This week’s groove is an exercise in snare drum control… can you control your snare drum?

View groove of the week #73 on Instagram

This week, we’re playing a funky two bar pattern. The challenge with this groove is getting control of the snare drum. Some of our snare drum notes are loud and proud, others are ghosted. Can you get the dynamics correct and maintain them for 20 bars or so?

Get The Groove

Let’s start by looking at the basic groove.

Our basic groove is a fairly simple two bar pattern. Hopefully you’ll have no problem playing this. If you do have problems, slow down (40 – 60bpm) and count out loud as you’re playing it.

Now let’s add in the first of our additional snare drum notes. This will be on the “a” of 2 during both bars.

The new snare drum note is to be played loud; at the same volume as beats two and four. This one snare drum note gives a new feel to the groove, it make it feel more aggressive. Now let’s add in the ghost notes.

The ghost notes appear on the “a” of 4 on both bars and on the “e” and “&” of 1 of the second bar.

Your challenge now is to play all of the ghost notes nice and soft while playing the other 3 snare drum notes loud. Good luck! Don’t let the changing volume of your snare drum affect the volume of your bass drum – the bass should always be loud.

Take It Further

Getting control over your snare drum is essential if you want to be a good drummer. A good exercise is to pick a groove – like groove #73 – and try different combinations of ghosted and non-ghosted snare drum notes. Try these variations:

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #73. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.