Let’s have fun with fives with this week’s groove.
Watch Groove Of The Week #81 on Instagram.
This week’s groove uses a five note group played between bass drum and hi-hat. We’re using the eighth note triplet subdivision in 4/4 for this week’s groove so we only have twelve notes per bar. That means we can only play the pattern twice in the bar and then we have 2 notes left over.
We did a similar thing with seven note groups and sixteenth notes on groove of the week #79. Check that one out too.
Get The Groove
Let’s start by getting familar with the five note pattern we’ll be playing between the hi-hat and the bass drum.

This pattern is to be played between your bass drum and your hi-hat (using only one hand). Practice just playing this 5 notes smoothly and evenly. Count 1,2,3,4,5 as you practice it.
Once you can do that, we can apply it to our subdivision and time signature – 8th note triplets in 4/4 time.

Set your metronome to play at 50bpm with the 8th note triplet subdivision. Play along with it. Notice what should be happening in time with the main beats. You may need to count the 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2 in time with the triplet subdivision to start with. Try to progress onto playing it and being able to count the 1 puh let, 2 puh let etc….
The final step is to add the snare drum on beats 2 and 4. Be careful not to flam the snare drum with the bass drum on beat 2.

Take It Further
When playing a five note grouping like this, it will only resolve properly after 5 bars (resolve: the first note of the 5 note group lands on beat 1). This creates a whole five bar pattern for us to explore and to try and play. You might not ever use the whole 5 bar pattern, but you may find some bars, that when looped, can create a useful groove.
Here’s the whole pattern.

Learning to play the whole pattern will be good for your concentration and co-ordination.
Once you can play it all, try playing each bar individually to see if they work as standalone grooves. Then try 2 bar patterns.
Bars 1 and 5 are the obvious stand alone grooves because they have the bass drum on beat one. For two bar patterns, I like bar 1 and 2 together and also bar 5 followed by bar 1.
Another thing I like to do is play a regular shuffle groove for one bar and then attach any one of these 5 bars as a second bar.
I hope you’ve enjoyed groove of the week #81. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.