Drum exercises to play on your kit

Drum beats

Eighteen grooves, from the money beat to 3/4, 6/8, 5/4, 9/8 and 7/8. The eight easy ones are on one page, in the order to learn them.

• Money beat
• 3/4 groove
• Half-time groove
• Ride cymbal groove
• Rock beat with an extra kick
• Four on the floor
• Motown beat
• 6/8 groove
• Shuffle
• Train beat
• 16th-note hi-hat groove
• 5/4 groove
• Half-time shuffle
• Linear groove
• Ghost note groove
• Paradiddle groove
• 9/8 groove
• 7/8 groove

Rudiments

Six rudiments with the sticking written out. Where both hands are written, the right plays the snare and the left a tom, so each hand has its own lane.

• Single stroke roll
• Five stroke roll
• Six stroke roll
• Double paradiddle
• Double stroke roll
• Single paradiddle

Drum fills

Four fills, each in a loop of groove so you practise the way in and the way out.

• Half-bar fill
• One-bar fill
• Triplet fill
• Around-the-kit fill

Bass drum exercises

Five exercises for the kick foot, from kick on the beat to the gallop, on one page.

How to read the patterns

Each pattern is a grid: one row for each drum, the cymbals at the top and the kick at the bottom, as they stand on a kit, and one column for each step of the bar, under its count. An x is a hit, a bold X an accent and a small (x) a ghost note. The shading changes with each beat, so you can see where the beats start.

Under every grid the bar is said in words, “kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4”, and counted aloud with only the counts that have a note. The rudiments add their sticking both ways round.

Words on these pages

Accent

A note played harder than the ones around it. Drawn as a bold X.

Backbeat

The snare on 2 and 4 in a bar of 4/4: the hit most rock and pop leans on.

Ghost note

A very quiet note, usually on the snare, there to be felt more than heard. Drawn as a small (x).

Eighth notes

Two notes to a beat, counted “1 &”.

Sixteenth notes

Four notes to a beat, counted “1 e & a”.

Triplets

Three notes to a beat, counted “1 trip let”. A shuffle plays the first and last of every three.

Sticking

Which hand plays each note: R for the right, L for the left.

Rudiment

A short sticking pattern practised until the hands play it without thinking. Fills and grooves are built out of them.

Fill

A short break from the groove, usually at the end of a phrase, that lands back on the 1.

Time signature

How many counts a bar has and what they are: 4/4 is four quarter notes, 7/8 is seven eighths.

BPM

Beats a minute. In these exercises the beat is always a quarter note, in 6/8, 7/8 and 9/8 too.

What DRUMY judges

• When each note lands. Within 45 ms of the note is perfect, within 90 ms great and within 140 ms good. A note with no hit inside 140 ms is a miss.
• Which drum. On a kit, a hit counts only for the drum its note is written for.
• Not how hard. The accents and ghost notes are drawn on the board so you can see them, but only their timing is judged: a ghost note played loud still counts.
• Open or closed. The open hi-hat is judged as the hi-hat: a hit on the hi-hat pad counts for it, open or not.
• The hi-hat foot. The pedal hi-hat shares the hi-hat lane. On a kit that sends the pedal as a note, a foot chick counts as a hi-hat hit, so one with no note to meet is an overhit.
• Side-stick. A side-stick shares the snare lane and counts as a snare hit.
• Double pedal. Every kick note is drawn as the same line across the board, so the kick is judged as rhythm only: one pedal or two, DRUMY cannot tell which foot played.
• Extra hits. A hit with no note near it is counted as an overhit and ends the combo.

From exercises to songs

When a beat feels easy, play it in a song: the easy drum songs are the place to start. For a whole song, the Trainer teaches its beats and fills a part at a time, each step starting at 70% of full speed and slowing to as low as 50% if it needs to.