This week we’re going fast & getting trashy!

Watch Groove Of The Week #80 on Instagram

This week’s groove goes by at 200 bpm, that’s pretty quick! We’re playing a 4 bar pattern for the first time on this groove of the week. There are plenty of songs out there that use 4 bar patterns; Sugar by Maroon 5 and Just Give Me a Reason by Pink are two examples.

Get The Groove

This groove is one of the more simple ones we’ve done. The first 3 bars are all the same. However, the 4th bar features a syncopated bass drum and the snare drum goes missing on beat 2. Here’s the full groove.

You might need to spend a bit of time working on the 4th bar and then transitioning from the the 3rd to the 4th bar before playing all 4 bars together. The question is, how fast can you play it and maintain bass drum accuracy. In the video I played it at 200bpm. Can you top that?

Taking It Further

Four bar patterns are a common occurrence in music. You need to be able to keep a 4 bar pattern consistent for a long period of time (possibly the whole song) without losing the pattern. This requires focus. Here’s some more variations on the this week’s groove. Can you play each one for 3 minutes without losing the pattern?

The first groove just moves the bar with the variation to the 3rd bar instead of the 4th bar. This gives a different feel to our original groove of the week.

The second groove just gives us a more common variation on the 4th bar.

The final groove is more complex and has more variation in it, using the ideas from the previous grooves. How long can you keep it straight?

I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #80. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.