Shuffle along and get linear with this week’s groove.

This week we’re playing what I call a layered to linear groove. The first bar is a regular layered groove and the second bar is a linear version of it. The goal is to keep the main voices (normally the bass drum and snare drum) the same and then fill in the gaps between them with hi-hats and ghost notes. Check out groove of the week #53 to hear the idea in action with another groove.

Get The Groove

Let’s start of with the easy part, the layered groove. We’re playing a fairly regular shuffle groove.

Hopefully you can play that already. If not, check out groove of the week 8 for help developing your shuffle.

So now we’re going make this groove linear. If a groove is linear it means that nothing hits together. To start, let’s strip our layered groove back down to the main elements – the snare and bass drum.

Now all we have to do is replace the rests with other voices. I kept this groove simple and just played the hi-hat in all the spaces. Here’s the full linear version of the groove with the sticking pattern outlined for you.

Now we just need to put it together with the layered groove to create the two bar pattern.

Practice this until you can transition smoothly from the first bar to the second. Focus on keeping the bass drum and snare drum pattern sounding exactly the same from bar to bar – be careful with your note placement.

At higher speeds, you may struggle with the transition from the linear groove back to the layered groove because of the 3 hi-hat notes in a row that are required. If you’re struggling, change the last hi-hat note on the right hand to a ghost note on the left hand.

Take It Further

Here’s some more linear to layered shuffles for you to get your teeth into. After playing these shuffles, create some of your own.

The first two variations are similar to our original shuffle groove and we’re just using the hi-hats to fill spaces as we did previously.

The third variation has a lot more space in it so I use ghost notes in the left hand to help fill the space as it would be too much work for just the right hand on the hi-hat.

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