It’s Tom Tom Time!

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This week’s groove sees us playing a simple foot ostinato while the right hand plays a tom pattern over top and the left hand keeps the back beat on 2 & 4.

Get The Groove

Let’s start by looking at the foot ostinato we’ll be playing under the hand pattern.

The bass drum is going to be playing on 1 & 3, the hi-hat will be playing on the off-beats. Get comfortable with this pattern first if you’re not familiar with it.

Now let’s add the snare drum on beats 2 & 4.

The left hand joins our foot ostinato on beats 2 & 4. We’ve now got a good basic groove going and the right hand is doing nothing yet.

The final part is to add in the right hand on the toms to bring some colour to the groove.

The right hand is free to roam around the kit. I chose a pattern I liked, what pattern do you like? You may not have the co-ordination to play this groove straight away. Take it slow and you’ll get there.

Take It Further

Try coming up with your own patterns for the right hand to play over top of the basic groove. Once you have a pattern you like, you can try the following ideas.

1. Displace the tom-tom pattern.
2. Change the foot pattern.

Here’s how you can displace the tom tom pattern.

My original tom pattern started on the “&” of 1 with the 2 sixteenth notes on tom 1. Here I change the tom pattern so it starts on the “&” of 2, then on the “&” of three and finally on the “&” of 4. This creates 4 different sounding grooves.

Here’s two ideas I played with for the foot pattern on this week’s groove.

The first pattern was my original idea for this groove with the hi-hat on the beat rather than the off beat. This gives a different feel to the groove.

The second pattern keeps the hi-hat on the beat and removes the bass drum on beat 3. This gives a little more space to the groove and allows the hi-hat on beat 3 to really add something to the groove.

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