right hand comes across from the hi-hat to the floor tom, combines with the bass drum and makes the first note of the bar sound BIG.

The first bar with floor tom added — Going BIG on beat 1

Now we’ll look at the second bar. Here’s the basic groove:

The only difference between the first basic groove and this one is that we’re missing a bass drum on beat 3.

Now let’s add in the floor tom on beat 1 again to get that BIG beat 1.

The second bar with floor tom added — Bash that tom

Our final change to the second bar is to spice up beat 3 by playing the rim of the snare drum on beat 3 and the “e” of 3.

the second bar with snare rims addded — Bar 2 complete.

Now all that remains is to put both bars together to create the full 2 bar pattern.

Taking It Further

On groove of the week #62 we explored adding the snare drum rim into our grooves. So now lets explore adding the occasional floor tom into our grooves. Here’s three grooves to try:

floor tom groove variations. — Floor Tom Fun

The first variation sees the right hand moving from the hi-hat to the floor tom on beat 3. It’s sandwiched between two bass drums with open hi-hats. This adds a nice colour change at the low end on beat 3. Be sure to close the hi-hat on beat 3 with the floor tom.

The second variation takes a very common groove and has us play the left hand 16th notes on the floor tom instead of the snare drum. Note that we’re playing the ride cymbal here to make it easier for the left hand to access the floor tom.

The final variation is a linear groove. Your right hand should play the floor tom part and the left and plays the hi-hat and snare drum parts.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Groove Of The Week #65. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.