Groove Of The Week #75

It’s time for the snare drum to take a stand.

Watch Groove Of The Week #75 on Instagram

This week’s groove is powerful! Featuring the snare drum pounding out quarter notes, the groove has an aggressive, energetic feel.

This kind of groove has it’s roots motown music but it has applications in the rock world. You can hear grooves with the snare drum on quarter notes in songs such as:

  • Get Ready – Tempations
  • Reach Out (I’ll be there) – Four Tops
  • Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
  • All revved up with no place to go – Meatloaf
  • Easy Money – Billy Joel
  • New Sensation – Inxs

Get The Groove

Let’s take this groove one bar at a time. Here’s the first bar:

First bars first

This is a common groove and is used in many motown songs. While this groove is fairly simple, be careful not to flam the snare and bass drum on beat 1.

Here’s the second bar:

Second bars second

The second bar features a more complex bass drum pattern and some open hi-hats. Practice this slowly at first and be sure to count. You may want to omit the open hi-hats to start with – add them back in when you are confident with the bass drum pattern.

All that remains now is to put the two bars together.

1 + 2 = groove

Take it further

I enjoy creating two bar patterns where one bar is fairly simple and the second bar is a more complex version. Here’s some more versions of this same groove – we’re just varying the second bar each time. After practicing these, try to come up with some of your own.

Change it up

If you have any trouble with these, slow down, count, and simplify.

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #75. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.

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David McGuire